Nicomachean Ethics IX.2

Today we turn to the problem of experts. It's a real problem: if you aren't an expert in a given field, you can't identify those who are. How would you? But we need experts.

Mostly Aristotle lays out the problem today, so I will just let him do that without comment.

A further problem is set by such questions as, whether one should in all things give the preference to one's father and obey him, or whether when one is ill one should trust a doctor, and when one has to elect a general should elect a man of military skill; and similarly whether one should render a service by preference to a friend or to a good man, and should show gratitude to a benefactor or oblige a friend, if one cannot do both.

All such questions are hard, are they not, to decide with precision? For they admit of many variations of all sorts in respect both of the magnitude of the service and of its nobility necessity. But that we should not give the preference in all things to the same person is plain enough; and we must for the most part return benefits rather than oblige friends, as we must pay back a loan to a creditor rather than make one to a friend. But perhaps even this is not always true; e.g. should a man who has been ransomed out of the hands of brigands ransom his ransomer in return, whoever he may be (or pay him if he has not been captured but demands payment) or should he ransom his father? It would seem that he should ransom his father in preference even to himself. As we have said, then, generally the debt should be paid, but if the gift is exceedingly noble or exceedingly necessary, one should defer to these considerations. For sometimes it is not even fair to return the equivalent of what one has received, when the one man has done a service to one whom he knows to be good, while the other makes a return to one whom he believes to be bad. For that matter, one should sometimes not lend in return to one who has lent to oneself; for the one person lent to a good man, expecting to recover his loan, while the other has no hope of recovering from one who is believed to be bad. Therefore if the facts really are so, the demand is not fair; and if they are not, but people think they are, they would be held to be doing nothing strange in refusing. As we have often pointed out, then, discussions about feelings and actions have just as much definiteness as their subject-matter.

That we should not make the same return to every one, nor give a father the preference in everything, as one does not sacrifice everything to Zeus, is plain enough; but since we ought to render different things to parents, brothers, comrades, and benefactors, we ought to render to each class what is appropriate and becoming. And this is what people seem in fact to do; to marriages they invite their kinsfolk; for these have a part in the family and therefore in the doings that affect the family; and at funerals also they think that kinsfolk, before all others, should meet, for the same reason. And it would be thought that in the matter of food we should help our parents before all others, since we owe our own nourishment to them, and it is more honourable to help in this respect the authors of our being even before ourselves; and honour too one should give to one's parents as one does to the gods, but not any and every honour; for that matter one should not give the same honour to one's father and one's mother, nor again should one give them the honour due to a philosopher or to a general, but the honour due to a father, or again to a mother. To all older persons, too, one should give honour appropriate to their age, by rising to receive them and finding seats for them and so on; while to comrades and brothers one should allow freedom of speech and common use of all things. To kinsmen, too, and fellow-tribesmen and fellow-citizens and to every other class one should always try to assign what is appropriate, and to compare the claims of each class with respect to nearness of relation and to virtue or usefulness. The comparison is easier when the persons belong to the same class, and more laborious when they are different. Yet we must not on that account shrink from the task, but decide the question as best we can.

Nicomachean Ethics IX.1

Aristotle begins the ninth book with a curious decision: he compares friendship to contractual relations in business. 

In all friendships between dissimilars it is, as we have said, proportion that equalizes the parties and preserves the friendship; e.g. in the political form of friendship the shoemaker gets a return for his shoes in proportion to his worth, and the weaver and all other craftsmen do the same. Now here a common measure has been provided in the form of money, and therefore everything is referred to this and measured by this...

Yes, that's what makes it a curious decision: we normally consider friendship to be entirely unlike the relationships we pay for, or take pay to have. 

...but in the friendship of lovers sometimes the lover complains that his excess of love is not met by love in return though perhaps there is nothing lovable about him), while often the beloved complains that the lover who formerly promised everything now performs nothing. Such incidents happen when the lover loves the beloved for the sake of pleasure while the beloved loves the lover for the sake of utility, and they do not both possess the qualities expected of them. If these be the objects of the friendship it is dissolved when they do not get the things that formed the motives of their love; for each did not love the other person himself but the qualities he had, and these were not enduring; that is why the friendships also are transient.

That paragraph again refers to the Greek homoerotic structures, which don't exist in our culture. There might be some general lessons for those who use love relationships as a way of getting practical goods ('utility,' Aristotle is calling that). 

But the love of characters, as has been said, endures because it is self-dependent. Differences arise when what they get is something different and not what they desire; for it is like getting nothing at all when we do not get what we aim at; compare the story of the person who made promises to a lyre-player, promising him the more, the better he sang, but in the morning, when the other demanded the fulfilment of his promises, said that he had given pleasure for pleasure. Now if this had been what each wanted, all would have been well; but if the one wanted enjoyment but the other gain, and the one has what he wants while the other has not, the terms of the association will not have been properly fulfilled; for what each in fact wants is what he attends to, and it is for the sake of that that that he will give what he has.

I'm guessing 'lyre players' were the guitar players of his day. But now we reach an important question:

But who is to fix the worth of the service; he who makes the sacrifice or he who has got the advantage? At any rate the other seems to leave it to him. This is what they say Protagoras used to do; whenever he taught anything whatsoever, he bade the learner assess the value of the knowledge, and accepted the amount so fixed. But in such matters some men approve of the saying 'let a man have his fixed reward'. Those who get the money first and then do none of the things they said they would, owing to the extravagance of their promises, naturally find themselves the objects of complaint; for they do not fulfil what they agreed to. The sophists are perhaps compelled to do this because no one would give money for the things they do know. These people then, if they do not do what they have been paid for, are naturally made the objects of complaint.

Protagoras gave his name to a Platonic dialogue, which turns on the question of whether virtue can be taught (if it is, as Socrates believed, a form of knowledge then it ought to be able to be taught, as Protagoras claimed to do). If you could teach virtue successfully you might well let your students set your rate of pay; after all, being now virtuous men, they would doubtless treat you equitably. 

Unfortunately, perhaps, we already know that Aristotle disproved Socrates' claim that virtue is a sort of knowledge. Can it be taught, then? Yes, because it is a sort of practice. It turns out not to be something that you can understand, but it is something that you can do. You can do it over and over until it becomes habitual for you, until it shapes your character.

But where there is no contract of service, those who give up something for the sake of the other party cannot (as we have said) be complained of (for that is the nature of the friendship of virtue), and the return to them must be made on the basis of their purpose (for it is purpose that is the characteristic thing in a friend and in virtue).

Yes, this is another reason why this is a curious comparison. We write contracts to govern relationships where friendship is absent, because the trust that you will be treated well is also consequently absent. We use the enforceable law as a substitute, as it were, for friendship.  

And so too, it seems, should one make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot be measured against money, and they can get no honour which will balance their services, but still it is perhaps enough, as it is with the gods and with one's parents, to give them what one can.

I trust you will all reflect on the wisdom of that paragraph. 

If the gift was not of this sort, but was made with a view to a return, it is no doubt preferable that the return made should be one that seems fair to both parties, but if this cannot be achieved, it would seem not only necessary that the person who gets the first service should fix the reward, but also just; for if the other gets in return the equivalent of the advantage the beneficiary has received, or the price lie would have paid for the pleasure, he will have got what is fair as from the other.

I'm not sure how well that principle works. It seems to hang on an unstated assumption that the services will be of roughly equal value, which may not be the case. 

We see this happening too with things put up for sale, and in some places there are laws providing that no actions shall arise out of voluntary contracts, on the assumption that one should settle with a person to whom one has given credit, in the spirit in which one bargained with him. The law holds that it is more just that the person to whom credit was given should fix the terms than that the person who gave credit should do so. For most things are not assessed at the same value by those who have them and those who want them; each class values highly what is its own and what it is offering; yet the return is made on the terms fixed by the receiver. But no doubt the receiver should assess a thing not at what it seems worth when he has it, but at what he assessed it at before he had it.

That is definitely not how we operate today; but in spite of the fact that our cultural heritage contains strict limits on usury, in fact usury has become the norm.  

Strongman Day

One last time. 

UPDATE:

Easy day. Those things only weigh 175 pounds, it turns out. 

Another Day of Glory

It only lasts a few weeks, but it is something to see. 

The Devil’s Courthouse from NC 215. 

Balsam Lake, where bald eagles nest in the spring.

Mt. Pisgah to the left, part of the National Forest also named Pisgah below.

A Little Friday Night Art

I Came across this piece of art I'd never heard of before, and thought it was quite interesting!

Sort of a high end "Dogs Playing Poker"!

I give you "Alexander and Diogenes" by Sir Edwin Landseer (1848):

Apparently it has to do with the Greek term for cynic- "The name "Cynic" derives from the Greek word kynikos, meaning "dog-like," a term applied to the philosophers due to their unconventional behavior and perceived resemblance to dogs."

Civil War Watch

The San Francisco Chronicle, wondering if the war has begun or not, notices something I pointed out back during my trip to DC in August (which is also true of the elements of the Georgia brigade that later joined the deployment).

According to the popular myth, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee handed U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant his sword at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, little did both men realize that Lee’s guys might be flying Blackhawks into the Loop in Chicago in 2025. 

It is quite an irony to see former Confederate States Army units deployed to blue cities. I don't know what kind of sense of humor Robert E. Lee had though this historian suggests it was substantial; perhaps his ghost is laughing about it somewhere.

Were I someone who thought that there was a Civil War coming imminently, I probably wouldn't be playing games with military pay like some people are doing. I'm not suggesting that the military's loyalty is for sale, which presumably it is not. However, it's hard not to notice when one side is going to great lengths to find ways to pay you and the other side is considering law suits to stop you getting paid after all. It's hard to ignore your children going hungry, after all -- the troops will get fed even during a shut down, but their families need to buy groceries. 

Trump seems to be moving to pay ICE and DHS agents during the shutdown too, and he's been treating them as important elements in what amounts to a domestic army. I'd think about that if I thought I were facing an imminent war, too. There are some old Roman stories about the loyalty of the Legions that are relevant. 

"Just Another Snake Cult"

Revolution is sometimes just and proper, and the decision about when the terms of the Declaration have been met is necessarily made by individual people with their individual judgment about the particular facts of the current case. One therefore has to be careful about whose judgment one considers on the question.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.14

Closing Book VIII, more comparisons between friendships political and actual.

Differences arise also in friendships based on superiority; for each expects to get more out of them, but when [such differences] happens the friendship is dissolved. Not only does the better man think he ought to get more, since more should be assigned to a good man, but the more useful similarly expects [to get more]; they say a useless man should not get as much as they should, since it becomes an act of public service and not a friendship if the proceeds of the friendship do not answer to the worth of the benefits conferred.

The 'better' man -- the Greek frankness about differences in social rank is disturbing to American readers, who prefer a strong sense of social equality even where there are strong differences in wealth or other social standing -- thus will only 'befriend' lesser men if they are useful men. Generally one's useless friends are of the pleasure-based variety; one can put up with spending time with a useless person only if one enjoys their company. 

For they think that, as in a commercial partnership those who put more in get more out, so it should be in friendship. But the man who is in a state of need and inferiority makes the opposite claim; they think it is the part of a good friend to help those who are in need; what, they say, is the use of being the friend of a good man or a powerful man, if one is to get nothing out of it?

As mentioned in the commentary on VIII.13, looking for the practical benefits one gets out of the relationship is not the mark of a true friendship but of a deceptive pretense at such friendship. At least the pleasant communication granted each other in a commercial relationship doesn't attempt the pretense that it is really a friendship; if one befriends a powerful man only to extract things from him, or one seeks a marriage only because of some practical benefit to be obtained, the basic deceit of the arrangement will eventually come out. At that point, the friendship (or the marriage) likely will be dissolved.

At all events it seems that each party is justified in his claim, and that each should get more out of the friendship than the other-not more of the same thing, however, but the superior more honour and the inferior more gain; for honour is the prize of virtue and of beneficence, while gain is the assistance required by inferiority.

Virtutis gloria merces has come up before, in IV.3, one of the chapters on magnanimity. Here, though, we see an attempt to create an equality between unequals by providing unequal amounts of different goods. All trade is like this: you have more cash, but want apples; I have more apples, but want cash. The trade is unequal: I receive more cash than you (indeed, you part with cash); you receive more apples than I (etc.). Yet the trading creates a kind of equality, because we are both satisfied with the outcome: you now have the apples you wanted, and I have some cash to spend on what else I might need.

For whatever reason this tends to strike contemporary readers as more acceptable in the case of capitalism than social exchange. We tend to object to providing the rich and powerful with honor in return for some benefit; that strikes Americans especially as unworthy toadying, or at best 'social climbing.' It was thought normal and proper to Aristotle. 

Now, he makes the transition from these lessons about personal relationships to public ones:

It seems to be so in constitutional arrangements also; the man who contributes nothing good to the common stock is not honoured; for what belongs to the public is given to the man who benefits the public, and honour does belong to the public.

Honors include, in Aristotle's as well as Plato's political philosophy, public offices. Thus 'honor belongs to the public' doesn't just mean that it is the public writ large that erects statues or holds parades, though it does mean that; it also means that the public chooses its officers. 

It thus makes sense to say that the public has the right to choose whom to honor, and that they shouldn't grant those honors to those who contribute nothing good to the common stock. If you're going to elect public officers they should be virtuous people who have proven their capacity as well as their willingness to sacrifice for the common good. That is why veterans have often done well in elected office: their advocates can point to clear demonstrations of worth.

Likewise, 'honor is the prize of virtue' is a wise guideline here. It's very helpful to show that the person being considered for an office has the right virtues to perform that office well. You should not elect a cowardly sheriff, nor a self-indulgent treasurer. If you decide that you must have these officers, you should at least choose candidates for the office who are fit for the powers invested in them.

It is not possible to get wealth from the common stock and at the same time honour. For no one puts up with the smaller share in all things; therefore to the man who loses in wealth they assign honour and to the man who is willing to be paid, wealth, since the proportion to merit equalizes the parties and preserves the friendship, as we have said.

It seems like it is possible to do that at least in our society, especially if we consider public office as one of the honors to be had. Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House and yet has greatly enriched herself by the office; the Obamas became multi-millionaires thereby; the Clintons profited wildly from their alleged charity fund. Even the current president, though he takes no salary (preferring honor?) profits at least a bit through public deals conducted in his companies' favor, and through foreign governments taking lavish stays at his hotels. 

Perhaps the point is that extracting wealth from the common stock should always be seen as diminishing one's honor in the same degree. It is one thing to have one's expenses paid, for example; that is not extracting wealth but being made whole. Yet perhaps it is more honorable to do the service for free, if one can; and if one uses their public position to enrich themselves through insider trading and special knowledge, or by taking bribes for favors, dishonor rather than honor should follow.

This then is also the way in which we should associate with unequals; the man who is benefited in respect of wealth or virtue must give honour in return, repaying what he can.

As a rule, this does happen even in America: it is quite usual for someone whose career was forwarded by an older co-worker, professor, or boss to speak honorably about that person at their retirement, for example. Repayment in the form of honoring those who came before you and helped you become established is thought normal and proper, not (as described above) a sort of social-climbing; but at the time of the retirement it is a kind of repayment for goods already long given, rather than a trade of goods for attentions. 

For friendship asks a man to do what he can, not what is proportional to the merits of the case; since that cannot always be done, e.g. in honours paid to the gods or to parents; for no one could ever return to them the equivalent of what he gets, but the man who serves them to the utmost of his power is thought to be a good man.

We have discussed this point adequately but it merits reinforcement.  

This is why it would not seem open to a man to disown his father (though a father may disown his son); being in debt, he should repay, but there is nothing by doing which a son will have done the equivalent of what he has received, so that he is always in debt. But creditors can remit a debt; and a father can therefore do so too. At the same time it is thought that presumably no one would repudiate a son who was not far gone in wickedness; for apart from the natural friendship of father and son it is human nature not to reject a son's assistance. But the son, if he is wicked, will naturally avoid aiding his father, or not be zealous about it; for most people wish to get benefits, but avoid doing them, as a thing unprofitable.-So much for these questions.

Thus ends Book VIII, with only two books remaining in the EN. 

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.13

Today's is a longer chapter. 

There are three kinds of friendship, as we said at the outset of our inquiry, and in respect of each some are friends on an equality and others by virtue of a superiority (for not only can equally good men become friends but a better man can make friends with a worse, and similarly in friendships of pleasure or utility the friends may be equal or unequal in the benefits they confer). This being so, equals must effect the required equalization on a basis of equality in love and in all other respects, while unequals must render what is in proportion to their superiority or inferiority.

Since the equality of friendship is sometimes each giving each other the same thing, when you are equals you have to be sure to be giving the other person as much as they are giving you. This principle of reciprocity holds in true friendships especially, i.e. friendships of virtuous people for the right reasons.

In the case where unequals are 'friends,' which happens especially with so-called friendships of utility, the principle as Aristotle has stated it is that the better gets more of the good. Thus, the person who is benefitting most from the utility -- perhaps they have befriended an older person with more and better connections in the industry they aspire to join -- must provide more of the goods of friendship to make the friendship worth the better person's time. If they don't, the better-connected or more-famous person will simply drift away because it's no longer worth their time.

Aristotle goes on to point out that this kind of drifting-away is mostly about friendships of utility, as true friends actually care about each other. Even in friendships of pleasure, they're both having fun.

Complaints and reproaches arise either only or chiefly in the friendship of utility, and this is only to be expected. For those who are friends on the ground of virtue are anxious to do well by each other (since that is a mark of virtue and of friendship), and between men who are emulating each other in this there cannot be complaints or quarrels; no one is offended by a man who loves him and does well by him-if he is a person of nice feeling he takes his revenge by doing well by the other. And the man who excels the other in the services he renders will not complain of his friend, since he gets what he aims at; for each man desires what is good. Nor do complaints arise much even in friendships of pleasure; for both get at the same time what they desire, if they enjoy spending their time together; and even a man who complained of another for not affording him pleasure would seem ridiculous, since it is in his power not to spend his days with him.

But the friendship of utility is full of complaints; for as they use each other for their own interests they always want to get the better of the bargain, and think they have got less than they should, and blame their partners because they do not get all they 'want and deserve'; and those who do well by others cannot help them as much as those whom they benefit want.

This strikes me as being appropriate in its way, because these 'friends of utility' are in a sense being untruthful with each other. They aren't really friends at all; they're only acting in a friendly manner in order to extract some practical good from each other. Perhaps this is more pleasant than to try to do business with people who are rude or hateful, which is understandable. If it is mistaken for friendship instead of courtesy, however, it is likely to lead to hurt feelings when people decide they aren't getting as much out as they are putting in. (This also points up the bad quality of treating a love relationship, such as the 'friendship between husband and wife,' as chiefly being about the 'goods' one gets from each other. If it is chiefly about utility it's not a true friendship of any sort.)

Speaking of the Free Press....

 ...they have a profile of Harmeet Dhillon, the forthright and effective DOJ Civil Rights Division director. 

“I have sued numerous hospitals and medical institutions for butchering young girls under the guise of a lie, a Mengele-like lie that you can change your sex,” she told me, referring to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who experimented on his patients at Auschwitz. “You cannot change your sex. That’s a lie,” she said. “Selling children that lie harms thousands of American children and families forever. So we’re making it difficult for them to do that.”

Those are uncompromising words. But Dhillon speaks them with barely perceptible emotion. “The strength of Harmeet is that she has a calm fearlessness about her,” friend and right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza told me. “She doesn’t come across as a wild woman. She has a sobriety about her, but she is hardcore. That sobriety is tactically directed at achieving results. You take a ferocious point of view, but it’s presented in a decorous legalese.”

Since Dhillon was confirmed in April, around half of the career attorneys in her office have resigned. Welch put the number at 368 in his July 23 memo. At a Senate oversight hearing at the end of that month, Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, was nearly apoplectic. “There’s been a mass exodus from the Civil Rights Department,” he said. “It is just a shell of what it used to be; they’re being canceled; they’re being canceled, by you, by the department.”

Under the old rules of Washington, a tongue-lashing like that from a senator—even from the opposing party—would be an ominous warning.

Dhillon doesn’t see it that way. When I asked for her reaction to the mass resignations, she said, “Great. Excellent.”

Indeed! Seeing a part of the Federal Government eviscerated is usually good news, but most especially when it is a part that focuses the power of the government against American citizens and institutions for what are essentially political reasons. She's still doing plenty of that, probably more than I'd like; but a great deal less, and in an environment that is a great deal less welcoming to people who feel like it is their calling to be moral Crusaders against their own country.

Free Speech is even (especially) for Offensive Speech

You have to stand up for offensive speech because that's always where the attempts to restrict free speech begin. Nobody objects to grandma posting about the church service this weekend at first. They object to the prickly jerk who says things that rightly ruffle feathers. They get agreement to go after him, to shut him down, and then they start to move the window. Eventually, grandma gets busted because her post about the church service is offensive to atheists or Muslims or whoever is willing to claim to be offended by it.

So this ex-cop is probably a jerk, and his speech acts are offensive. That's why we have to stand up for his rights.

A Confession

Matt Taibbi of the Free Press writes:

I apologize for Racket readers for my recent absence. I had an accident at the end of the last week, taking a fall after losing keys and trying to break into my own house. I was unconscious for a few minutes. Apparently upon waking I knew my date of birth and name, but not the current President (!). EMTs and a nearby hospital took good care of me... 

My lesson from this week: if you’re older and have kids, act like it. Beware of thoughts like, “When I was 22 I could make this jump without a problem.” You’re not 22, you’re one of earth’s most dangerous animals, middle-aged and delusional. 

I have a Strongman competition coming up on Saturday, which I have intended to be my last one and after when I have intended to retire. The run-up to it has gone so well, though, I keep finding myself thinking: "You know, maybe I shouldn't retire from the sport after all..." 

Perhaps I need a different sport. We're all getting older. 

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.12

Book VIII continues exploring the similarities and differences of friendship from other social relationships.  

Every form of friendship, then, involves association, as has been said. One might, however, mark off from the rest both the friendship of kindred and that of comrades. Those of fellow-citizens, fellow-tribesmen, fellow-voyagers, and the like are more like mere friendships of association; for they seem to rest on a sort of compact. With them we might class the friendship of host and guest. The friendship of kinsmen itself, while it seems to be of many kinds, appears to depend in every case on parental friendship; for parents love their children as being a part of themselves, and children their parents as being something originating from them.

This is also the division between the 'friendship' that constitutes political friendship and the natural authority of the family, as we were just discussing in VIII.11. This is in other words a basic distinction in human relationships: it is the reason that Aristotle considers man a political animal, as he puts it in the Politics I.2ff, i.e. that human beings have to extend their relationships beyond these natural family ties and form compacts that allow non-family members to trust that they will be fairly treated. 

How could such a compact be enforced? The traditional solution has been to set up a state according to one of the three types of constitutions that Aristotle has been discussing. Is it possible to do so without a state? Yes, apparently: the medieval Íslendingar did so with significant success for a time. However, the occasions have been rare and have not tended to survive without the kind of isolation that Iceland enjoyed at the time. 

Now (1) parents know their offspring better than there children know that they are their children, and (2) the originator feels his offspring to be his own more than the offspring do their begetter; for the product belongs to the producer (e.g. a tooth or hair or anything else to him whose it is), but the producer does not belong to the product, or belongs in a less degree.

One might see the point better with an acorn than with a tooth or a hair; the tooth or the hair is arguably a constituent part of the organism that generated it, and the good of the organism is the purpose of the tooth (or the hair). The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, but it is from the start both a product of its elder -- we as observers could tell that the older oak and the younger one were related, as well as which was the elder and which was the younger. Yet from the beginning the younger oak has its own existence and purpose, its own life-cycle: and it is to some degree in competition with the parent for sunlight and resources from the beginning. (There is some evidence now that trees share, however, especially with their own but also with their analogs to friends, with fungal networks as a kind of necessary interlocutor.)

And (3) the length of time produces the same result; parents love their children as soon as these are born, but children love their parents only after time has elapsed and they have acquired understanding or the power of discrimination by the senses. From these considerations it is also plain why mothers love more than fathers do. 

Parents, then, love their children as themselves (for their issue are by virtue of their separate existence a sort of other selves), while children love their parents as being born of them, and brothers love each other as being born of the same parents; for their identity with them makes them identical with each other (which is the reason why people talk of 'the same blood', 'the same stock', and so on).

This is the first use of the concept of 'another self.' That will become important later, but it is worth noticing that it originates as an idea in the text in the context of the love a parent has for their own scion. 

They are, therefore, in a sense the same thing, though in separate individuals. Two things that contribute greatly to friendship are a common upbringing and similarity of age; for 'two of an age take to each other', and people brought up together tend to be comrades; whence the friendship of brothers is akin to that of comrades. And cousins and other kinsmen are bound up together by derivation from brothers, viz. by being derived from the same parents. They come to be closer together or farther apart by virtue of the nearness or distance of the original ancestor.

Commonality of age remains one of the largest divisions in American society, if anything only increased by the technological change of the era. People from my generation remember a time without smart-phones or the internet or computers, a time when we'd be turned out in the morning by our parents and expected to survive unsupervised until dinner. That is unknown to the youth of today, or even the generation immediately before them, and the results have created a division between us: they literally cannot imagine the world I remember from my youth. For those of a generation older than me, the effect is even greater. 

The friendship of children to parents, and of men to gods, is a relation to them as to something good and superior; for they have conferred the greatest benefits, since they are the causes of their being and of their nourishment, and of their education from their birth; and this kind of friendship possesses pleasantness and utility also, more than that of strangers, inasmuch as their life is lived more in common.

The kinship between parents and gods is one contemporary psychology has made much of, and consequently our literature: in Fight Club the imaginary version of Tyler Durden makes the point explicitly that 'our fathers were our models for God.' It may be true to some degree: I have sometimes thought that the unshakeable quality of my faith was built on the fact that I had a good father who was always there if I really needed him, but willing to trust me to go free about my business when I didn't call on him. Aristotle isn't making the psychological point, neither Freudian nor Jungian: he means gods, which really exist out there, and have the same relationship by extension that a parent does to children.

The friendship of brothers has the characteristics found in that of comrades (and especially when these are good), and in general between people who are like each other, inasmuch as they belong more to each other and start with a love for each other from their very birth, and inasmuch as those born of the same parents and brought up together and similarly educated are more akin in character; and the test of time has been applied most fully and convincingly in their case. Between other kinsmen friendly relations are found in due proportion.

Aristotle has made that point several times now: the types of constitutions that seem plausible to us seem to him to derive from these different family relations.  

Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples-even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more necessary than the city, and reproduction is more common to man with the animals. With the other animals the union extends only to this point, but human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together.

Another point underemphasized by our contemporaries: Aristotle not only expects that husband and wife will be friends, he regards the friendship of man and wife as even a more basic feature of human nature than the formation of cities. Given that 'civilization' in the West derives from the formation of cities (not in China, where it linguistically points to the formation of a system of writing), Aristotle is saying that the friendship of man and wife is more natural to humanity than civilization itself. 

How man and wife and in general friend and friend ought mutually to behave seems to be the same question as how it is just for them to behave; for a man does not seem to have the same duties to a friend, a stranger, a comrade, and a schoolfellow.

Here we get another return to the analogy between justice and friendship, which is as we've noted strange given that the sorts of equality that are appropriate to both are quite different. Likewise, justice was meant to be 'fairness' and 'lawfulness,' where 'fairness' pointed to proportionate equality and the law pointed to things that required virtuous behavior from each other. Mostly we don't regulate our friendships by law (although we do our marriages, to some degree at least). That seems to leave fairness: but the equalities aren't the same, so the kind of fairness required isn't the same either. 

A Glorious Time of Year

Some more photos for you, since the beauty won't last and ought to be enjoyed while it can.

Looking Glass Rock, looking south from the Blue Ridge Parkway over Cherry Gap.

The distant white over the saddle in the second-most distant ridge is Asheville. Looking north from the Parkway near the Graveyard Fields.

Those are from yesterday afternoon, when I had a few moments towards sunset to get up there and look around.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.11

I ended yesterday's short reading on constitutions with a note that Book VIII is chiefly about friendship, so we need to tie the political discussion of the last few chapters back to the problem of human friendships. Aristotle starts moving in that direction in today's reading.

Each of the constitutions may be seen to involve friendship just in so far as it involves justice. The friendship between a king and his subjects depends on an excess of benefits conferred; for he confers benefits on his subjects if being a good man he cares for them with a view to their well-being, as a shepherd does for his sheep (whence Homer called Agamemnon 'shepherd of the peoples'). Such too is the friendship of a father, though this exceeds the other in the greatness of the benefits conferred; for he is responsible for the existence of his children, which is thought the greatest good, and for their nurture and upbringing.

Now this is an interesting move because we started this book by laying out the ways in which the 'equalities' of justice aren't the same as the 'equalities' of friendship. There are several of each, and they differ significantly. So now the 'friendship' involved in political communities is tied to the justice equalities -- which are, you will recall, proportionate in several different ways for the most part, arithmetical when providing rectificatory justice to the injured. These are all unlike the 'equalities' of friendship, which have to do with things like 'each giving the other the same thing (e.g. love or honor or pleasure).'

Thus we can see that political friendship is purely analogical to real friendship, even more than frienship-for-pleasure-or-utility was merely analogical to true friendship. 

These things are ascribed to ancestors as well. Further, by nature a father tends to rule over his sons, ancestors over descendants, a king over his subjects. These friendships imply superiority of one party over the other, which is why ancestors are honoured.

Two of those are more 'by nature' than the third one. As we recently discussed, the natural authority of parents over children really does come from nature: children are born helpless and need guidance as well as protection to survive ("Don't eat those berries!"). Those who brought them into the world tend to provide that guidance, and in return are due honor and respect; and if you break that law of nature by ignoring or rejecting their guidance, nature itself will punish you (as for example if you ate 'those berries' anyway). 

Ancestors, to a more extended degree, are due respect because they did the work that laid the grounds for your present prosperity (whatever it is). You look back on whatever goods you have, and you find that you have them in part because those who came before you spent their lives toiling to create some conditions of prosperity from the world that you inherited. Even bad ancestors did at least some of this, or you and your parents wouldn't have survived to exist now. The superiority mentioned here of ancestors is thus really priority in the literal sense, i.e., they came first.

Kings, however -- there's nothing natural about kings. We used to tell stories about royal lines that tried to imbue them with power and authority from God, but it's been clear for a long time that those stories were fictions. As Jefferson put it, "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god." Arrangements like kingship are artificial: indeed, all such political relationships are artifices, meaning things made by men rather than found in nature. That doesn't necessarily make them bad, but it does mean that such arrangements aren't rooted in anything like natural law.

The justice therefore that exists between persons so related is not the same on both sides but is in every case proportioned to merit; for that is true of the friendship as well. The friendship of man and wife, again, is the same that is found in an aristocracy; for it is in accordance with virtue the better gets more of what is good, and each gets what befits him; and so, too, with the justice in these relations.

This 'the better gets more of what is good' is not thought proper to marriage today. However, the same idea underlies the superior pay of commissioned officers in the military to that of NCOs, even when the NCOs might be greatly senior to the junior officers as Sergeants Major are to First Lieutenants. The notion is that the officers are better, traditionally by birth but in the United States purely by education, and thus deserve higher pay and privileges. Yet, at least in the Marine Corps, this is formally balanced by a recognition that they also have a duty of care for those under their command, such that at mess the officer may not eat until he has seen that all of his men have been fed.

We don't have to do things that way with our military, just as we don't run our marriages that way anymore. We could pay instead by proofs of virtue, for example years of honorable service or by awards and recognitions earned. Because these arrangements are artifices, we are free to arrange them differently if we think of a better way.

The friendship of brothers is like that of comrades; for they are equal and of like age, and such persons are for the most part like in their feelings and their character. Like this, too, is the friendship appropriate to timocratic government; for in such a constitution the ideal is for the citizens to be equal and fair; therefore rule is taken in turn, and on equal terms; and the friendship appropriate here will correspond.

This is meant to be the worst of the true forms of government, recall. 

But in the deviation-forms, as justice hardly exists, so too does friendship. It exists least in the worst form; in tyranny there is little or no friendship. For where there is nothing common to ruler and ruled, there is not friendship either, since there is not justice; e.g. between craftsman and tool, soul and body, master and slave; the latter in each case is benefited by that which uses it, but there is no friendship nor justice towards lifeless things. But neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua slave. For there is nothing common to the two parties; the slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave.

The transformation of a living man with all his joys and pains and experiences into a thing that can be disposed of for one's own ends is a base violation of human dignity. It is one of the apparent advances of our era over the glories of the ancient world to have understood that, though few places even today go as far to secure it as to recognize the individual right to keep and bear arms that best secures it.

Qua slave then, one cannot be friends with him. But qua man one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be friendship with him in so far as he is a man.

That was the last refuge of justice even in slavery that the Dred Scott decision rejected.

Therefore while in tyrannies friendship and justice hardly exist, in democracies they exist more fully; for where the citizens are equal they have much in common.

Indeed, quite a lot in common insofar as they are in any sense 'equal.' It's not clear which equality Aristotle is thinking of here, but it might be the equality before the law, so that all citizens are held to the same rules even when the rules are unfairly slanted to allow the majority to extract what it wants from the minority.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.10

Today we get what amounts to the nickel tour of the Politics; Aristotle gives us his basic typology of political systems in one paragraph instead of a whole book.

There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity.

"Republic" is another popular translation of that last one, with "democracy" often being given as the perverted form. A timocracy can have other qualifications for voting/citizenship than property; for example, military service could be the qualification, a la Starship Troopers. Yet in the original form it did work this way, military service being required of citizens in any case: Solon's laws actually limited the category of military service you could perform by the kind of wealth production your property could produce. 

The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant.

This is going to hold for all the systems and perversions: the true form has the empowered looking out for the good of the whole, with the perverse form following self-interest by the individual, the narrow class of oligarchs, or the majority voting itself wealth from the minority. 

 Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations; for in its case the form of constitution is but a slight deviation. These then are the changes to which constitutions are most subject; for these are the smallest and easiest transitions.

So the best true form -- monarchy, allegedly -- has the worst of all as its deviation, whereas the worst true form has the least-bad deviation. Thus, given that it is hard to keep a government from corrupting, it seems like you are hedging your bets by adopting the less-good that also is limited to the least-harmful perversions.

Following that, Aristotle makes some analogies between government and private relations.

One may find resemblances to the constitutions and, as it were, patterns of them even in households. For the association of a father with his sons bears the form of monarchy, since the father cares for his children; and this is why Homer calls Zeus 'father'; it is the ideal of monarchy to be paternal rule. But among the Persians the rule of the father is tyrannical; they use their sons as slaves. Tyrannical too is the rule of a master over slaves; for it is the advantage of the master that is brought about in it. Now this seems to be a correct form of government, but the Persian type is perverted; for the modes of rule appropriate to different relations are diverse. The association of man and wife seems to be aristocratic; for the man rules in accordance with his worth, and in those matters in which a man should rule, but the matters that befit a woman he hands over to her. If the man rules in everything the relation passes over into oligarchy; for in doing so he is not acting in accordance with their respective worth, and not ruling in virtue of his superiority. Sometimes, however, women rule, because they are heiresses; so their rule is not in virtue of excellence but due to wealth and power, as in oligarchies. The association of brothers is like timocracy; for they are equal, except in so far as they differ in age; hence if they differ much in age, the friendship is no longer of the fraternal type. Democracy is found chiefly in masterless dwellings (for here every one is on an equality), and in those in which the ruler is weak and every one has license to do as he pleases.

Since we are chiefly interested in friendship, which is based upon (one of what have turned out to be many notions of) equality, presumably a friendship should be like a democracy. Yet one might surpass the other in virtue, as we have discussed, in which case it might be like an aristocracy in an analog to the way that a marriage might be. 

Scottish Cowboy

He makes the point that lots of Scots handled cattle in the Highlands, and came to America in the Clearances in the 1700s and 1800s. They didn't have much of a horse culture, although Scotland during the War of Independence in the 1280s-1330s had a famous pony cavalry that could manage much more difficult passages than English war horses and consequently could traverse areas that the English cavalry couldn't cross or where they couldn't follow. 

Still, once they got to America the Highlanders could learn to ride if they didn't know how to do. It's an interesting project to hear what the old cowboy songs might have sounded like in a Scottish burr. 

From my Front Porch

It’s really getting nice. Tom said he wants to see Appalachia in autumn. This is the best I can do remotely. 

Challenging the National Firearms Act

The FPC is at it again, along with a host of other upstart gun rights groups.

Zeroing out the tax stamp isn’t nothing. As we and others have pointed out, eliminating the tax stamp undercuts any remaining argument that the NFA is a tax…because there is no longer a tax involved. On top of that, cans and SBRs are in common use. That means they pass the Heller test. There’s also no text, history or tradition of regulating them which means doing so doesn’t pass the Bruen test.

There's also no real gun control argument for controlling either "silencers" (which definitely don't silence, just reduce the volume of the gunshot to levels less likely to damage hearing) or short-barreled rifles (as long arms of all sorts put together constitute very little of gun crime, almost all of which is committed with handguns). All the money to be made in reducing gun crime points to addressing illegally-possessed handguns, not in point-of-sale restrictions on new guns anyway.

What "Anarchy"?

The philosophical concept I talk about occasionally has a troubled relationship with some practical difficulties that are really unrelated: they mostly have to do with failures of government rather than attempts to set up a voluntaristic system. Indeed, the word itself refers to such a failure.

1530s, "absence of government," from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader[.]"

There was no archon in most of 404 BC, but there was a government: it was imposed upon Athens by Sparta after they executed their archon Cleophon and accepted what became known as the Thirty Tyrants (including Charmides). It was not the case that there was no government, let alone that there was anything intentional going on with regard to what Athens wanted to accomplish that year: there was the collapse at the loss of a punishing war.

I was thinking of this while reading Jeffrey Carter's post this morning about Democratic leaders in places like Chicago "needing anarchy." He doesn't mean anything like anarchism, and certainly not the absence of government.

When there is no law, and there is no will to enforce the law, or there is only a selective will to enforce some laws, anarchy will reign. Totalitarians love anarchy. It’s what Lenin brought to Russia to take control. It is the playbook of Saul Alinsky. Anarchy begets totalitarianism. 

The other commonality in all this is that it seems consistent that career politicians favor anarchy. Career politicians are a bane on the existence of our country. I had a conversation with a VC in SF about this once. His research backed it up. Term limits and getting people out of government and into the private sector are a great thing for freedom...

Career politicians are terrible in any form in any party. They hold and concentrate power. Our government is structured to be decentralized. Career politicians are terrible if they are fully developed... Terrible if they are young and using various offices as stepping stones to a higher office, like they are climbing some corporate ladder....

Every single thing a Democratic politician does today is designed to concentrate power, eliminate competition, and create anarchy so they can grab more power and continue to centralize.  

Emphasis added. So that kind of 'anarchy' is built around not only the existence of government, but the stability and long-term continuance of the same government by the same governors. It's not about an absence of powerful leaders, but the concentration of power among existing leaders. It's a kind of failure of government, but not one that leads to the absence of government, the kind that leads to the corruption of government.

Lenin obviously wasn't trying to usher in any sort of anarchism either; in fact, the anarchists who were deported by the US to Russia, as well as the ones native to Russia, ended up in gulags and graveyards. The last thing the Soviets wanted was a leaderless society without the possibility of coercive force being deployed by the government against citizens. If what he is talking about 'begats totalitarianism,' it's increased and unceasing government rather than the absence of rulers.

When I see people on the right talking this way -- people who do want things like term limits and to "get people out of government and into the private sector" or to oppose "concentrated power" -- I wonder what they're intending by the term. Obviously Chicago is not an anarchy: it has a government that is deeply embedded, impenetrable to outsiders not approved by its power structurer, and consequently wickedly corrupt. Getting rid of the Chicago archons would be a significant step forward.

Camerata Nordia Octet

Most likely none of you are planning to be in Athens, Georgia this Wednesday; but if you are, Sweden's leading chamber orchestra will be appearing at the University's Hodgson Concert Hall that evening. While on the subject, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will be performing that greatest of symphonies, Beethoven's No. 9, on 14 November of this year.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.9

We continue to discuss friendship and community. I've mentioned several times that Aristotle conceives of politics as a sort-of friendship, and therefore the relationships between fellow citizens as being friendly. Today he's going to talk about how this sort of 'friendship' invokes justice, which is the 'virtue of the others' governing how we treat other people. 

Friendship and justice seem, as we have said at the outset of our discussion, to be concerned with the same objects and exhibited between the same persons. For in every community there is thought to be some form of justice, and friendship too; at least men address as friends their fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers, and so too those associated with them in any other kind of community.

Indeed, comrade. 

(This translation actually uses 'comrade' for 'friend' in parts of this section, which I will replace to avoid the contemporary connotation of a Communist fellow-subject).

And the extent of their association is the extent of their friendship, as it is the extent to which justice exists between them. And the proverb 'what friends have is common property' expresses the truth; for friendship depends on community. Now brothers and [friends] have all things in common, but the others to whom we have referred have definite things in common-some more things, others fewer; for of friendships, too, some are more and others less truly friendships.

For the most part we in America do not practice this commonality of property except in the sort-of friendship we refer to as marriage (and even then not in every state). Even in marriage we usually maintain a sense that certain things belong to me rather than to us. One would be aggrieved if one's spouse sold one of those treasured possessions that belonged to me, even though legally they might be permitted to do so. That would seem like a betrayal.

We can see it even more clearly in the case of a friend to whom one had granted a durable general power of attorney. That was done because it was intended to be used for one's good, as for example because one was long absent on a military deployment abroad, or because of the possibility of medical issues disabling one's ability to make informed decisions for a while. If it were instead used to enrich the other at one's expense, it would seem like a violation even though such a usage is perfectly legal under the terms of the arrangement. 

This gets to the point Aristotle is making about some relationships being 'more, and others less, than true friendships.' A very good marriage is one in which you can trust your spouse with both community property laws or a durable general power of attorney and know they will loyally defend your interests. A very good friend, a true friend, would be trustworthy to that degree.

And the claims of justice differ too; the duties of parents to children, and those of brothers to each other are not the same, nor those of [friends] and those of fellow-citizens, and so, too, with the other kinds of friendship. There is a difference, therefore, also between the acts that are unjust towards each of these classes of associates, and the injustice increases by being exhibited towards those who are friends in a fuller sense; e.g. it is a more terrible thing to defraud a [friend] than a fellow-citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than any one else. And the demands of justice also seem to increase with the intensity of the friendship, which implies that friendship and justice exist between the same persons and have an equal extension.

This is a common sense remark rather than a logical deduction, which I mean in the best sense of the term "common sense." I think almost any human being at any time in history would agree with that remark, which arises from our first nature and the consequent natural authority of family. It is not always the actual father who performs the role of protecting and providing for you when you are helpless as a baby and a child, but it is always someone: and that someone you owe a moral debt to that isn't due to strangers. Even if they did it poorly, you owe something to them for what they did for you when you needed them. Friendship is akin to that in that we each end up giving of ourselves and ours to help our friends, and they for us; this creates a special debt between us and our true friends by which we are glad to be mutually bound because it sacralizes our relationship. 

However! Much of Modern and postmodern ethics would deny this basic, humane point. Probably Kant himself would not have, but Kantians often do: they reason from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that morality depends on universalizable maxims that can be framed as universal laws. Universal means that it doesn't matter if it's your father or your brother or a stranger; you should behave the same way towards everyone. The absurdity of that is quickly evident, but take it with the commentary above: would you trust just anyone with a durable general power of attorney over you? Only perhaps the truest Communist would even consider that possibility, and such a person would quickly find themselves in the place that Communists generally end up: that is, stripped of everything and starving. 

Utilitarianism, the other major school of modern ethics besides deontology, likewise holds that what we are supposed to be doing is a kind of universal calculation of pleasure/pain -- and not for ourselves or our fathers or brothers or friends, but for all of humanity equally. If it increases pleasure for most, the one may be sacrificed to a greater or lesser degree; indeed, to the greatest degree if the increase is great enough. This universalizing impulse ends up sacrificing as well all these basic human connections. "Sorry, comrade, but the communal utility demands that we give you up; those organs could benefit all of them more than you." 

This universalizing tendency in modern ethics is quite dangerous, even though it is well-intentioned: its advocates think that it will make our ethical decisions more rational, and less given to special-pleading for those we care about more than others. One can judge a tree by its fruits, however; no matter how lovely the tree, certain trees are poisonous. The common sense of humanity across millennia and many successful civilizations is more reliable here.

Now all forms of community are like parts of the political community; for men journey together with a view to some particular advantage, and to provide something that they need for the purposes of life; and it is for the sake of advantage that the political community too seems both to have come together originally and to endure, for this is what legislators aim at, and they call just that which is to the common advantage. Now the other communities aim at advantage bit by bit, e.g. sailors at what is advantageous on a voyage with a view to making money or something of the kind, fellow-soldiers at what is advantageous in war, whether it is wealth or victory or the taking of a city that they seek, and members of tribes and demes act similarly...

For some reason the translator chose to give the Greek word here rather than to translate it; the word is the root of "democracy," and refers to 'a people' in the sense of one that forms a political community rather than, say, as a genetic origin. 

...(Some communities seem to arise for the sake or pleasure, viz. religious guilds and social clubs; for these exist respectively for the sake of offering sacrifice and of companionship. But all these seem to fall under the political community; for it aims not at present advantage but at what is advantageous for life as a whole)...

This is in line with Aristotle's conclusion that the political community, and not the family, is the most natural form of human organization because it is only in a political community that the highest forms of human life (e.g. the pursuit of philosophy) are attainable. This discussion is in Politics I, continuing to Politics II.

...offering sacrifices and arranging gatherings for the purpose, and assigning honours to the gods, and providing pleasant relaxations for themselves. For the ancient sacrifices and gatherings seem to take place after the harvest as a sort of first-fruits, because it was at these seasons that people had most leisure. All the communities, then, seem to be parts of the political community; and the particular kinds friendship will correspond to the particular kinds of community.

Greek, Roman, and Hebrew religions of the ancient period had a first-fruits festival; likely he is correct that it is common in agricultural societies (probably not, for the obvious reason, in pastoral ones). It is retained today also in some of the older forms of Christianity, such as at the Catholic feast of Lammas, named for the Old English word hlafmæsse.

In Politics III.9, Aristotle distinguishes a state by the existence of such festivals and brotherhoods, which form a friendship to go along with the mere living-together: "These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together."

Yet we are left with the fact that, however similar friendship and politics might ideally be, the justice conditions are quite different between them. "Equality," as we have discussed at length, means something very different in a friendship from what it did in Book V's long consideration of justice. It may be that it is best if we have a society of family connections, brotherhoods, common festivals and amusements; that may indeed be a much better form of human life than a modern city full of strangers thrown together from different parts of the world, of different religions and worldviews, brought together only by commerce and the pursuit of wealth. It is not, however, the same thing as friendship.