Nicomachean Ethics II.4

The question might be asked, what we mean by saying that we must become just by doing just acts, and temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is in accordance with the laws of grammar and of music, they are grammarians and musicians. 

Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do something that is in accordance with the laws of grammar, either by chance or at the suggestion of another. A man will be a grammarian, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself.

As I have alluded to twice already in this discussion, Aristotle's account of the virtue of justice is going to look like what he is describing here. Justice has two components, fairness and lawfulness; and 'lawfulness' means not "obedience to any laws that may happen to exist," but specifically that the laws that exist should compel people to behave as a virtuous person would.  Thus, it is not necessary to be just yourself in order to behave justly -- which is what he is getting at here. You can be compelled to do so by threat of punishments and shames.

If you behave justly only through fear of punishment and not because you feel inclined to treat others justly, then even though you have behaved justly you are not yourself just. We have now seen enough to distinguish several possible states of character (presented in descending order of virtue): 

1) The person who behaves justly because he takes pleasure in being just even when it is costly, as he is habituated to it and would find anything else uncomfortable. 

2) The person who behaves justly because he knows it is right intellectually, but still finds it painful to render costly justice to others.

3) The person who behaves justly only because he fears the punishment, but would find it more pleasant to behave unjustly because he is habituated to pursuing his own advantage; he finds the costly, just thing uncomfortable.

4) The person who does not behave justly because his habituated injustice is more powerful than his fear of shame or punishment. 

5) The truly vicious person who takes pleasure in being unjust. 

The truly vicious and the truly virtuous actually look fairly similar because they are inverse cases. They are both fully formed characters who are no longer struggling with their actions because their ethics are settled. There are cases in the middle where people are struggling with pleasure or pain, fear or a desire to receive honors, or trying to do what they understand is right even though it hurts. There are parallels on each side of that also. We will talk more about this later.

Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately.

To rephrase this slightly: someone performing music well is creating a beauty that is good in itself regardless of why they do it. It doesn't really matter if they are talented or just well-instructed. Someone performing a just act is also creating a good that is good regardless of why he does it -- that is exactly why the laws should compel virtuous behavior even from the vicious -- but it matters a great deal what his internal state is in determining whether he is virtuous or not. 

The [ethical] agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them [in order to be fully virtuous]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.

Remember that sentence. It lays out the precise conditions Aristotle holds for virtue to be complete. They are each necessary conditions, e.g. it's not complete virtue if you did an action ignorantly, lacking knowledge of virtue; it is not fully virtuous if you didn't choose the act, but were compelled; etc. 

These are not reckoned in as conditions of the possession of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little or no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result from often doing just and temperate acts.

What is this 'little or no weight'? The knowing of what is right isn't heavy here: even the worst man in the numbered scale above knows what is right, at least knows what the just law requires. Knowledge isn't very heavy in determining how virtuous you are if the very best and the very worst person have that in common.

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

As the practice of just acts becomes a habit, it will eventually become pleasurable because it becomes comfortable whereas stealing would then be uncomfortable: you can imagine how uncomfortable most men who are used to paying their own way would be with shoplifting. Perhaps as a child they might have wanted to take a piece of candy they couldn't pay for from the store; but as a man habituated to the justice of paying for his goods, they probably would never think of shoplifting, let alone do it.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.

In a way this is a restatement of the 'little or no weight' of knowledge to virtue. Knowing the philosophy about what is right counts for almost nothing in determining if you are virtuous. Your practices count for everything because they shape your internal character until it is fully formed. 

Don't Shoot Firefighters

 At least two people were killed in Idaho on Sunday afternoon after firefighters were ambushed in a sniper attack as they responded to a fire call in a rugged mountain area, the authorities said.

Officials said that it was unclear how many shooters might be involved but said that firefighters were still being shot at. Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at an evening news conference that the number of causalities was unknown and “we are actively taking sniper fire as we speak.”

“We don’t know who the suspects are,” he said. “We don’t know how many there are.” He added: “We don’t know if it’s one, two, three or four.”

“If these individuals are not neutralized quickly, this will likely be a multiday operation,” he added.

Every firefighter I know owns and is competent with firearms, but it will really hamper the business of fighting fires if we also have to hunt snipers. I have heard stories of arsonists who were left to burn up in the fires they started before those fires were extinguished, however. I'm sure those are just folk tales. 

A Useful Corrective

The View from Iran

(H/t: Wretchard.)

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei claims victory over Israel, "a big slap in the face" to the U.S.

"I offer my congratulations on the victory over the fallacious Zionist regime," a message posted Thursday on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's X account declared. Another post added the bold claim that Israel's government "was practically knocked out and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic."

"Fallacious"?

Forget it, he's rolling. 

Convincing, nay, Compelling Arguments

 

The thing is that we know that the same three liberal justices each speak more than any male justice during oral arguments. Justice Jackson speaks as much as three of the men put together. If they have come to that conclusion, it's on the basis of substantial evidence. 

I was a little surprised by how directly the recent opinion upbraided Justice Jackson in particular. Whether or not they have become convinced that she is stupid, she has very plainly annoyed them.

Explorations of Liberal Patriotism

The Washington Post carried a recent column by Monica Hesse arguing that, actually, liberals love America. 

You couldn’t buy [Pop Tarts] where I was staying, but I loved them and still do. I also love McDonald’s. I love Thanksgiving Day parades and Fourth of July pool parties. “Mission: Impossible” movies and John Grisham novels. Holiday Inn Expresses and my hometown’s annual Corn Festival with a mountainous pile of corn right there on the street, which you can grab from and eat raw. I’ve been to every U.S. state except Hawaii and North Dakota and have loved things about each of them, so it is deeply confusing that Donald Trump and his allies keep insisting I hate America.

They have now collected letters on the topic. There's a lot of nostalgia, and of course homages to immigration ('nothing is more American than things that aren't' is a strange bit of logic, though it is true that you can get good Mexican and Thai food in much of America, whereas in either Mexico or Thailand it would likely be either one or the other). The nostalgia reminds me of the piece AVI wrote about Christmas and liberals.

All the same, though, it's kind of nice to see at least a passing attempt at patriotism. It's been all negative for so long it's nice to hear some positive things. 

UPDATE: They probably won't mind if I borrow their graphic to give a feel for the thing.

I actually do believe that they love the weirdness aspect of America. There is quite a lot of that to love!

Nicomachean Ethics II.3

We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward.

This is where we start to begin to discuss degrees of virtue. Doing the right thing for the right reason isn't proof of being fully virtuous; the fully virtuous person will also experience pleasure from doing the right thing. If it pains him to do the right thing, even though he does it anyway he is only partly virtuous. Thus a man can be said to be a coward even if he stands his ground against terrible things. 

Many people object to that; we have an aphorism often attributed to John Wayne that "courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." Aristotle's point is that once you are fully accustomed to bravery, it feels normal and natural and therefore pleasant to be brave. You have to go through the habituation period in which it will be terrifying, but eventually it will not be so: it will become your habit, and therefore it will be at least comfortable to do it because keeping our habits is comfortable. There is even a pleasure in it.

For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.

Emphasis added. Plato says a lot of things about this; it is a major subject of the Laws (see sidebar for commentary). 

Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is inflicted by these means; for it is a kind of cure, and it is the nature of cures to be effected by contraries.

The medical science there is a bit dubious, but this was very close to the beginning of medical science;  Hippocrates was a contemporary of Plato's and an old man in Aristotle's youth.

It's obvious that you can apply pain as a punishment, so that fear of a whipping (say) will keep you from public drunkenness: however pleasant the drinking is, the contrary pain might hold you back. However, we are meant to apply contraries in 'matters of pleasure and pain,' so there must be sometimes we would 'punish' with pleasure. It sounds strange to say it that way, but in fact we do this. Aristotle says we abstain from noble deeds because of the pains associated with doing them; awards and honors are often publicly bestowed to encourage the doing of great things.

Again, as we said but lately, every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kind of things by which it tends to be made worse or better; but it is by reason of pleasures and pains that men become bad, by pursuing and avoiding these- either the pleasures and pains they ought not or when they ought not or as they ought not, or by going wrong in one of the other similar ways that may be distinguished. Hence men even define the virtues as certain states of impassivity and rest; not well, however, because they speak absolutely, and do not say 'as one ought' and 'as one ought not' and 'when one ought or ought not', and the other things that may be added. We assume, then, that this kind of excellence tends to do what is best with regard to pleasures and pains, and vice does the contrary.

The following facts also may show us that virtue and vice are concerned with these same things. There being three objects of choice and three of avoidance, the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant, and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful, about all of these the good man tends to go right and the bad man to go wrong, and especially about pleasure; for this is common to the animals, and also it accompanies all objects of choice; for even the noble and the advantageous appear pleasant.

This seems straightforward, though it runs into Aristotle's earlier discussion about the best kind of life being one that isn't common with animals, but one particular to human nature. We have in common with animals that we can be motivated by pleasures and pains; we are distinct in that we can use reason to challenge that base instinct when it is appropriate. An animal can be trained using pleasure and pain, but a man can train himself to ignore them.  

Again, it has grown up with us all from our infancy; this is why it is difficult to rub off this passion, engrained as it is in our life. And we measure even our actions, some of us more and others less, by the rule of pleasure and pain. For this reason, then, our whole inquiry must be about these; for to feel delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions.

Compare and contrast with the utilitarian school of ethics, which also holds that the whole of ethics is about pleasure and pain -- maximizing pleasure for as many as possible, and minimizing pain. That is definitely not what Aristotle is talking about here. He wants you to cultivate a character that will forgo pleasures in order to maintain health and strength; that will dare and endure pains in order to accomplish noble things. Seeking 'utility' is not any part of this ethic. 

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus' phrase', but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder; for even the good is better when it is harder. Therefore for this reason also the whole concern both of virtue and of political science is with pleasures and pains; for the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly bad.

That virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and that by the acts from which it arises it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which it arose are those in which it actualizes itself- let this be taken as said.

That last sentence could do with some analysis. Virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains, yes. The acts that produce virtue increase the virtue if they are done correctly, as the brave man practices courage by going to Airborne school and thereby becomes braver. If the same act is done badly, the virtue can be destroyed by it instead of increased by it. 

To switch to moderation/temperance instead of courage, imagine that you are at a buffet in Las Vegas. Every kind of food is there, as much as you want of any of it. If you face this temptation properly, you will eat a good meal that is fairly healthy and proportionate in size. Then you will become more temperate by practicing temperance. Eating at the buffet can increase your virtue.

However, if you indulge in all the various sweets and fatty foods, you will become less temperate by the same act of eating at the buffet. If you get in the habit of stuffing yourself at Vegas buffets, you may destroy the virtue of temperance in yourself entirely. The same act that causes the virtue to become actualized in yourself can, done badly instead of well, destroy it. 

Operation Narnia

At the end of an insightful post about assassinations, real and verbal, the Orthosphere raises a curious question:

I wonder why Israel named its campaign to assassinate Iranian scientists Operation Narnia.  Perhaps the word has a Hebrew meaning that I do not understand.  I know C. S. Lewis liked the sound of the name of an ancient Roman city called Narni, or Narnia; but I can’t see why Israel would be moved by the same appreciation of euphony.  In the lands where Israel hopes to be approved for political murders, Narnia is the name of a cozy and magical land where animals talk and Aslan rules.

Why would an Order of Assassins name their latest campaign after that?

I hadn't realized they did use that name, but that does appear to be the case. It was paired with airstrikes called "Red Wedding," which is a Game of Thrones reference. Interesting to find that their imaginations turn to English-language fantasy fiction.

Calling for a Color Revolution

Doctor Rathbun doesn't use the term of art, but it's what he means. The Asheville Citizen-Times published this opinion piece:

The normal course of the disintegration of government follows when the economic elites become swollen to the point that their wealth seems insufficient to them when compared to the competition. There follows an uprising in which one elite group plays on the resentments of the working class to mobilize them in open rebellion. What follows may be an armed uprising, with the elimination of the concept of human rights. Unfortunately, those naturally well-equipped to rise up in violent revolution are rarely well-suited as leaders in times of peace, causing the crowds to change sides readily as we move from one unstable government to another.

Just how a society can escape this nastiness is the subject of many books, of which my favorite is "Civil Resistance" by Erica Chenoweth, an academic expert on how nonviolent mobs can overthrow dictators. This author's research indicates that nonviolent resistance works better than the alternatives. The book explores the history of nonviolent resistance with the intention of laying out a detailed discussion of methods, some of which work much better than others.

I think we might have different definitions of "nonviolent," but this sort of thing has happened regularly in recent decades. What the good doctor may not realize is that such movements are not usually organic, but are nurtured by foreign powers. The People's Republic of China resents our usage of this technique, and has been trying to explain it to Americans through their embassy here. It's not exactly a big secret; NED had a series of panel discussions including of "the role of international actors in shaping the regional contexts for democratic transitions."

I suspect that we already did have our color revolution in the "fortified" election of 2020, and that the forces that might have come to his aid are already spent. If they could have done it again last year they would have. It'll be harder without the money laundering from USAID.

That reminds me, though, of how hysterical this same crowd was about the protest/riot of January 6th. That was said to be an insurrection; this is actually a call for an insurrection. Mostly peaceful, of course. A "nonviolent" overthrowing of the government.

No nationwide injunctions

Per a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS confirms that the only court with nationwide jurisdiction is the Supreme Court.

Are You Minimally Qualified to Have an Opinion on Iran?

Philosopher Peter Boghossian provides some gentle guidance.

Nicomachean Ethics II.2

Since, then, the present inquiry does not aim at theoretical knowledge like the others (for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use), we must examine the nature of actions, namely how we ought to do them; for these determine also the nature of the states of character that are produced, as we have said. 

Now, that we must act according to the right rule is a common principle and must be assumed-it will be discussed later, i.e. both what the right rule is, and how it is related to the other virtues.

This introduction will be surprising once we have finished the work, given the crucial importance of a life spent in philosophical contemplation (theoria)  to the highest degree of happiness. However, you can't jump into it; you have to do the work of developing the right kind of character before it becomes available. 

But this must be agreed upon beforehand, that the whole account of matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account being of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation.

This is a restatement of I.3, in case you missed it the first time. Most people miss it, which is why I have taken some trouble to emphasize the point. This is the core of understanding the EN. 

But though our present account is of this nature we must give what help we can. First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it.

This is the first statement of what will prove to be a core concept of Aristotle's ethics: virtue is the proper balance between two extremes. It is not, as is often mistakenly thought, 'moderation' or 'the middle.' Sometimes the best course is very close to one of the extremes. This is, rather, a version of his concept of all sorts of motion (from the Physics) as being necessarily between two extremes. Motion is only possible if there are two opposing possible positions, and a substrate between them that allows you to shift from one towards the other. 

Sometimes, in other words, nearly absolute anger is appropriate; sometimes nearly absolute bravery will be. Not always, though; and it is only because you have the capacity to shift from the absolute to something stronger or lesser that you can find the right degree for the present task.

So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears everything and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

Again, 'the mean' can be confusing. Many are confused by it. There is an appropriate amount in a given set of circumstances; it isn't just seeking 'the middle' regardless of the situation. 

But not only are the sources and causes of their origination and growth the same as those of their destruction, but also the sphere of their actualization will be the same; for this is also true of the things which are more evident to sense, e.g. of strength; it is produced by taking much food and undergoing much exertion, and it is the strong man that will be most able to do these things. So too is it with the virtues; by abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them; and similarly too in the case of courage; for by being habituated to despise things that are terrible and to stand our ground against them we become brave, and it is when we have become so that we shall be most able to stand our ground against them.

This is almost self-evident. You become stronger by pursuing strength; the temperate man is best able to say no to cheesecake, because he has become accustomed to saying no to pleasurable things.

Escape from New York

They're riding high at the moment, but they're not paying attention to the polls. You can win a Democratic primary election in New York City at 62/38 college/no-college, with exactly opposite numbers for no-college/college. You can't win a real election that way, because 2/3rds of citizens didn't go to college. 

This is good, surprisingly, given the stupid ideas people seem to learn at college. Education ought to be a positive, and can still be if you are discerning. Most people are better off without it, sadly, given the state of the thing.

Iron John: An Appreciation

Chronicles published a retrospective review by Mark Judge of Iron John: A Book About Men by the late poet Robert Bly. The book came out thirty-five years ago. Bly was something of a kook, as poets often tend to be (especially the sort who get published these days, publishing being what it is). He got to writing about men after a long time writing about women.

In 1975, Bly organized a Great Mother Conference. Throughout the nine-day event, poetry, music, and dance were practiced to examine human consciousness. The conference has been held annually; since 2003 in Nobleboro, Maine. In the early years, one of its major themes was the goddess or "Great Mother", as she has been known throughout human history. Much of Bly's collection Sleepers Joining Hands (1973) is concerned with this theme. In the context of the Vietnam War, a focus on the divine feminine was seen as urgent and necessary. Since that time, the Conference has expanded its topics to consider a wide variety of poetic, mythological, and fairy tale traditions. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was much discussion among the conference community about the changes which contemporary men were going through, so "The New Father" was added to the Conference title.

Why would a man be the one to organize a "Great Mother Conference"? It was the thing to do in the '70s for New Age Men, I suppose. Anyway, he eventually got to thinking about how to apply the same sort of "mythopoetic" approach to the problems of men. It produced some genuine insight.

Iron John is described adequately at the link. Star Wars' success had made 'the Hero's Journey' a standard of literary education (even now almost every highschooler is required to learn about it). The Iron John myth is a Germanic variation of it that incorporated some elements Bly found helpful and instructive. The ones the review focuses on are the influence of the Wild and the need for masculine strength. This is where I want to add something that was missed:

At one conference Bly asked men to re-enact a scene from The Odyssey, in which Odysseus is told to lift his sword as he sails towards Circe, “the symbol of matriarchal energy.”

Journalist Tom Butler-Bowden described what happened next:

Peace-loving men were unable to carry out the lifting of the sword, so fixed were they on the idea of not hurting anyone. These were men who had come of age during the Vietnam War, and they wanted nothing to do with a manhood which, to feel its aliveness, required an enemy. Instead of the single-mindedness of the 1950s male, they had a receptivity to different viewpoints and agendas. The world is a much better place for these “soft males”—they are lovely human beings, Bly admits—but such harmony-minded men are also distinguished by their unhappiness, caused by passivity. Bly tried to teach these men that flashing a sword didn’t necessarily mean you were a warmonger, but that you could show “a joyful decisiveness.”

It's a little strange to describe Circe as "the symbol of matriarchal energy," but she does practice polypharmakos (she is, in other words, a sorceress as well as the daughter of a god). Hermes tells Odysseus he needs to show her the sword in order to begin the process of escaping her, and it works (combined with some other steps). 

This was an important insight of Bly's that the study of myth and poetry produced. It is even more clear in Iron John. When the king's son wants to free the Wild Man in order to go on his adventure of coming-of-age and transformation, his mother the Queen holds the key to the cage. She will not under any circumstances give him the key to let him free the Wild Man and become a man himself. 

Bly quotes the story's claim that the child steals the key from his mother, and then explains that the boy has to steal the key from his mother. It will never be given to him by permission. At some point, if he is to become a man, he has to learn to break her rules, defy her authority, and do what he has to do. Indeed he has to learn to break rules in general, to defy authority in general, and assert his own rights and legitimate power. He has to leave the safety and care Mother represents, against her will, and go to the Wild to face challenges and hardships.

Thirty-five years ago I was just the right age to encounter such a work at a useful period of time. I forget which teacher made us read it, or why; maybe just because it was a sensation at the time, maybe because it was about coming-of-age and we were all doing that. Perhaps the teacher hoped, as the Arts & Humanities crowd does, that boys could be usefully transformed with poetry and literature.

Indeed they were right. What I got out of it was that it was time to leave them behind for a while as well, defy my mother and her commitment to safety, and go out and have adventures. Obviously I eventually came back, as the Hero's Journey entails a return by the now-adult hero on his own terms. Just as we find in Aristotle, however, it isn't enough to know what is heroic; it isn't enough to lift a symbolic sword. The poem can only show you the way, as the good upbringing taught the youth stories of what courage and justice look like. To become courageous and just, you have to go and do the thing. You have to practice until it becomes habit, eventually second nature.

In learning to defy maternal authority to seek the truth of his own nature, the young man becomes a true man who is worthy of women. The adult women will need him to have his own seat of authority and power too, to not just be another boy they have to mother. They may at times value his ability to set limits, definitely upon himself, perhaps sometimes even upon them. 

So kooky or not, I have warm regards for the poet Robert Bly. It was a helpful book, with some real insights. I wonder now if today's youth could read it, not because it isn't still potentially helpful, but because of the severe degradation of attention-span brought on by smart phones and such. Perhaps that, too, is another key you have to steal if you want to make the journey. 

A Real Trade War

 

I'm related to a lot of men in the trades and this is both funny and informative. The video is useful for anyone considering the trades and the comments fill out a lot of information on other trades (like carpenter, machinist, etc.) that he doesn't mention as well as more info on some of the trades he does.

That said, I know a few welders and no way that's S tier. Maybe A, maybe, just for the coolness factor.

Assassination and the Laws of War

There are two judgments to be made in the laws of war, and the first amounts to assigning the crime of aggression. This amounts to "who started it." Technically this is called jus ad bellum, or justice towards war.

The recent "12-Day War" has, typically, two very different conceptual claims about that. On one view, the belligerents were involved in a longstanding war that just rushed into a high kinetic phase for a few days. This view is my own; I personally had an Iranian 107mm rocket strike and explode within a few feet of me during a bombardment by Shia militias Iran had armed and trained back in 2007. This was not the only such rocket attack I encountered, to say nothing of the daily mortar attacks we had for a while. I didn't really resent it; I understood that we were there in Iraq without their consent, either the militias or Iran's. The US could have claimed such a thing as a provocation if it had wanted to, legally, but didn't want to expand the war at that time. Other proxy forces, like Hamas of "October 7th" infamy, and Hezbollah, and the Houthis, have been shooting at us (and us back at them) for a very long time. 

On this view, Revolutionary Iran 'started it' declaring war on the United States by seizing our embassy and diplomats; or the US 'started it' by backing the Shah and his tyranny; or, more likely, the British 'started it' in the colonial era that we walked into on the back end. As is often the case in war, this judgment is complicated by competing claims and tangled history; it is usually the case that the victor gets to decree that the loser was the one who 'started it.' The justice of such claims is therefore suspect.

The second view of this first judgment, the judgment about aggression, is that the 12-Day War was a discrete entity that started when Israel assassinated a lot of Iranian leaders in the act of aggression (note definite article). Opponents of Israel paint this, even, as unprovoked in spite of the long history of continuous violence; by treating the 12-Day War as a discrete entity with a clear beginning (and, hopefully!, end), they can omit that long history of proxy warfare as background noise and focus on the clear state-to-state violence. This approach allows for a cleaner claim, but it is also suspect as a matter of justice because it intentionally ignores so much that is relevant.

Once this first judgment is made, however it is made, there remains a second judgment about how the war was fought. This is technically called jus in bello, or justice within war. On this point, assassination is clearly over the line into war crimes -- at least, as the laws of war have traditionally been known.

As this article points out, however, assassination has become a standard practice for both the United States and Israel. Assassination is against the rules of war but so is the use of civilian-dressed proxy forces. It may be that the rules themselves are so outdated that they need to be revised in recognition of new realities. 

It also always struck me that the ban on assassinations in the 'laws' of war was totally self-serving on the part of the politicians and military leaders. Of course we'll have a rule that we are untouchable; you have to restrict your killing to the unimportant blue-collar dudes we conscripted and sent to fight you on our behalf. I've always been suspicious of the subset of the laws of war that protect politicians, royalty, and the like. 

There might be a justice condition for reversing that ban. Assassination at least targets the genuinely guilty rather than the poor conscripts. The reason I have praised the restraint against assassinating the Ayatollah is not that it would be unjust to kill him after all he has done, but that it would be pragmatically unwise to do so. It is helpful to preserve a leader who can negotiate an end to the war from a position of recognized authority. 

By the same token, killing so much of the military chain of command may have made it harder to get the ceasefire into effect by the deadline: there are some practical downsides to disabling such linkages once you get to the point that you want to end the fighting, though it is pragmatically wise to do it while fighting continues.

Since the rules haven't been formally revised, technically one could probably defend a prosecution at the Hague for the round of assassinations. However, doing so would run into its own pragmatic difficulties: it would be rejected by the leadership of most nations, since the United States and Russia as well as Israel would find themselves in danger from such prosecutions. 

Dad29 points out by email (he brought the linked articles to my attention this morning, though I had been researching the issue yesterday separately) the claim that Israel may have effected a strategic advance by one killing that might have been an assassination: 

Similarly, Chinese columnist Bin Hua noted that Iran had recently tilted towards India and away from China.

These apparent shifts in Iranian foreign policy may have now proven disastrous for the country and seem likely to have been propelled by a crucial change at the top of Iran’s government.

Following his 2021 election, hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had enjoyed close relations with Russia and China, but in May 2024 he had died in a highly-suspicious helicopter crash along with his foreign minister, and given subsequent events, it now seems quite likely that Mossad had been responsible. Raisi’s successor Masoud Pezeshkian was a far more moderate political figure eager to restore good relations with America and the rest of the West and he deliberately avoided drawing closer to Russia or China lest such steps alienate Western leaders.

Thus, it seems quite possible that a Mossad assassination had successfully diverted Iranian foreign policy in a direction that ultimately had dire strategic consequences for the country.

If that's true, it would be an unusual success for an assassination. They normally have only small effects, as personnel are easily replaced. They could have larger-scale effects in special cases, though: for example, the attempt on Trump in Butler would, had it succeeded as it almost did, have had titanic effects. 

UPDATE: Apparently China has chosen to back Iran more forcefully recently, regardless of the policy change. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.1

We will continue to take it slowly for now. This is one of the most important books in human history, and there's groundwork to do to understand almost every chapter. This one not least!

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit).

It is enlightening to learn that "ethics" and "ethos" come from a word that originally meant "habit." It almost means "habitat," as it can be used for a dwelling place. It is the moral place where you live, and where therefore you are most comfortable. Home is where the habit is, the place where everything is done just the way you think is best.

From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Natural place is one of Aristotle's core ideas from the Physics and Metaphysics. It makes a lot of sense, can be directly verified by your own personal experiment, and by the way explains the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe -- it wasn't, as you have probably heard, arrogance on the part of mankind; it was rather an empirical observation about how things made of earth moved in the world. This idea suffused educated Europe: here's an example from 12th century 'science fiction.' 

Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

The senses come to be as potential in gestation, in other words, and are actual by childhood. The virtues exist in us naturally, Aristotle thinks, but only as potentials (and not, we shall see, in everyone equally). Practice is necessary to bring them out. 

Note the interesting analogy between art and these moral virtues. Art/artistry/technology (techne) is actually one of the intellectual virtues, which comes to us (we have just read) by teaching more than by practice. You won't become a very good lyre-player by picking one up and, having never heard a good lyre-player nor met one, just fooling around with it. You learn building by studying with those who understand architecture, not just by going out and getting some rock and piling them up.

This returns us again to the idea that a good upbringing is needed for the development of moral virtue. You do have to do the work of practicing, but you also do have some initial learning to do. It's not that there is no learning involved in moral virtue, only practice: it is that you must first know what you are aspiring to do, but then you must also do the hard work of practicing the difficult thing until it becomes -- well, "second nature" as we will discover.

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

As mentioned before, this is a disconnect between Aristotle's idea of politics and our own.  

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced.

Indeed if you never play a lyre, you'll never be bad at it.  

And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances.

The above further clarifies the analogy between art and moral virtue, and also the similarity between intellectual and moral virtue more broadly. Upbringing gets another mention at the end: 

Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.

Nicomachean Ethics Book I Roundup

Before we move on to Book II, here is a place for any last questions or thoughts about Book I. I'll start on Book II probably later today. Maybe tomorrow, because the MIT site I use to easily access the text is down right now. 

Talk Loudly & Carry a Big Stick

 Apparently the big stick is really the key to this whole thing.

Frankly Israel deserves a lot more credit than anyone, if this holds. Credit is due chiefly to their decapitation massacre of the Iranian regime, their secret drone base that took out many air defenses, their airstrikes that cleaned up the rest, their assassination program that proved so intimidating. Of course it was chiefly their fight, so it's perfectly fitting that they did the heavy lifting. Still, they deserve credit for carrying that weight and for doing so effectively. 

Yet the big stick on Fordow seems to have broken Iranian resistance. They lost the only thing left worth fighting for except their survival, which is apparently theirs to be had for the simple price of surrendering after a token, face-saving reprisal strike.

Before we committed, I wrote this:

Thus I suspect that, dissembling aside, Trump intends to issue the order.... Trump [reportedly] asked Israel not to assassinate the Ayatollah Khamenei. The reasoning given in the brief quote aside, a better reason to leave him alive is that he is the only one who can plausibly negotiate a surrender. You have to leave someone alive that the losing side recognizes as their legitimate leader if you are to have any hope of getting them to accept the legitimacy of the order to lay down arms. 

With the air defenses already effectively destroyed, a US air campaign will face relatively easy sailing. I would expect the Fordow strike to be done in more than sufficient force to leave it obviously and permanently destroyed. The psychological effect of having that fortress reduced to ash in one night might compel the aging Ayatollah to consider surrender, especially if more generous terms than "unconditional" are truly on offer behind the scenes. 

I feel pretty good about that prediction. All the same, as I noted just a bit below, Trump fooled me too on the timing: I thought he'd wait for the three carriers to be on station before sending the B-2s. He didn't; and he also didn't launch from Diego Garcia, which was a whole lot closer, perhaps to preserve OPSEC. The British would have had to have known if we'd flown from there; flying from Kansas City, Missouri meant that nobody but Americans would have witnessed any preparations. 

We'll see if the peace holds, but if it does, a hard decision by the President may have spared the world a nuclear Iran. I understand why that was worth doing, though I hope very much that this is the end of the matter. It's a lot harder to stop the rolling stone than to start it. 

UPDATE: An aside: has any American President ever before said, "God bless Iran"?

UPDATE: The Iranian Foreign Minister denies, but admits, that there is a ceasefire that may lead to peace in another face-saving move.

"Until the very last minute, at 4am" is a concession that there's a ceasefire starting at 4 AM. 

That's ok. Face-saving is often crucial to de-escalation; making room for them to say yes on their own terms is fine. As long as we get to peace, with a de-nuclearized Iran to boot, it's a win.

UPDATE: Reports say there were some early ceasefire violations, but that's not necessarily important yet. Iran's chain of command is badly disrupted. Their foreign minister confirmed the ceasefire, but that doesn’t mean every line unit has received the orders. Disrupting their chain of command is one of the roads to victory, but it does have the side-effect that it can also make it harder to stop the fighting.

Hezbollah: Good Luck, Iran!

Hezbollah joins Russia in waving goodbye to their old friends. "Iran is a strong country capable of defending itself."