A little cowboy music on a Friday.
You Ougtha Learn to Cook
I'm personally of the opinion that we shouldn't provide food stamps to anyone at all, nor health care, nor any government aid. People aren't going to starve to death in America; our problem with the poor is obesity. They'd adjust, and be freer for not being dependent.
But hey, you would benefit from learning to cook. Food will be heathier and better-tasting as well if you learn what to do with it.
This is what happens when we take these basic life skills out of schools. Cooking, gardening, food preservation, and basic butchery are, in fact, survival skills. Without this knowledge, is it any wonder people have this reaction to receiving a box of canned and dry goods?
Having seen its products, I'm not really in favor of public education either. I'd be happy to teach people how to cook, though, on a volunteer basis. I like cooking, and it is amazing how much better life gets when you're possessed of the skill to do it well.
More experimentation with AI
(1) It's pretty good at what amounts to a skip-trace on an old friend or relative you've lost contact with.
(2) It does a great job finding a book that might appeal to you for the same reason other books did. The "heat-map" sites that try to do this don't yield good results for me; it usually turns out that what other people liked in an author was nothing like what attracted me. Grok can find an author of a thriller series that's good at "show, don't tell" exposition and has characters (primary and otherwise) with a lot of moral agency and autonomy, with a strong "MacGyver" vibe. No ordinary book review is a good substitute for that service. It found me several books on an obscure point of cellular biology evolution that I not only had not been able to find with traditional searches, but about which I had never found anyone else who had much curiousity, in person or in print.
(3) It does a decent job explaining technology I'm not familiar with. It will offer an explanation that's a mixture of concepts I can grasp and those I'm lacking a foundation for, then tailor the explanation to the areas I'm stronger in, like a flexible and patient tutor.
(4) It's a little like talking to a therapist: the attention is all one way, and its attention span to my personal obsessions is seemingly limitless. Nor is it above flattering me for being interested in something interesting.
(5) But in that vein, someone just commented elsewhere that it's a strong temptation to indulge in conversations that are all about getting attention and information and not at all about reciprocating or bonding. Still, the experience of a conversation on a topic that truly arouses my enthusiasm is a strong draw, when I know from long experience I'm unlikely to find a person to share the interest--or not since my father's death 30 years ago, anyway. It's a bit like talking to myself, but smarter and more broadly informed in ways that are easily reflected in published materials.
(6) I may be too much of an introvert to be much use to other people as a conversational companion, so maybe I just have to find other ways to be useful, like rescuing dogs and helping my neighbor with her custody dispute.
Nicomachean Ethics X.2
We begin with the examination of opinions worth considering, as we have been doing throughout.
Eudoxus thought pleasure was the good because he saw all things, both rational and irrational, aiming at it, and because in all things that which is the object of choice is what is excellent, and that which is most the object of choice the greatest good; thus the fact that all things moved towards the same object indicated that this was for all things the chief good (for each thing, he argued, finds its own good, as it finds its own nourishment); and that which is good for all things and at which all aim was the good. His arguments were credited more because of the excellence of his character than for their own sake; he was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and therefore it was thought that he was not saying what he did say as a friend of pleasure, but that the facts really were so. He believed that the same conclusion followed no less plainly from a study of the contrary of pleasure; pain was in itself an object of aversion to all things, and therefore its contrary must be similarly an object of choice. And again that is most an object of choice which we choose not because or for the sake of something else, and pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks to what end he is pleased, thus implying that pleasure is in itself an object of choice. Further, he argued that pleasure when added to any good, e.g. to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.
Aristotle uses that bolded argument himself in other places to prove that existence is the greatest good, for all things -- not only men but small animals -- pursue it, both by striving to avoid death and by striving to reproduce and extend their existence. The unification of existence and goodness is of great use to later thinkers from monotheistic traditions, who identify perfect existence with God: Avicenna is the greatest of these, but Aquinas also adopts the argument without modification into his Summa Theologiæ.
Here, however, Aristotle is intending to reject the argument as presented. The hedonistic approach to ethics is not satisfying to him.
This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it. Now it is clear that nothing else, any more than pleasure, can be the good if it is made more desirable by the addition of any of the things that are good in themselves.
This is a solid argument, and classically Greek in its structure. They are looking for "the" good, not "a" good. If we're going to identify that thing -- it is an assumption already that there is or ought to be a single good -- we need to find something that won't be improved by adding anything else to it. This is because if anything else could make X better, then X is not by itself the pure good.
When we get to existence, we can show that at least most beings will accept it even if it is stripped of other goods -- many will choose to continue to live in pain, rather than to die. Yet even there we can't show that existence plus the absence of pain (and presence of pleasure) wouldn't be better than existence alone. The later monotheistic thinkers will assume that a perfect existence will include the goods, but for the pagan Greeks that won't do: if we are looking for the good, we need something that is self-sufficient.
What, then, is there that satisfies this criterion, which at the same time we can participate in? It is something of this sort that we are looking for. Those who object that that at which all things aim is not necessarily good are, we may surmise, talking nonsense.
There Aristotle rejects the alternative position to the basic argument, and therefore accepts that "that at which all things aim is necessarily good" as a consequence.
For we say that that which every one thinks really is so; and the man who attacks this belief will hardly have anything more credible to maintain instead. If it is senseless creatures that desire the things in question, there might be something in what they say; but if intelligent creatures do so as well, what sense can there be in this view? But perhaps even in inferior creatures there is some natural good stronger than themselves which aims at their proper good.
Nor does the argument about the contrary of pleasure seem to be correct. They say that if pain is an evil it does not follow that pleasure is a good; for evil is opposed to evil and at the same time both are opposed to the neutral state-which is correct enough but does not apply to the things in question. For if both pleasure and pain belonged to the class of evils they ought both to be objects of aversion, while if they belonged to the class of neutrals neither should be an object of aversion or they should both be equally so; but in fact people evidently avoid the one as evil and choose the other as good; that then must be the nature of the opposition between them.
This should be familiar from the early parts of the EN, when we were talking about virtue as the balancing point between two opposites. Aristotle is showing that pleasure and pain are clearly in opposition, not both middle figures in the neutral sector between oppositions. Yet given the overall structure of the work that implies, of course, that neither pleasure nor pain will be 'the Good,' but some state between them -- perhaps closer to one than the other, but in any case in between.
Keep it Closed
A more than modest proposal.
We may need some government. But some government is far less than we have now when disruptions in the budget process affect one in eight Americans' meal planning and prevent passenger jets from crossing the skies. The government should be doing less, subsidizing fewer people and businesses, and it certainly shouldn't be encouraging a class of clients whose fortunes depend on politicians' largesse.CNN reports that "a small group of fed-up lawmakers in Washington are furiously trying to end the standoff as soon as this week" so the federal government can resume its suspended activities. But that's the wrong approach. We need a real shutdown to make Americans go cold turkey. We need to rediscover our independence, kick the government habit, and learn how to live without Uncle Sugar.We'll eventually learn how much, if any, government we really need. For now, keep it closed.
Every step in that direction seems like a step in the right direction. Maybe we don't need them at all; maybe we do, but not nearly as much as people thought we did.
Sandwich Guy Not Guilty
Jury nullification is a beautiful thing, even if you don't agree with the particular case: it's always good to see the people tell the government that it is the people who hold the final veto on power. It's not a violation of the rule of law but a reminder that part of the rule is that the people decide on when and whether to apply the law.
The community considered that guy a hero -- much like the sandwich he threw -- and as 'political violence' goes, a thrown sandwich isn't really a threat to anyone anyway. The cops may not like having a sandwich thrown at them, but it's better than rocks or Molotov cocktails. Everybody has a chance to learn something important about what the locality and its population will tolerate from the government, and from the populace.
Individuals and Communities
Tom was asking about this topic below; here’s a paper by Linda Zagzebski that came across my desk, which is on the matter.
Is ethics all about rights and duties, or is it about living a happy, flourishing life? For millennia in the West, ethics was about the way to flourish as an individual and a community. The qualities that enable people to live that way are the virtues, and that style of ethics is called Virtue Ethics. In the early modern period, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion and ethics began to focus on right and duties, where rights and duties are demands made against others. In this article I argue that the language of rights and duties has made it almost impossible for people on opposing sides of public policy issues to come to agreement. I defend the return of Virtue Ethics in philosophy, and propose that if it can be adopted by ordinary people, we will have a better chance at overcoming our deep divisions.
Remember, remember
. . . I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.But I did forget the Fifth of November completely, until I happened to be working on some Gutenberg pages this morning from a history of the period. It's an extremely condensed history, jumping from a rapid description of John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Jamestown Colony to a quick note on Guido Fawkes. I'd never before associated the two events with the same decade. The smiling zeal to destroy impure societies rings a bell this week.
International Socialism
AVI makes a good point:
...liberals have become more and more European, and have oriented themselves toward Western European comparisons, just as Europe itself is disintegrating. They have castigated conservatives for being provincial and prided themselves on being internationalists. But international means China, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Singapore now.
The Chinese would tell you that they remain part of the original international socialism, which was supposedly going to spread to all the capitalist world by Marxist revolution. This was supposedly going to bring, inter alia, equality between the sexes. How's that project going?
China's new divorce law changes everything: wives can only keep what they can prove they bought or paid for, eliminating the automatic division of assets..... According to local media, courts in Shanghai and Beijing have already applied the new rule in recent trials, and the first cases resulted in decisions largely favorable to the husbands, consolidating the new legal understanding. The Chinese reform reflects a trend of tightening family laws in several Asian countries, which seek inhibit marriages motivated by economic gain. However, international experts note that the social impact could be profound: in a country where more than 70% of urban properties are registered only in men's names, millions of women may be left without the right to housing in the event of separation.
There are several uses of "international" and "global" in that article.
Meanwhile, as this article co-authored by my friend Jim Hanson points out, there's some real internationalism going on in New York city.
Mamdani’s political mentor, Linda Sarsour, boasted that the Hamas-linked nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was the “largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran PAC.” Public records confirm the connections: CAIR Action funneled money to the “Unity and Justice Fund PAC.” That political action committee dropped $120,000 into the pro-Mamdani Super PAC....
This operation exploited New York’s public financing. Staffers from the Islamic Circle of North America—a group critics identify as a South Asian Islamist branch—made donations totaling $1,300. The city’s matching funds program multiplied that contribution, turning it into $7,700 in public money.
Mamdani’s associations reveal his allegiances. He praised Imam Siraj Wahhaj—an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—as a “pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.”
What's the women's rights situation like in those Muslim countries, again? Must be pretty good! Surely that explains his extraordinary popularity with young women. They're just voting their self-interests.
One of the good things about our remaining Federalism is how little what happens in NYC matters to me in Western NC. I'm glad they don't have much control over my life; I imagine they wouldn't like it if I had more control over theirs. I'm glad to leave them to their own devices in return for getting to be left alone to mine. Still, if they think they're voting themselves Norway and Sweden, they might be in for a surprise. (Or maybe they are; Sweden's got a lot more crime and violence in their "once utopian" city of Malmö these days, now ranked as more dangerous than Baghdad.)
Nicomachean Ethics X.1
We begin the final book with a short chapter. The initial remarks are straightforward and biologically accurate; even in the womb, a fetus will try to move away from a needle. Whether this "avoidance behavior" counts as 'feeling pain' or not is, however, debated still somewhat hotly; but the avoidance response occurs quite early. There is thus something very basic about the avoidance of pain, perhaps even pre- or proto-conscious as a drive; the seeking of pleasure is likewise basic. These must therefore be considered in an account of human ethics as they will be deeply influential.
After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.
So, what should we say about it? Aristotle begins as often by explaining what often is said about it. Some people say that pleasure is the good; others say pleasure is bad. Some who say so believe that, and others just think they ought to say it in order to guide people away from being enslaved by their pleasures.
For some say pleasure is the good, while others, on the contrary, say it is thoroughly bad-some no doubt being persuaded that the facts are so, and others thinking it has a better effect on our life to exhibit pleasure as a bad thing even if it is not; for most people (they think) incline towards it and are the slaves of their pleasures, for which reason they ought to lead them in the opposite direction, since thus they will reach the middle state. But surely this is not correct.
This is not the first time the issue of pleasures and pain has come up; Aristotle discussed it before in II.9 (this is the 'Helen at the Gates of Troy' warning against pleasures, coupled with advice that you should be keen about driving them off) and again in VII.13-14. The latter concluded that there were some noble pleasures that are worthy of pursuing. There are good things that are good all the time, like philosophical reflection, kindness, and friendship; these are not to be avoided because they have no excesses. There are other pleasures that do admit of excesses, such as food and drink, but these should still be pursued because they are in fact goods as long as they are pursued within a rule and not to excess.
Since we've already discussed the matter it's a little surprising to find ourselves returning to the ground in the last book of the EN. Nevertheless, Aristotle has a lot more to say about pleasure, pain, happiness and politics.
In any case, Aristotle is against lying to people about pleasure being bad for them in order to try to guide them away from it. This will not fool people, he says, but it will make them despise you because they can see you are saying something you must know is not true.
For arguments about matters concerned with feelings and actions are less reliable than facts: and so when they clash with the facts of perception they are despised, and discredit the truth as well; if a man who runs down pleasure is once seen to be aiming at it, his inclining towards it is thought to imply that it is all worthy of being aimed at; for most people are not good at drawing distinctions. True arguments seem, then, most useful, not only with a view to knowledge, but with a view to life also; for since they harmonize with the facts they are believed, and so they stimulate those who understand them to live according to them.-Enough of such questions; let us proceed to review the opinions that have been expressed about pleasure.
This at least is good advice about which many remain mistaken; I can't recount how many times in my childhood and youth adults would fiercely preach against things like beer and sex, which they would then go home to enjoy. Nobody is fooled, and the speaker is discredited thereby: the youth who might have listened to him and learned a good lesson from him will instead now set aside anything else he says thereafter.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.12
This is the final chapter of the penultimate book of the EN, and it's only one paragraph long.
Does it not follow, then, that, as for lovers the sight of the beloved is the thing they love most, and they prefer this sense to the others because on it love depends most for its being and for its origin, so for friends the most desirable thing is living together?
Recalling that there is a gear that fits together ordinary friendship with political friendship, 'living together' can mean several different things: in the same home, possibly, but also in the same building, the same block of apartments, the same town, the same city. Generally our situation comedies have groups of friends who may technically have separate homes, but are usually displayed in one or a few common places: one friend's living room, a local cafe they share, a restaurant.
For friendship is a partnership, and as a man is to himself, so is he to his friend; now in his own case the consciousness of his being is desirable, and so therefore is the consciousness of his friend's being, and the activity of this consciousness is produced when they live together, so that it is natural that they aim at this. And whatever existence means for each class of men, whatever it is for whose sake they value life, in that they wish to occupy themselves with their friends; and so some drink together, others dice together, others join in athletic exercises and hunting, or in the study of philosophy, each class spending their days together in whatever they love most in life; for since they wish to live with their friends, they do and share in those things which give them the sense of living together.
I have found that friends who study philosophy together often also drink together; that activity has been linked with philosophical discussion at least since Plato's Symposium ("to drink together").
Thus the friendship of bad men turns out an evil thing (for because of their instability they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil by becoming like each other), while the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship; and they are thought to become better too by their activities and by improving each other; for from each other they take the mould of the characteristics they approve-whence the saying 'noble deeds from noble men'.
Friendship as an ideal improves the virtue of both friends, for they spend their time doing good things that build the good habits that are a virtuous character. We have the saying that 'iron sharpens iron' (Prov. 27:17), which also puts this in the context of a friendship.
There is a final warning that bad men make bad friends, not just because you have to be around a bad person but because it is likely to cause you to develop bad habits -- and, eventually, a bad character. You can 'do virtue together' or you can 'do vice together' just as readily. It is a significant question whom you choose to befriend.
So much, then, for friendship; our next task must be to discuss pleasure.
We will begin the final book of the EN tomorrow.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.11
On the value of friends in good times and bad.
Do we need friends more in good fortune or in bad? They are sought after in both; for while men in adversity need help, in prosperity they need people to live with and to make the objects of their beneficence; for they wish to do well by others. Friendship, then, is more necessary in bad fortune, and so it is useful friends that one wants in this case; but it is more noble in good fortune, and so we also seek for good men as our friends, since it is more desirable to confer benefits on these and to live with these. For the very presence of friends is pleasant both in good fortune and also in bad, since grief is lightened when friends sorrow with us. Hence one might ask whether they share as it were our burden, or-without that happening-their presence by its pleasantness, and the thought of their grieving with us, make our pain less. Whether it is for these reasons or for some other that our grief is lightened, is a question that may be dismissed; at all events what we have described appears to take place.
That is a striking observation: all things being equal, people wish to do well by others and give them gifts if they are able. "Give your friends gifts -- they're as glad as you are / to wear new clothes and weapons; frequent giving makes friendships last, if the exchange is equal." (Havamal 41)
We tend to talk about human nature as being basically good (as Rousseau), or basically evil (as Hobbes does). Aristotle treats humanity as basically social; in the Politics he quickly deduces that 'man is a political animal,' and thus that formation of polities is basic to our nature. This is because humanity arises in families, and while families have a natural hierarchy families need politics to assure fair treatment when they have to interact with members of other families. (It is thus all the more striking that he finds that the friendship of husband and wife is even more natural to humanity than this civilization.)
Is it true that, given a degree of prosperity, human beings will wish to do well by others and give each other gifts? If so, that says something fairly positive about us; it is over against the idea that humanity is basically selfish, which has a lot of empirical weight behind it.
But [friends'] presence seems to contain a mixture of various factors. The very seeing of one's friends is pleasant, especially if one is in adversity, and becomes a safeguard against grief (for a friend tends to comfort us both by the sight of him and by his words, if he is tactful, since he knows our character and the things that please or pain us); but to see him pained at our misfortunes is painful; for every one shuns being a cause of pain to his friends. For this reason people of a manly nature guard against making their friends grieve with them, and, unless he be exceptionally insensible to pain, such a man cannot stand the pain that ensues for his friends, and in general does not admit fellow-mourners because he is not himself given to mourning; but women and womanly men enjoy sympathisers in their grief, and love them as friends and companions in sorrow. But in all things one obviously ought to imitate the better type of person.
When my father died, I remember that I hid my grief away from everyone as completely as possible. Was this the better mode? I have no idea. I know it seemed right to keep it hidden and to myself.
On the other hand, the presence of friends in our prosperity implies both a pleasant passing of our time and the pleasant thought of their pleasure at our own good fortune. For this cause it would seem that we ought to summon our friends readily to share our good fortunes (for the beneficent character is a noble one), but summon them to our bad fortunes with hesitation; for we ought to give them as little a share as possible in our evils whence the saying 'enough is my misfortune'. We should summon friends to us most of all when they are likely by suffering a few inconveniences to do us a great service.
One of the ideas about friendship Aristotle has been pursuing is that part of the value of friendship is the ability to 'do virtue together.' Happiness is an activity, specifically the exercise of virtue (ἀρετή, or excellence) with our vital powers. Doing great service to your friends is, then, an excellent thing to do: it is an exercise of virtue. Being a good friend implies letting your friends practice their excellence on you once in a while.
Yet this here is counterbalanced against not being a burden to those friends. If they can do you a great service at small inconvenience, great: but if it will be costly for them, perhaps it is most excellent to suffer quietly than to ask for help.
What, though, if you discover that your friend is in need?
Conversely, it is fitting to go unasked and readily to the aid of those in adversity (for it is characteristic of a friend to render services, and especially to those who are in need and have not demanded them; such action is nobler and pleasanter for both persons); but when our friends are prosperous we should join readily in their activities (for they need friends for these too), but be tardy in coming forward to be the objects of their kindness; for it is not noble to be keen to receive benefits. Still, we must no doubt avoid getting the reputation of kill-joys by repulsing them; for that sometimes happens.The presence of friends, then, seems desirable in all circumstances.
Not being a kill-joy is a very worthy ethical principle.
The funny behavior of the "oomph"
From a very enjoyable Richard Feyman lecture, "The Meaning of It All":
[S]cience can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. . . . If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong. The exceptions to any rule are most interesting in themselves, for they show us that the old rule is wrong. [The scientist] does not try to avoid showing that the rules are wrong; there is progress and excitement in the exact opposite. He tries to prove himself wrong as quickly as possible. . . . There are ways to try it and see. Questions like, “Should I do this?” and “What is the value of this?” are not of the same kind. . . . [T]here is a famous joke about a man who complains to a friend of a mysterious phenomenon. The white horses on his farm eat more than the black horses. He worries about this and cannot understand it, until his friend suggests that maybe he has more white horses than black ones. It sounds ridiculous, but think how many times similar mistakes are made in judgments of various kinds. . . . Another very important technical point is that the more specific a rule is, the more interesting it is. The more definite the statement, the more interesting it is to test. If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an “oomph,” this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as a proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, “Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.’” . . . We have a way of checking whether an idea is correct or not that has nothing to do with where it came from. We simply test it against observation. . . . We have lost the need to go to an authority to find out whether an idea is true or not. We can read an authority and let him suggest something; we can try it out and find out if it is true or not. . . . In that sense it makes no difference where the ideas come from. Their real origin is unknown; we call it the imagination of the human brain, the creative imagination—it is known; it is just one of those “oomphs.” . . . Incidentally, the fact that there are rules at all to be checked is a kind of miracle; that it is possible to find a rule, like the inverse square law of gravitation, is some sort of miracle. It is not understood at all, but it leads to the possibility of prediction—that means it tells you what you would expect to happen in an experiment you have not yet done. The rules that describe nature seem to be mathematical. This is not a result of the fact that observation is the judge, and it is not a characteristic necessity of science that it be mathematical. It just turns out that you can state mathematical laws, in physics at least, which work to make powerful predictions. Why nature is mathematical is, again, a mystery. . . . The laws are guessed laws, extrapolations, not something that the observations insist upon. They are just good guesses that have gone through the sieve so far. And it turns out later that the sieve now has smaller holes than the sieves that were used before, and this time the law is caught. . . . [Scientific k]nowledge is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow if you do something—not only necessary, but fun. Only you must be willing to stick your neck out. . . . It is better to say something and not be sure than not to say anything at all.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.10
How many friends should one keep?
Should we, then, make as many friends as possible, or-as in the case of hospitality it is thought to be suitable advice, that one should be 'neither a man of many guests nor a man with none'-will that apply to friendship as well; should a man neither be friendless nor have an excessive number of friends?To friends made with a view to utility this saying would seem thoroughly applicable; for to do services to many people in return is a laborious task and life is not long enough for its performance. Therefore friends in excess of those who are sufficient for our own life are superfluous, and hindrances to the noble life; so that we have no need of them. Of friends made with a view to pleasure, also, few are enough, as a little seasoning in food is enough.
Favors to the useful have to be repaid, so you don't want too many of that sort; and those you keep around only for fun can be few in number, since who has time for much fun? The world is full of work to do.
But as regards good friends, should we have as many as possible, or is there a limit to the number of one's friends, as there is to the size of a city? You cannot make a city of ten men, and if there are a hundred thousand it is a city no longer.
There's an interesting question: are our cities not cities in Aristotle's sense, some of them containing millions? They remain polities of a sort -- a few of them, like Singapore, almost in Aristotle's sense. Hong Kong, perhaps, until the Communists took it back. Have we lost something essential to human community by becoming too many?
In ancient Athens, though it was a great city in its era, at least the key people could all know each other. To some degree that's true in small towns today. It seems as if a better community ought to be possible when we can all get to know one another and, therefore, make adjustments for each other. Yet of course it was that very city that put Socrates to death.
Famously we now have Dunbar's number, which suggests that the average person can maintain not more than about 150 relationships. Presumably Aristotle was trying to work out something similar here.
But the proper number is presumably not a single number, but anything that falls between certain fixed points. So for friends too there is a fixed number perhaps the largest number with whom one can live together (for that, we found, thought to be very characteristic of friendship); and that one cannot live with many people and divide oneself up among them is plain.
How many people can live together? We tend to think of two or three or five, but when we were younger and lived in barracks or dormitories the number was much larger.
Further, they too must be friends of one another, if they are all to spend their days together; and it is a hard business for this condition to be fulfilled with a large number. It is found difficult, too, to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that one has at once to be happy with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of living together; for it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people.
Now another argument for monogamy:
This is why one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person; therefore great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people. This seems to be confirmed in practice; for we do not find many people who are friends in the comradely way of friendship, and the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one's friend, except in the way proper to fellow-citizens, and such people are also called obsequious.
Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, I suppose; but against that, the Rat Pack as a famous group of friends.
In the way proper to fellow-citizens, indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be obsequious but a genuinely good man; but one cannot have with many people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such.
Indeed, even a few virtuous friends are a great wealth if one can find them. That is, however, a pragmatic difficulty rather than an answer to the question: shouldn't one want more if one could find them?
It may be that only pragmatic answers are possible to this question; we are in fact limited by something like Dunbar's number; we can't in fact find very many virtuous friends in any human environ. It may be a limit to us rather than a proof about what ought to be wanted.
Yet that is in keeping with what we were told to expect in I.3: not proofs, which belong to mathematics and strict logic, but arguments about what is most probably true. Ethics often admits of no better than this; it is what we were warned the wise would seek from it, this and no more.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.9
Today's is a longer chapter; it is on the subject of whether people who are already happy need friends or not. There is not much to comment on here, other than to draw out the argument; the conclusion, that the supremely happy man will need virtuous friends or he'll be deficient in something important (and thus not supremely happy) is obvious.
It is also disputed whether the happy man will need friends or not. It is said that those who are supremely happy and self-sufficient have no need of friends; for they have the things that are good, and therefore being self-sufficient they need nothing further, while a friend, being another self, furnishes what a man cannot provide by his own effort; whence the saying 'when fortune is kind, what need of friends?' But it seems strange, when one assigns all good things to the happy man, not to assign friends, who are thought the greatest of external goods. And if it is more characteristic of a friend to do well by another than to be well done by, and to confer benefits is characteristic of the good man and of virtue, and it is nobler to do well by friends than by strangers, the good man will need people to do well by. This is why the question is asked whether we need friends more in prosperity or in adversity, on the assumption that not only does a man in adversity need people to confer benefits on him, but also those who are prospering need people to do well by. Surely it is strange, too, to make the supremely happy man a solitary; for no one would choose the whole world on condition of being alone, since man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others. Therefore even the happy man lives with others; for he has the things that are by nature good. And plainly it is better to spend his days with friends and good men than with strangers or any chance persons. Therefore the happy man needs friends.What then is it that the first school means, and in what respect is it right? Is it that most identify friends with useful people? Of such friends indeed the supremely happy man will have no need, since he already has the things that are good; nor will he need those whom one makes one's friends because of their pleasantness, or he will need them only to a small extent (for his life, being pleasant, has no need of adventitious pleasure); and because he does not need such friends he is thought not to need friends.But that is surely not true. For we have said at the outset that happiness is an activity; and activity plainly comes into being and is not present at the start like a piece of property. If (1) happiness lies in living and being active, and the good man's activity is virtuous and pleasant in itself, as we have said at the outset, and (2) a thing's being one's own is one of the attributes that make it pleasant, and (3) we can contemplate our neighbours better than ourselves and their actions better than our own, and if the actions of virtuous men who are their friends are pleasant to good men (since these have both the attributes that are naturally pleasant),-if this be so, the supremely happy man will need friends of this sort, since his purpose is to contemplate worthy actions and actions that are his own, and the actions of a good man who is his friend have both these qualities.
The chain of logic here is as follows:
1) Happiness is an activity, a state that has to be made by action rather than something one inherits like property;
2) The particular activity that is happiness consists in using your vital powers to pursue virtue;
3) Virtuous friends will pursue virtue together, which is the happiness activity.
∴ To be supremely happy, one needs virtuous friends.
Notice the point about observation, though, which becomes important by the end of this chapter.
After the jump, some further explanation of the mechanism and proof by Aristotle; and an important point buried in the argument that scholars often miss.
An Inappropriate Confidence
This week my favorite local bar was raided by state police. I don't go there all that often, but it's an axe-throwing joint where I sometimes like to go and throw axes with my son. Armed stage agents of North Carolina's Alcohol Law Enforcement (yes, "ALE") raided the bar to check IDs, give breathalyzer tests to the staff and search staff's persons and belongings for contraband. Apparently working at a bar in North Carolina allows the police to do that to you.
It's been nearly twenty years ago now that the police shot and killed my eye-doctor in a similar raid for a local-bar-oriented offense, in his case alleged gambling at Applebees on sporting events with friends (and a fake friend who was a police detective). He never hurt nor even threatened anyone, and the 'crime' was both nonviolent and mutually consensual. Prosecuting such a crime -- even legislating such a crime -- is already morally dubious; but arresting such a person violently at gunpoint is immoral even if you don't negligently shoot and kill them. Their overconfidence with their weapons killed a good man. He was a husband and father, and kind to my son when my son was a boisterous child in his office.
The bar raided in this week's instance is not (in spite of the axes) a violent or dangerous establishment. This was not a biker bar where the patrons might be expected to be armed, not that police should be raiding those either. Mostly this joint is a local college bar. That apparently was the source of concern as ALE also raided another college bar in town and did the same things there. Both bars also employ mostly college students. None of the students needed to be raided by armed agents of the state in body armor, putting the students' lives at risk for... what? Not checking IDs with sufficient fervor? Possibly being drunk on duty -- at a bar?
The presence of these agents came to my attention before the raid because they were acting so suspiciously. They arrived in town in unmarked cars with civilian plates rather than government ones, but concealed police lights in their undercarriage. In this way they were acting exactly like the ICE agents, backed by other Federal agents and local police, that I saw in DC running raids on communities with large immigrant populations. They too were raiding parties to stop people from having fun at gunpoint. The jackbootery is spreading, apparently, even to state police with Democratic governors; it is a bad trend. The only purpose of such a raid on a bar full of college students is to teach them that the government is allowed to treat them that way, and that submission to such agents is expected of them as American citizens.
I dissent. I deeply resent not merely the actions but the existence of agencies like this. They endanger us all for no good reason. All such agencies should be abolished outright, as should the laws that support their existence and function.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.8
On whether one ought to love one's self. In the Christian tradition it is assumed that you will, and that this love can serve as a standard for how you ought to love others (passim in the Gospels, but e.g. Lk. 10:27). Aristotle is not of that tradition. He treats the matter as a serious question, and comes to an alternative and somewhat surprising result.
The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself most, or some one else. People criticize those who love themselves most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace, and a bad man seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so the more wicked he is-and so men reproach him, for instance, with doing nothing of his own accord-while the good man acts for honour's sake, and the more so the better he is, and acts for his friend's sake, and sacrifices his own interest.
The centrality of honor to Aristotle's ethics almost cannot be overstated, at least in the sense we have often now discussed: doing what is worthy of honor rather than what receives honor, and focusing on doing what is worthy whether than worrying over whether one receives honors (or even dishonors) for doing it. This will also prove to be the core of whether one deserves to love one's self.
First, however, some objections to consider.
But the facts clash with these arguments, and this is not surprising. For men say that one ought to love best one's best friend, and man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it; and these attributes are found most of all in a man's attitude towards himself, and so are all the other attributes by which a friend is defined; for, as we have said, it is from this relation that all the characteristics of friendship have extended to our neighbours. All the proverbs, too, agree with this, e.g. 'a single soul', and 'what friends have is common property', and 'friendship is equality', and 'charity begins at home'; for all these marks will be found most in a man's relation to himself; he is his own best friend and therefore ought to love himself best. It is therefore a reasonable question, which of the two views we should follow; for both are plausible.
The attentive reader will notice that this return to "the friend is another self" has, here, the quality of making your love of your friend a species of self-love. If one is 'a single soul' then to love your friend is to love yourself.
Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase 'lover of self', the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures; for these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too, why they become objects of competition. So those who are grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and most men are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used as it is-it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one); it is just, therefore, that men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so.
I mentioned Immanuel Kant when discussing IX.5; Kant describes this sort of self-love as "radical evil." For him it is the alternative to obeying the moral law (as he conceives it). Of course, he is operating in the tradition in which the question is not the one Aristotle opened with -- 'ought one love one's self more, or others more?' -- but 'whether one ought to love one's self more, or others equally?'. It is curious, give how many different forms of "equality" that Aristotle has floated in the EN -- several of them pointed at friendship specifically -- that he didn't start there. Even if it required specifying yet another sort-of equality, who would notice one more given how many we've seen?
That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a lover of self or blame him.
But such a man would seem more than the other a lover of self; at all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and gratifies the most authoritative element in and in all things obeys this...
"The most authoritative element" here in himself is reason. However, note that Aristotle goes on immediately to commit the fallacy of composition -- exactly as Plato does throughout his political philosophy -- by assuming that what is true for one person ruling himself within a polity should hold for 'rational' ruler(s) governing the whole polity.
...and just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative element in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. Besides, a man is said to have or not to have self-control according as his reason has or has not the control, on the assumption that this is the man himself; and the things men have done on a rational principle are thought most properly their own acts and voluntary acts. That this is the man himself, then, or is so more than anything else, is plain, and also that the good man loves most this part of him. Whence it follows that he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to a rational principle is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men approve and praise; and if all were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should be for the common weal, and every one would secure for himself the goods that are greatest, since virtue is the greatest of goods.
With that furniture, we can answer the question: the man of honor should love himself, in this second and higher sense. Those who fail in that charge should find someone else to love, because they are not worthy.
Therefore the good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil passions. For the wicked man, what he does clashes with what he ought to do, but what the good man ought to do he does; for reason in each of its possessors chooses what is best for itself, and the good man obeys his reason. It is true of the good man too that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good to himself.
In the next section we see again the distinction between 'doing what is worthy of honor' versus 'receiving honors.' The good man is willing to discard the receipt of honors -- in favor of his friend -- because that, too, is worthy of honor.
The same too is true of honour and office; all these things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself. In all the actions, therefore, that men are praised for, the good man is seen to assign to himself the greater share in what is noble. In this sense, then, as has been said, a man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men are so, he ought not.
We often see harmonies with the Christian position, but this is a genuine alternative. In spite of Aristotle's very frequent reference to equalities and proportions, here we get an actual preference for self-love -- but only in the specific sense of loving assigning to one's self the power to do noble and worthy actions. In this way, even if you don't love your neighbors equally -- nor in this special sense even your friends -- both the virtuous and their society will flourish more completely than if equality were pursued.
Nicomachean Ethics IX.7
Today's topic is the friendship-like relation between benefactors and those they help. A lot of what Aristotle says here is likely to seem straightforward and need little comment.
That said, there is a concept in this chapter that is crucial to understanding Aristotle more broadly, the concept of the 'active' and the 'passive.' We have seen very little of this in the EN, but it is hugely important elsewhere in his corpus. For example, it informs his theory of mind in De Anima, and how we come to understand the world. This is later important in medieval philosophy as they try to bring their theology in line with classical philosophy. Likewise it informs his biological theory, and very importantly his physics and metaphysics.
Aristotle believed that the things we encounter in the world are made up of a combination of form and matter. You can think of a pile of wood on the ground (matter) versus a table (matter plus the right form). The material stuff is all the same, but whereas before it was only potentially a table, now it is actually a table and can be used for table activities like holding up your coffee cup.
Form is active -- indeed, form is said by Aristotle to be an activity, and a pure activity is an Unmoved Mover because such a being has no material, only form. Since an Unmoved Mover has no material, it also cannot be acted upon: it is already pure activity. This is why it is Unmoved; it cannot be moved by anything else. (Why it is a Mover is a topic for another day.) The reason it cannot be moved is that only material, not form, is receptive -- i.e. passive.
Thus when we get to the theory of mind, the Passive Intellect has the capability of taking on forms it encounters outside, such that you can receive the form into your mind and realize it in your Active Intellect. That is how you come to learn that the world involves things like tables: you meet a table, through interaction your Passive Intellect receives the form, and then the form of a table passes into your Active Intellect as a concept you now have drawn out of the world and can use (perhaps by building new tables where you want them).
Both of these things are necessary for the world to exist; without potential we couldn't make or do things, and thus passive things are necessary. Without the forms, there would be nothing to strive to create in the world. Yet Aristotle is often said to favor the active over the passive; to view the table as superior to the wood from which it was made. I'm not as sure that he does this to the same degree that other scholars attribute it to him; I think to some degree they are misunderstanding what he means by other qualities like priority, for example. That's an aside; for today, we'll see how it plays out here in the Ethics.
Benefactors are thought to love those they have benefited, more than those who have been well treated love those that have treated them well, and this is discussed as though it were paradoxical. Most people think it is because the latter are in the position of debtors and the former of creditors; and therefore as, in the case of loans, debtors wish their creditors did not exist, while creditors actually take care of the safety of their debtors, so it is thought that benefactors wish the objects of their action to exist since they will then get their gratitude, while the beneficiaries take no interest in making this return. Epicharmus would perhaps declare that they say this because they 'look at things on their bad side', but it is quite like human nature; for most people are forgetful, and are more anxious to be well treated than to treat others well.
That would seem to follow from Aristotle's own account, which was only in the prior chapter discussing how people are more eager to receive justice than to behave justly to others. Yet he has more to say:
But the cause would seem to be more deeply rooted in the nature of things; the case of those who have lent money is not even analogous. For they have no friendly feeling to their debtors, but only a wish that they may kept safe with a view to what is to be got from them; while those who have done a service to others feel friendship and love for those they have served even if these are not of any use to them and never will be.
When you hear Aristotle say things like "the cause [is] rooted in the nature of things," you should pay attention. He's going to tell you something about how a practical observation ties into basic reality.
First, however, some unreality (perhaps appropriate on Halloween!).
This is what happens with craftsmen too; every man loves his own handiwork better than he would be loved by it if it came alive; and this happens perhaps most of all with poets; for they have an excessive love for their own poems, doting on them as if they were their children.
Every now and then in Aristotle you get one of these flights of fancy in which he assumes a practically impossible thing, and then proceeds to conclude something from the impossible that he thinks is plausible. A similar one occurs in Physics II.1 in which he concludes that, if you were to plant a bed of rotting wood, it would more likely grow a tree than that it would grow another bed.
This is what the position of benefactors is like; for that which they have treated well is their handiwork, and therefore they love this more than the handiwork does its maker. The cause of this is that existence is to all men a thing to be chosen and loved, and that we exist by virtue of activity (i.e. by living and acting), and that the handiwork is in a sense, the producer in activity; he loves his handiwork, therefore, because he loves existence. And this is rooted in the nature of things; for what he is in potentiality, his handiwork manifests in activity.
At the same time to the benefactor that is noble which depends on his action, so that he delights in the object of his action, whereas to the patient there is nothing noble in the agent, but at most something advantageous, and this is less pleasant and lovable. What is pleasant is the activity of the present, the hope of the future, the memory of the past; but most pleasant is that which depends on activity, and similarly this is most lovable. Now for a man who has made something of his work remains (for the noble is lasting), but for the person acted on the utility passes away. And the memory of noble things is pleasant, but that of useful things is not likely to be pleasant, or is less so; though the reverse seems true of expectation.
Thus, the benefactor loves the person he has benefitted -- a beloved nephew whose education he has helped further -- because the benefactor regards it as part of his own noble work. He is proud of it like the poet is proud of his poems.
Further, love is like activity, being loved like passivity; and loving and its concomitants are attributes of those who are the more active.
Again, all men love more what they have won by labour; e.g. those who have made their money love it more than those who have inherited it; and to be well treated seems to involve no labour, while to treat others well is a laborious task. These are the reasons, too, why mothers are fonder of their children than fathers; bringing them into the world costs them more pains, and they know better that the children are their own. This last point, too, would seem to apply to benefactors.
Mothers are another place where the active/passive distinction applies in Aristotle; he regards male sexuality as active (passing on the form of the father) and the female as receptive and passive (receiving the form and creating material in its shape). This isn't really how it works, of course; in fact mothers pass on more of their own form than of the father's, as we now know, because the X chromosome transfers more information than the Y. Nevertheless, among those who think that Aristotle considers the active to be superior to the passive, it's taken as evidence of him not thinking much of women.
Against that, consider how he here considers the mother's love to be superior to that of the father's in the context of such love being akin to the love a poet has for his own poems. The mother, then, is here the craftsman to a greater degree than is the father, and perhaps less passive to that degree. Recall too how in VIII.8 a mother's love was used as a proof that loving was better than receiving love; and how in VIII.12 the friendship between husband and wife was thought to be more basic to human nature than even the formation of cities or polities. I suspect contemporary scholarship is overcorrecting a bit here, perhaps because Aristotle's positive regard of mothers' love and the friendship of husband and wife is less striking than his teacher Plato's robust embrace of female equality as citizens and soldiers (seen both in the Republic and the Laws). Aristotle may not go as far as Plato, but nevertheless he has some strongly positive things to say about women.
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