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 Honkytonk Wranglers

Out of Cain-tuck, the boys and one girl are pretty good. 

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. 

Nicomachean Ethics IX.6

Irwin translates today's central topic as "concord," which makes a lot more sense to me than "unanimity." One often sees broad agreement about how to proceed without it being perfect agreement; likewise, one often sees people who are willing to go along even with a plan even if they don't fully agree with its every aspect. For that reason, I shall follow Irwin's usage in my comments.

Unanimity also seems to be a friendly relation. For this reason it is not identity of opinion; for that might occur even with people who do not know each other....

In fact we won't know a lot of the people we do share concord with in Aristotle's sense; these days, far and away most of our fellow citizens that we are in concord with about central ideas will be people we haven't met. This was less true in Ancient Greece, where populations were much smaller in scale. 

The point he's making there isn't really about whether you've met, but about the fact that the agreement might be an accident. Now you might believe X, and some people in Africa might believe X as well, as might some people in Asia. You haven't all been part of a political discussion that brought you to those positions. You just arrived at them on your own, due to independent causal chains that led you each to separately adopt this opinion X. Thus, while it is true that you don't know those other people, the real issue here is that your agreement of opinion is not a concord that has somehow been produced between you; it is just an accident that you happen to share that opinion. 

...nor do we say that people who have the same views on any and every subject are unanimous, e.g. those who agree about the heavenly bodies (for unanimity about these is not a friendly relation)...

Presumably we agree with strangers about the basic facts of mathematics, not because we have established friendly relations but because those facts are just there in the world to be discovered. The sun is warm, the grass is green, etc. Agreement about that is not a concord.

...but we do say that a city is unanimous when men have the same opinion about what is to their interest, and choose the same actions, and do what they have resolved in common.

This is to say that concord is a species of political friendship. It is not necessarily that all people in a given polity share it, either: concord is often what holds factions together, not necessarily states. Aristotle goes on to explain this:

[Unanimity/concord] is about things to be done, therefore, that people are said to be unanimous, and, among these, about matters of consequence and in which it is possible for both or all parties to get what they want; e.g. a city is unanimous when all its citizens think that the offices in it should be elective, or that they should form an alliance with Sparta, or that Pittacus should be their ruler-at a time when he himself was also willing to rule. But when each of two people [or groups -- Grim] wishes himself to have the thing in question, like the captains in the Phoenissae, they are in a state of faction...

Is it possible to be in both a state of concord and a state of faction at once?  

...for it is not unanimity when each of two parties thinks of the same thing, whatever that may be, but only when they think of the same thing in the same hands, e.g. when both the common people and those of the better class wish the best men to rule; for thus and thus alone do all get what they aim at. Unanimity seems, then, to be political friendship, as indeed it is commonly said to be; for it is concerned with things that are to our interest and have an influence on our life.

The above is ambiguously phrased. It might seem to suggest that concord is maintained if both parties agree on a principle, i.e., that 'the best men should rule'; they just differ about which of the men are in fact the best ones. Irwin translates 'in the same hands' instead as 'the same person,' such that a difference about which of the people should lead is itself a change from concord into faction.

Yet I think it is often possible to be in both states at once: in the United States it is very common to disagree about which party should lead the government while still agreeing very broadly about some policies (e.g. that the National Parks should not be abolished; that there should be some form of public education; that there should be a continuation of popular programs like Social Security). It seems to me that there are often substantial elements of concord even in cases where factions exist and are striving quite loudly against one another for the leadership.

I do not mean to put that forward as Aristotle's position, however: given the ambiguity, it is difficult to say that he thinks that. I simply say that it is a plausible position that might be one Aristotle would agree to if you put it before him. He might intend a simpler distinction, however, as Irwin implies: either concord exists because people do agree, or faction exists because people differ.

Now such unanimity is found among good men; for they are unanimous both in themselves and with one another, being, so to say, of one mind (for the wishes of such men are constant and not at the mercy of opposing currents like a strait of the sea), and they wish for what is just and what is advantageous, and these are the objects of their common endeavour as well.

This is quite similar to the point from IX.4 about why only virtuous men can be true friends to each other, i.e., because they are internally already wishing the right things for themselves they therefore can also transfer those wishes to another. The virtuous here too already are in internal agreement about what is good and best, and desire those things for their society; and thus it is easy for them to agree with each other, since they will all be internally discerning wisely about what is best.

But bad men cannot be unanimous except to a small extent, any more than they can be friends, since they aim at getting more than their share of advantages, while in labour and public service they fall short of their share; and each man wishing for advantage to himself criticizes his neighbour and stands in his way; for if people do not watch it carefully the common weal is soon destroyed. The result is that they are in a state of faction, putting compulsion on each other but unwilling themselves to do what is just.

The compulsion described here is a compulsion for members of the other party 'to do what is just' without being willing to do it yourself. Since we are speaking of political friendship, 'what is just' refers to political justice rather than the justice that exists between true friends, i.e., Book V justice rather than the kinds we've seen discussed more recently. The compulsion to do what is just is exactly what Book V wanted justice to accomplish: to require citizens to behave as a virtuous person would, in this case a just person.

Book V's argued that this justice was 'fairness plus lawfulness.'  Even insofar as the law requires that one behave justly (i.e. virtuously towards others, since 'justice is another's good' as V.1 phrased it), because only one side is being forced and the other allowed to behave unjustly the fairness requirement is no longer achievable: "For my friends everything, for my enemies the Law." 

The the law itself then becomes a tool of faction, and thus breaks Book V's notion of justice because it creates a division between its elements of 'fairness' and 'lawfulness.' Justice is not achievable if the lawfulness is not applied fairly: it requires both elements on Aristotle's reading.

In addition to making justice impossible, the success of a faction of bad men in gaining political power also increases the amount of vice permitted in the society. The 'lawfulness' that is a compulsion to behave virtuously is now not being applied to all, so at least the victorious faction is able to behave in ways that are not virtuous. Thus, whereas justice properly applied is both fair and compels virtue from all, this sort of factional 'justice' is neither fair nor as successful at extracting virtue from the citizenry. 

Friends Like These...

I used to think of the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Weekly Standard as the least unfriendly of journalists. Well, the Weekly Standard turned into the Bulwark and then the Dispatch -- or maybe it was the other way around, I can't remember and don't care if they still exist -- National Review went softer than it already was, and the Wall Street Journal remains no real friend to gun rights at all.

The percentages look damning, until one recalls the famous adage popularized by Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. If those cases increased by 59% over five years, what's the scale involved? How many cases does a 59% increase entail?

Not many, as it turns out. The entire data set consists of 200 cases or fewer in each of the five years...

Hot Air then provides this chart to compare that 200 number to the whole:

If you were to chart this independently, 200 doesn't fit on the scale. In fact it's more than 12,000 short of rising to the level that would fit on the scale. That is to say, if it were to increase by a factor of 60 it still wouldn't fit on the scale -- not a "59% increase," which is a little more than half again more, but 60 times more and it still wouldn't make the chart.

It can't be a coincidence that journalists assigned to the gun beat are so bad at math so consistently across decades.

UPDATE: Another journalistic storyline, this time on guns to Mexican cartels because of 'lax gun laws' in the USA, that proves unreliable.

Nicomachean Ethics IX.5

On "goodwill," towards men.

Goodwill is a friendly sort of relation, but is not identical with friendship; for one may have goodwill both towards people whom one does not know, and without their knowing it, but not friendship. This has indeed been said already.

While this commentary is on Aristotle, an aside to a much later philosopher is helpful here. Kant, in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, implies that this sort of "beneficence" towards all is a basic moral duty of all rational beings.  (Ak. 4:398, for any students of Kant here.) It's the sort of thing we think of at Christmastime, when the carol hopes for "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men." 

The problem with it is that it is a duty that doesn't imply any particular actions, just to feel a certain way and not to hold generalized hatred or bad-feeling for strangers. When he gets to it in the full Metaphysics of Morals (Ak. 6:402) he says that "Beneficence is a duty. If someone practices it often and succeeds in realizing his beneficent intention, he eventually comes to love the person he has helped. So the saying, 'you ought to love your neighbor as yourself' does not mean that you ought immediately (first) to love him and (afterwards) by means of this love do good to him. It means, rather, do good to your fellow human beings, and your beneficence will produce love of them in you[.]"* Even here, though, while Kant says there is a duty to do good to others, there's no way to discern which particular others we should do it for right now.

For Aristotle, there is no duty to generalized beneficence; that comes from the Christian heritage, which even a rational Modern like Kant felt very strongly to be the basis of morality. The idea is that we sometimes feel goodwill towards people one may not even know, or know very much about. They might even be people actively working against us. [Cf. Sympathy vs. Empathy for a discussion of the dangers of such feelings as motivational of action.]

But goodwill is not even friendly feeling. For it does not involve intensity or desire, whereas these accompany friendly feeling; and friendly feeling implies intimacy while goodwill may arise of a sudden, as it does towards competitors in a contest; we come to feel goodwill for them and to share in their wishes, but we would not do anything with them [Irwin: "would not cooperate with them" -Grim]; for, as we said, we feel goodwill suddenly and love them only superficially.

Indeed, they are strictly speaking your competitors; perhaps even your enemies. One can imagine watching a ship at sea bravely crewed in a storm, and wishing the sailors well in view of their obvious courage; but not so well that they should succeed at reaching your port, since they are carrying a crew of hostile raiders. Viewed as fellow men struggling valiantly, though, it is hard not to sympathize with them. Goodwill could arise in such a situation, though as Aristotle says "we would not do anything with them" as companions; we might not even, pace Kant, do any good to them that might save them. They are, after all, enemies.

Goodwill seems, then, to be a beginning of friendship, as the pleasure of the eye is [a] beginning of love. For no one loves if he has not first been delighted by the form of the beloved, but he who delights in the form of another does not, for all that, love him, but only does so when he also longs for him when absent and craves for his presence...

Here, by the way, is a useful heuristic for any young readers who want to know if another person loves you the way you feel love for them. If they do not long for you when you are absent and crave your presence, they do not in fact love you, however delightful they may be to your eyes. Accept this and move on.

...so too it is not possible for people to be friends if they have not come to feel goodwill for each other, but those who feel goodwill are not for all that friends; for they only wish well to those for whom they feel goodwill, and would not do anything with them nor take trouble for them.

Notice that this is a kind of passion as Aristotle is describing it, rather than anything like a "duty" as it is for Kant. It's a feeling that comes upon you, as if from outside; it can be something you suffer, which is what "passion" strictly speaking means. It does not imply any duty to do anything with or for the other person. 

And so one might by an extension of the term friendship say that goodwill is inactive friendship, though when it is prolonged and reaches the point of intimacy it becomes friendship-not the friendship based on utility nor that based on pleasure; for goodwill too does not arise on those terms. The man who has received a benefit bestows goodwill in return for what has been done to him, but in doing so is only doing what is just; while he who wishes some one to prosper because he hopes for enrichment through him seems to have goodwill not to him but rather to himself, just as a man is not a friend to another if he cherishes him for the sake of some use to be made of him. In general, goodwill arises on account of some excellence and worth, when one man seems to another beautiful or brave or something of the sort, as we pointed out in the case of competitors in a contest.

So the courage of the sailors in the storm may excite goodwill for them in us; but they alone thereby deserve no help from us, nor should we rush out and aid our enemies in landing on our shores.

* Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 

A Pointed Cartoon

That was meant by xkcd as a joke, but it's the whole game now: "Computer, forge a philosophy paper on Descartes."

Nicomachean Ethics IX.4

On neighbors, and loving them -- at least in the friendly way (philia, in the Greek, not eros or one of the several other 'love' words as we discussed in VIII.3). This is usually thought to be one of the most important chapters of the work.

Friendly relations with one's neighbours, and the marks by which friendships are defined, seem to have proceeded from a man's relations to himself.

This is the second hint of the definition of 'a friend' as 'another self,' which will become central to the concept. The first was in VIII.12. 

For (1) we define a friend as one who wishes and does what is good, or seems so, for the sake of his friend, or (2) as one who wishes his friend to exist and live, for his [i.e. the friend's own] sake; which mothers do to their children, and friends do who have come into conflict. And (3) others define him as one who lives with and (4) has the same tastes as another, or (5) one who grieves and rejoices with his friend; and this too is found in mothers most of all. It is by some one of these characteristics that friendship too is defined.

Now each of these is true of the good man's relation to himself (and of all other men in so far as they think themselves good; virtue and the good man seem, as has been said, to be the measure of every class of things).

This was also established in the pivotal I.3. I usually cite that to remind us 'to seek precision in different disciplines at the appropriate levels,' but also, "Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge[.]" Thus, the man who knows virtue and proves it by being virtuous is a good judge of virtue, or at least the particular virtue that he has (e.g. courage).   

For [the good man's] opinions are harmonious, and he desires the same things with all his soul; and therefore he wishes for himself what is good and what seems so, and does it (for it is characteristic of the good man to work out the good), and does so for his own sake (for he does it for the sake of the intellectual element in him, which is thought to be the man himself); and he wishes himself to live and be preserved, and especially the element by virtue of which he thinks. For existence is good to the virtuous man, and each man wishes himself what is good, while no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become some one else (for that matter, even now God possesses the good); he wishes for this only on condition of being whatever he is; and the element that thinks would seem to be the individual man, or to be so more than any other element in him. And such a man wishes to live with himself; for he does so with pleasure, since the memories of his past acts are delightful and his hopes for the future are good, and therefore pleasant. His mind is well stored too with subjects of contemplation. And he grieves and rejoices, more than any other, with himself; for the same thing is always painful, and the same thing always pleasant, and not one thing at one time and another at another; he has, so to speak, nothing to repent of.

The argument above, simplified, is just that the goods one wishes for one's friend are the same as one pursues for one's self.  

Therefore, since each of these characteristics belongs to the good man in relation to himself, and he is related to his friend as to himself (for his friend is another self), friendship too is thought to be one of these attributes, and those who have these attributes to be friends. Whether there is or is not friendship between a man and himself is a question we may dismiss for the present; there would seem to be friendship in so far as he is two or more, to judge from the afore-mentioned attributes of friendship, and from the fact that the extreme of friendship is likened to one's love for oneself.

Very often the above in bold is cited as the conclusion of Aristotle's enquiry into friendship: that the friend is another self (as was just demonstrated by the argument about wanting the same things for one's self that one does for one's friend). 

In this way, Aristotle has independently arrived at the conclusion that one ought to 'love one's friend as one's self'; and, since he began this chapter with the example of the friendship between neighbors, 'to love one's neighbor as one's self.' 

But the attributes named seem to belong even to the majority of men, poor creatures though they may be. Are we to say then that in so far as they are satisfied with themselves and think they are good, they share in these attributes? Certainly no one who is thoroughly bad and impious has these attributes, or even seems to do so. They hardly belong even to inferior people; for they are at variance with themselves, and have appetites for some things and rational desires for others. This is true, for instance, of incontinent people; for they choose, instead of the things they themselves think good, things that are pleasant but hurtful; while others again, through cowardice and laziness, shrink from doing what they think best for themselves.

So bad people aren't entirely capable of friendship, precisely because they don't even love themselves in the right way. How can you expect to wish the best for your 'other self' if you can't and don't do it for your own self? 

And those who have done many terrible deeds and are hated for their wickedness even shrink from life and destroy themselves. And wicked men seek for people with whom to spend their days, and shun themselves; for they remember many a grevious deed, and anticipate others like them, when they are by themselves, but when they are with others they forget. And having nothing lovable in them they have no feeling of love to themselves. Therefore also such men do not rejoice or grieve with themselves; for their soul is rent by faction, and one element in it by reason of its wickedness grieves when it abstains from certain acts, while the other part is pleased, and one draws them this way and the other that, as if they were pulling them in pieces. If a man cannot at the same time be pained and pleased, at all events after a short time he is pained because he was pleased, and he could have wished that these things had not been pleasant to him; for bad men are laden with repentance.

Is it true that bad men are laden with repentance, or that wicked men are? If one is thinking of drunkards as 'wicked men,' surely; they have hangovers, which feel like regret and sadness as well as pain. But it's not true of men like Blackbeard, who died defiantly rather than remorsefully; nor as far as we can tell of Aristotle's student Alexander, who put many men to the sword and thought it pleasant. Indeed, it isn't even true that Alexander would have thought himself wicked, although another pirate -- Blackbeard's ancient ancestor, perhaps -- once pointed Alexander's wickedness out to him.  Or so we are told on the authority of St. Augustine's City of God, in a chapter devoted to how alike kingdoms are to robbery!

Therefore the bad man does not seem to be amicably disposed even to himself, because there is nothing in him to love; so that if to be thus is the height of wretchedness, we should strain every nerve to avoid wickedness and should endeavour to be good; for so and only so can one be either friendly to oneself or a friend to another.

Leaving aside the question of whether all sorts of wickedness (or only some) produce repentance, the chapter closes with the proof that one ought to be good ourselves if only so we can be true friends to others -- or even ourselves. The proof is a reasonable one. If one ought to wish what is best for one's self, one ought to wish for virtue (since it is excellence in any category of human action, as established in Book I); and then, knowing how to properly wish it for one's self, one can properly wish it for one's friends. Thus one can be a true friend, as well as a good person.