Nicomachean Ethics II.9

This is the last chapter of Book II.  

That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence also it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get angry- that is easy- or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.

This is the point I was making in the update to the Bladesman's post. Because this is a pragmatic ethics, it is about adapting yourself to the world. It's not a purely internal exercise, where you determine how much courage or temperance or justice is right for your soul. You have to be right not just for yourself, but for the external situation. Sometimes more or less will be needed because the challenge you are facing is greater or lesser.

Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart from what is the more contrary to it, as Calypso advises-

Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.

Obviously that is the only way to push off in a ship, so the Homeric reference may seem superfluous. Unlike Plato, who was constantly at war with the poets, Aristotle has the greatest respect for Homer especially. It conveyed to his students, especially Alexander: "Aristotle taught Alexander and his companions about medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Under Aristotle's tutelage, Alexander developed a passion for the works of Homer, and in particular the Iliad; Aristotle gave him an annotated copy, which Alexander later carried on his campaigns."  

For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils; and this will be done best in the way we describe. But we must consider the things towards which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent.

This is a restatement of yesterday's point about love of pleasure being much more dangerous than insensibility to pleasure, for example. He continues on the subject: 

Now in everything the pleasant or pleasure is most to be guarded against; for we do not judge it impartially. We ought, then, to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the people felt towards Helen, and in all circumstances repeat their saying; for if we dismiss pleasure thus we are less likely to go astray. It is by doing this, then, (to sum the matter up) that we shall best be able to hit the mean.

The reference is to Iliad 3: "The two sages, Ucalegon and Antenor, elders of the people, were seated by the Scaean gates, with Priam, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like cicales that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, 'Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvellously and divinely lovely. Still, fair though she be, let them take her and go, or she will breed sorrow for us and for our children after us.'"

But this is no doubt difficult, and especially in individual cases; for or is not easy to determine both how and with whom and on what provocation and how long one should be angry; for we too sometimes praise those who fall short and call them good-tempered, but sometimes we praise those who get angry and call them manly. The man, however, who deviates little from goodness is not blamed, whether he do so in the direction of the more or of the less, but only the man who deviates more widely; for he does not fail to be noticed. But up to what point and to what extent a man must deviate before he becomes blameworthy it is not easy to determine by reasoning, any more than anything else that is perceived by the senses; such things depend on particular facts, and the decision rests with perception. So much, then, is plain, that the intermediate state is in all things to be praised, but that we must incline sometimes towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for so shall we most easily hit the mean and what is right.

That's fair enough. This is hard work, and our reason can only get us so far sometimes given the depths of emotional entanglement and the difficulty of the problems. Sometimes we'll go astray, but if we err in the wisest direction we'll be closer to what was best.  

Managerialism vs. Democracy

It's really just an updated version of what Weber said a long time ago -- see the sidebar for that commentary -- but it is where we are.

[Democracy] risks extinction because the authorities that run our societies seem to find the practice, values, and very spirit of democracy to be increasingly intolerable.

In France, where the ruling government maintains power despite being the most widely hated in decades, the most popular candidate of the most popular political party has been barred from challenging that government in upcoming elections, on legal grounds that are openly political.

In Romania, when the “wrong” outsider candidate appeared poised to win an election, authorities canceled the election outright and then had him arrested, the unelected national security state inventing entirely unsupported excuses about foreign meddling to justify their coup d’état against the democratic process.

In Germany, the state has now begun the process of banning the country’s most popular party, supported by more than a quarter of the voting population, in order to avoid facing any real political opposition. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary,” is how a former European Commissioner confidently foreshadowed events on live television a few months ago....In Brazil, a single Supreme Court judge, in alliance with the country’s leftist president, has effectively established a judicial dictatorship, locking up political rivals by decree, silencing the speech of opposition figures, and utilizing state leverage over the financial system to punish political enemies by banishing them from public economic life. 

But of course Brazil’s authorities learned these tactics by observation. Observation of Canada, to be precise, where Justin Trudeau’s government first employed debanking — along with a little brute force — as a tool to crush peaceful protest of his draconian and disastrous pandemic lockdown policies. 

As we've just seen in the Epstein case, even when a rejected candidate gets elected they often go along with the managers. The managers are the real danger; they are the real problem. Getting rid of them will not be accomplished by elections. What else?

An Actually-Helpful Suggestion

The boys at Free Beacon are misunderstanding this Russian offer, I think. 

"Russia has technological solutions for uranium depletion and is ready to work with Iran in this field," Lavrov said in remarks published by Iran’s state-controlled media. "We have technological capacities and we are ready to offer them, taking the excess of overly enriched uranium and returning the power-generation-grade uranium to the Islamic Republic and its nuclear facilities."

I understand that to be offering to take the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) remaining in Iran off their hands, and trading it for uranium that is a better fit for the power generation the Iranians claim to want.* That would be unsuitable for weapons production, and put Iran on a more plausible path towards having nuclear power but not a weapons program. 

Getting Iran's remaining stockpiles of HEU out of Iran's hands is helpful. Russia is already a nuclear power, so this wouldn't be a risk for proliferation. As long as Iran didn't set up its enrichment centrifuges again, everyone could relax if they gave up their HEU for reactor-grade material. 

* The distinction has to do with the isotopes found in the Uranium, 238 versus 235. An unnaturally high purity of U-235 is necessary to build nuclear weapons. You only need about 20% for power generation, 95% for weapons. Thus, the comment about 'overly enriched uranium' strikes me as one about getting rid of the stuff they've been working on for the weapons program. 

Complex Attack

A reasonably decent analysis of the Alvarado attack. The author is using the language of military intelligence, including specifying MLECOA and MDECOA (you’ll see it spelled out at the link). His alternative is that one I think is actually the most likely. 

A “complex attack” is one in which more than one element is involved, e.g. instead of just opening fire with a rifle, first setting off explosions and then opening fire. In Iraq, a common version was to use an IED to disable an American convoy, and then hit it with a team using small arms fire once the American soldiers dismounted. Here, an attention-drawing fireworks attack drew out law enforcement, who were then ambushed by shooters. 

Nicomachean Ethics Interlude: A Bladesman's Insight

In the comments to the post below, I mentioned that the 'balancing point' I keep talking about in my commentary is my own insight and not something I'm getting out of Aristotle's text. He uses words that are translated as "mean" or "intermediary," and students sometimes go wrong by missing that he doesn't mean the exact average or middle point. He is quite explicit about that repeatedly, as I've pointed out, but it remains a common misconception.

By the way, when I talk about the 'balancing point,' that's my own way of describing what Aristotle is after. He doesn't use that phrase or anything like it, but I think it's helpful in thinking about how a 'mean' or 'intermediate' can be 'closer to one end than the other.'

I'm thinking of that thing we do to test the balance of a blade, where you put it longways across one finger and find where it balances. The blade may be longer than the hilt, but the hilt is more densely constructed; if so, the blade's tip may be much further out from your finger than the tip of the hilt, but it balances there. That's just another analogy, of course, and it's one I'm creating and importing to the text. It's not there in the original; I just find it helpful in conceptualizing the model.

Here is what I mean by that.

Balancing point on a Type XII arming sword, common c. 13th century.

Balancing point on a typical American Bowie knife.

As you can see, the balancing point is sometimes much closer to the middle, and sometimes much closer to one end than the other. The blade is balanced perhaps well forward of the guard, perhaps nearly upon it. Sometimes it's the exact middle of the blade, which we sometimes refer to as 'perfectly balanced,' but sometimes the tip of the blade extends well beyond the balancing point.

Again, it's just another analogy, and it's mine instead of Aristotle's. If you find it helpful in conceptualizing the point he's making about finding the exactly right place between two extremes, however, that's good. Use the analogy as far as it is useful. 

It does amuse me to wonder if Aristotle's most famous student had this insight, and if he brought it to his master's attention. That student was well-familiar with such tools! If so, however, it didn't survive to us in the text.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that I ought to point out that blades are balanced the way they are for a reason: even if we speak of a 'perfectly balanced' blade as being in the exact middle, that doesn't mean another way is wrong. A perfectly balanced knife is good for throwing, though you can throw any of them if you can figure out their rotation properly. I enjoy axe throwing, and usually the axes aren't balanced with that consideration at all. You just have to figure out how far away you have to stand to have them strike at the correct point in their rotation.

A rapier (and similarly, thrusting weapons) is often balanced 'towards the hilt' as this allows the point to be moved rapidly and precisely to a desired position. Having most of the weight closer to the hand, or in the hand, means that smaller and gentler movements can be used to direct the point to exactly where you want it to go.

A slashing weapon is often balanced 'towards the blade.' This is because a sword is essentially a lever, and the lever's effect is greatest at the opposite end of the lever rather than in the middle. Since F=ma, putting more of the mass towards the place where the lever will exert more force on it increases the acceleration the lever produces, and thus the force of impact. 

All of these considerations also have analogs to ethics. Ethics is about getting things inside us right to deal with the world outside of us. Thus, we too may find that the correct balancing point is sometimes here, and sometimes over there. It's not an operation of looking inside of ourselves and determining how much bravery, or anger, or temperance is best for us: we also have to consider how much the external situation requires.

Departments of Analysis

Noting a 'professor of American studies' who wants to dismantle America, this Substack asks: 

Ironically, she’ll be teaching this anti-American rhetoric for Macalester’s American Studies Department. More like Anti-American Studies?

Well, no; the business of analyzing anything is the business of breaking it apart. That is what the word "analysis" means.

1580s, "resolution of anything complex into simple elements" (opposite of synthesis), from Medieval Latin analysis (15c.), from Greek analysis "solution of a problem by analysis," literally "a breaking up, a loosening, releasing," noun of action from analyein "unloose, release, set free; to loose a ship from its moorings," in Aristotle, "to analyze," from ana "up, back, throughout" (see ana-) + lysis "a loosening," from lyein "to unfasten" (from PIE root *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart").

There's a Chinese critique of the Western way of learning that we study a flower by cutting it into its component parts, then studying each in turn to understand the whole. We generate a deeper understanding, but we also thereby destroy the flower and its beauty.

When I was studying at the University of Georgia, one of their lawyers told me that they got by far the most civil rights complaints from the Department of Religion, because students would take courses on their own religion and be deeply offended at the analysis of its core claims. Naturally a department of 'American Studies' is going to do the same thing for America. 

You might say, "Well, Grim, what about the department of Women's Studies? Isn't that for promotion of women's interests?" "What about African-American studies?" Perhaps those departments are intended in that way; but look at the effect it has on the people who study them. The ones I know who've gone on to happiness have done so by walking away from the department's core claims and embracing a more traditional life at least in those core elements. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.8

This chapter is a fairly technical spelling-out of how Aristotle conceives of his model. It's an analog to mathematics, but it isn't meant to be a mathematical model, just like one. His model for motion in the Physics in which there are two contraries and a substrate is the real model, as I have already mentioned. We are, in this case, the substrate that unifies the contraries and allows for motion between them: we have the capacity to be cowardly or brave, and can shift our position between those extremes in search of the right balancing point.

There are three kinds of disposition, then, two of them vices, involving excess and deficiency respectively, and one a virtue, viz. the mean, and all are in a sense opposed to all; for the extreme states are contrary both to the intermediate state and to each other, and the intermediate to the extremes; as the equal is greater relatively to the less, less relatively to the greater, so the middle states are excessive relatively to the deficiencies, deficient relatively to the excesses, both in passions and in actions. For the brave man appears rash relatively to the coward, and cowardly relatively to the rash man; and similarly the temperate man appears self-indulgent relatively to the insensible man, insensible relatively to the self-indulgent, and the liberal man prodigal relatively to the mean man, mean relatively to the prodigal. Hence also the people at the extremes push the intermediate man each over to the other, and the brave man is called rash by the coward, cowardly by the rash man, and correspondingly in the other cases.

That's a good point about how we perceive each other, as well as the effect we tend to have on each other in deliberating together. The rash man thinks of the brave man as cowardly; and by associating with the rash, the brave man may move away from the correct balancing point as they draw him towards their position. It's important to choose your friends carefully if you are to live the best life. 

These states being thus opposed to one another, the greatest contrariety is that of the extremes to each other, rather than to the intermediate; for these are further from each other than from the intermediate, as the great is further from the small and the small from the great than both are from the equal. Again, to the intermediate some extremes show a certain likeness, as that of rashness to courage and that of prodigality to liberality; but the extremes show the greatest unlikeness to each other; now contraries are defined as the things that are furthest from each other, so that things that are further apart are more contrary.

To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not rashness, which is an excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to courage, and not insensibility, which is a deficiency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that is more opposed to temperance.

Another demonstration that the 'mean' he keeps talking about is not the middle point: sometimes one of the extremes is more opposed to the 'mean' than the other, i.e., the right balancing point may not be in the exact middle. 

This happens from two reasons, one being drawn from the thing itself; for because one extreme is nearer and liker to the intermediate, we oppose not this but rather its contrary to the intermediate. E.g. since rashness is thought liker and nearer to courage, and cowardice more unlike, we oppose rather the latter to courage; for things that are further from the intermediate are thought more contrary to it.

Again, "one extreme is nearer," i.e., we aren't talking about the 'mean' in a strictly mathematical sense even though that term is preferred by translators. The mathematical similarity is analogical, rather than logical.

This, then, is one cause, drawn from the thing itself; another is drawn from ourselves; for the things to which we ourselves more naturally tend seem more contrary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves tend more naturally to pleasures, and hence are more easily carried away towards self-indulgence than towards propriety. We describe as contrary to the mean, then, rather the directions in which we more often go to great lengths; and therefore self-indulgence, which is an excess, is the more contrary to temperance.

Another good point about human psychology by Aristotle: relatively few of us are inclined to being insensible to pleasure, so it's really self-indulgence we're guarding against on that particular scale. The other contrary doesn't hold much interest for most of us.  

Classical Schooling

I'm amused with this post on education at the Orthosphere, and approve greatly of the author's unapologetic use of sed contra (and without explanation, assuming a familiarity with Aquinas' work among his readers).

There is a much simpler reason to prefer the Greeks, and to some degree the Romans, as a starting point for a young person's education. Their works are where the foundations of all human forms of enquiry are laid, as written by many of the finest minds in human history who happened to be in dialogue with each other -- sometimes directly, otherwise by only a few years' distance through many common companions. A good education in the Classics prepares you for any other subject because it provides you a grounded position from which to understand the changes in your particular field. 

What we tend to do instead is skip the classics, give a bad version of Newtonian physics to a subset of high school students (how many recent high school graduates do you know who could explain the Ideal Gas Law?), and still have to tell them when they get to college that we only gave (some of) them an antiquated system that needs multiple updates. A few weeks or months with Aristotle at the beginning will better prepare them for the revolution that was Newton, which will mentally prepare them for the further revolutions that were Relativity and Quantum Theory. They will understand the whole thing better for having started at the beginning, and seen the stones on which the initial groundworks were laid.

It's also very beneficial to learn different ways of thinking about the same problems. Just having an alternative mental position that you can adopt for the sake of perspective often sheds new light on any problem that has you stuck.

In any case, I wanted to quote a section because it touches on our ongoing discussion of empathy. He is not using the term in the specific sense that I do, and indeed seems to switch back and forth between 'empathy' and 'sympathy' as is common, but he is making the same point:

Fiction teaches empathy.  Where’s the evidence?  The literary don’t seem to me to cast the net of their sympathy particularly widely.  Fiction doesn’t teach intellectual empathy (being able to think inside other peoples’ belief systems).  Nor does it teach one better to empathize with others from an epistemic distance–I already know how to sympathize with someone when I’m in his head (i.e. no different from sympathizing with myself)

What it teaches you to do is to imagine yourself in the position described, and assume that what you would feel is what the character would feel. That is empathy in the original sense, the art-project sense of creating a character or an image in art that causes the audience to respond to it as if they were in the thing. It is illusory, however: just as he says, it doesn't do anything to help you actually understand someone who is intellectually or epistemically different from you; also as he says, the artists are often very selective in what they want you to imagine yourself being. Not Homer, though: he freely offers you the chance to empathize with Hector and his wife and children, the same as Odysseus and his.

Mimetic Justice

This is one of those cases where everyone knows they're lying, and they know we know, but they persist. At least it's opening a few eyes to how much one cannot trust the government. 

UPDATE: Team Trump is catching semi-friendly fire over the US Steel deal too. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.7

By the standards of modern books, these are very dense sections: they aren't very long, strictly speaking, but there's a lot to understand in every sentence.

We must, however, not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual facts. For among statements about conduct those which are general apply more widely, but those which are particular are more genuine, since conduct has to do with individual cases, and our statements must harmonize with the facts in these cases.

This is usefully conferred with Rhetoric I.1, where Aristotle makes a similar point about well-constructed laws: "it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges." His considerations about the difficulty of finding good judges, and the danger of partisanship and faction, are also valid here.

We may take these cases from our table. With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward.

As I have often said here, courage is the exemplary virtue. It is the model by which all the others are understood. There will be more on it later. 

With regard to pleasures and pains- not all of them, and not so much with regard to the pains- the mean is temperance, the excess self-indulgence. Persons deficient with regard to the pleasures are not often found; hence such persons also have received no name. But let us call them 'insensible'.

One occasionally hears of people who are not sexually attracted to other human beings, for example. 

With regard to giving and taking of money the mean is liberality, the excess and the defect prodigality and meanness. In these actions people exceed and fall short in contrary ways; the prodigal exceeds in spending and falls short in taking, while the mean man exceeds in taking and falls short in spending. (At present we are giving a mere outline or summary, and are satisfied with this; later these states will be more exactly determined.) With regard to money there are also other dispositions- a mean, magnificence (for the magnificent man differs from the liberal man; the former deals with large sums, the latter with small ones), an excess, tastelessness and vulgarity, and a deficiency, niggardliness; these differ from the states opposed to liberality, and the mode of their difference will be stated later.

As he says, these states will be examined in greater detail later; this is just an initial outline to make the plan of the work clear. 

With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of 'empty vanity', and the deficiency is undue humility; and as we said liberality was related to magnificence, differing from it by dealing with small sums, so there is a state similarly related to proper pride, being concerned with small honours while that is concerned with great. For it is possible to desire honour as one ought, and more than one ought, and less, and the man who exceeds in his desires is called ambitious, the man who falls short unambitious, while the intermediate person has no name. The dispositions also are nameless, except that that of the ambitious man is called ambition. Hence the people who are at the extremes lay claim to the middle place; and we ourselves sometimes call the intermediate person ambitious and sometimes unambitious, and sometimes praise the ambitious man and sometimes the unambitious. The reason of our doing this will be stated in what follows; but now let us speak of the remaining states according to the method which has been indicated.

Immanuel Kant also makes the point that excess humility is a kind of servility that is unworthy. (If anyone wishes to compare, Ak. 6:434-7; he treats 'proper pride' and arrogance at 6:465-6. In Kant's system these things that are connected in Aristotle are separated: Kant conceives of ethics not principally as virtues, though he talks about all these virtues, but as duties. The duty not to be servile is a duty to one's self; the duty not to be arrogant and to restrain your pride appropriately is a duty to others. Thus, they appear in different places in his work.)

With regard to anger also there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean. Although they can scarcely be said to have names, yet since we call the intermediate person good-tempered let us call the mean good temper; of the persons at the extremes let the one who exceeds be called irascible, and his vice irascibility, and the man who falls short an inirascible sort of person, and the deficiency inirascibility.

There are also three other means, which have a certain likeness to one another, but differ from one another: for they are all concerned with intercourse in words and actions, but differ in that one is concerned with truth in this sphere, the other two with pleasantness; and of this one kind is exhibited in giving amusement, the other in all the circumstances of life. We must therefore speak of these too, that we may the better see that in all things the mean is praise-worthy, and the extremes neither praiseworthy nor right, but worthy of blame. Now most of these states also have no names, but we must try, as in the other cases, to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow.

The above seems to move us to art again, rather than to virtue; he's talking about the 'virtue' of being a good rather than a poor entertainer. But the ethical issues remain, as becomes apparent:  

With regard to truth, then, the intermediate is a truthful sort of person and the mean may be called truthfulness, while the pretence which exaggerates is boastfulness and the person characterized by it a boaster, and that which understates is mock modesty and the person characterized by it mock-modest. With regard to pleasantness in the giving of amusement the intermediate person is ready-witted and the disposition ready wit, the excess is buffoonery and the person characterized by it a buffoon, while the man who falls short is a sort of boor and his state is boorishness. With regard to the remaining kind of pleasantness, that which is exhibited in life in general, the man who is pleasant in the right way is friendly and the mean is friendliness, while the man who exceeds is an obsequious person if he has no end in view, a flatterer if he is aiming at his own advantage, and the man who falls short and is unpleasant in all circumstances is a quarrelsome and surly sort of person.

Friendship will prove to be quite important in the later books of the EN; truth-telling is obviously a moral concern. Being witty remains a surprising addition, but since it is tied to being able to make and keep friends, you can at least see the connection.  

There are also means in the passions and concerned with the passions; since shame is not a virtue, and yet praise is extended to the modest man. For even in these matters one man is said to be intermediate, and another to exceed, as for instance the bashful man who is ashamed of everything; while he who falls short or is not ashamed of anything at all is shameless, and the intermediate person is modest. Righteous indignation is a mean between envy and spite, and these states are concerned with the pain and pleasure that are felt at the fortunes of our neighbours; the man who is characterized by righteous indignation is pained at undeserved good fortune, the envious man, going beyond him, is pained at all good fortune, and the spiteful man falls so far short of being pained that he even rejoices. But these states there will be an opportunity of describing elsewhere; with regard to justice, since it has not one simple meaning, we shall, after describing the other states, distinguish its two kinds and say how each of them is a mean; and similarly we shall treat also of the rational virtues. 

That is the plan for the next few parts. 

Migration Problems

Mexicans are unhappy about American aliens invading their neighborhoods.

In handwritten signs and graffiti, the protesters made their anger at the influx of foreigners who have recently settled in Mexico City clear:

“Gringo, go home!” “Speak Spanish or Die!” “Gentrification is colonization!”...

 Foreign remote workers began relocating in large numbers to Mexico City during the coronavirus pandemic, settling largely in central, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods such as Condesa and Roma.

Jarring many longtime residents, these areas have developed into bastions where more English than Spanish is spoken in some sidewalk cafes, and in which co-working spaces, Pilates studios, specialty food stores and clothing boutiques have sprouted, catering to the recent arrivals.

I've already written the post about this, but the disruption of communities is an unrecognized human universal that our society has no good way of talking about. It doesn't really matter if the migration is legal or illegal in terms of the destruction of existing communities and ways of life. 

It doesn't matter if it's internal to a nation, even, as I observed watching Northern American citizen migrants to Atlanta overrun and destroy the way of life where I grew up. It was the same problem: 

Ms. Sheinbaum also acknowledged the demonstrators’ concerns, and how tempers are flaring in Mexico City, North America’s largest metropolis, around the arrival of thousands of relatively well-off foreigners, especially from the United States. Many longtime residents are fuming over rising rents and food prices in parts of the city.

“The playing field is not level,” said Daniela Grave, a resident attending the protest. “If they make a living in dollars, and don’t pay taxes here, we are just in unequal circumstances, Mexicans and foreigners, where those who have salaries in dollars have all the power to exert in this city and that is what should be regulated.”

What happened between the 1970s and the 1990s was that a whole lot of corporations moved South, where everything was cheaper. Their workers could also then move South, selling a home in New York City that was worth enough to buy a big home in Atlanta or to build a McMansion in one of the small towns nearby. Those small towns quickly became suburbs instead of small towns; the farmland was bought up and turned into subdivisions.

Everyone who had lived there was priced out and had to leave the place where their parents and grandparents had lived. Property values went up, so taxes went up to the point that you couldn't keep the family home. All the extra money brought inflation, too. As your neighbors sold out and left, churches shrank or closed, the old family-run shops were sold and replaced with cheaply built chains, and all your friends drifted away until there was nobody left.

We really need a better way to address this human universal of meaning and community, and to address how it gets lost in mass migration -- whether of poor workers to rich countries, or rich workers to poorer, cheaper ones.

Nicomachean Ethics II.6b

If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well- by looking to the intermediate and judging its works by this standard (so that we often say of good works of art that it is not possible either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of works of art, while the mean preserves it; and good artists, as we say, look to this in their work), and if, further, virtue is more exact and better than any art, as nature also is, then virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate.

That's a long deduction with two questionable assumptions.  (A) IF every art does its work well by creating works that can't be improved either by adding or taking away; (B) AND IF virtue is more exact and better than any art (as nature is); (C) THEN virtue must have the quality of aiming at this intermediate point of balance.

So (A∧B)⊃C, for those of you who want to study philosophy formally. Or, you can put it this way: 

(Assumption) A
(Assumption) B
∴ C

The deduction follows if the assumptions are true. Are they true? 

It isn't clear to me that the first assumption is true. In The Singer of Tales, Albert Lord demonstrates that much of the heroic poetry of the Homeric tradition was oral by nature, and part of a performance was to edit it to fit the audience's interest level and available time. For that audience, such a shortening or stretching improved the work; but arguably no such work was an actual improvement over Homer's version. These are of course two different works, and one could argue that each performance has to hit the right balancing point ("intermediate" or "mean") for its audience. However, one can also admit that there is nothing wrong with Homer's work -- that's why it has endured for millennia -- even though it could be improved for a particular audience by editing it (or even stretching it, although it's already quite long). 

The second assumption turns on an important ambiguity in what it means to be 'better than.' Aristotle says here that nature is better than any art; and in Physics II and elsewhere, he says that 'art imitates nature.' However, as we have already discussed, art has a crucial role in perfecting the flaws found in nature, as by improving eyesight when the natural eye is weak. If art can perfect nature, it can't be 'less good' because you perfect something by bringing it to a greater good than it had by itself. 

I suspect this means that 'good' is being used in two senses here. Nature is the source of everything to which we might apply an art, and creates the basic things that our arts can only improve upon but not make from nothing. In that sense, nature is higher and better than art. Yet art must have a 'good' to offer insofar as it is being applied; and that good is based upon the ability of us to understand the reasoning behind the created thing (telos) so that we can intuit how to improve it. 

Given the structure of the deduction, if either of the assumptions are false, the deduction fails. That doesn't mean the conclusion is false; it just means that the logic itself cannot guarantee the truth of the conclusion. 

I mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Similarly with regard to actions also there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. Now virtue is concerned with passions and actions, in which excess is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate is praised and is a form of success; and being praised and being successful are both characteristics of virtue. Therefore virtue is a kind of mean, since, as we have seen, it aims at what is intermediate.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult- to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue;

For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

Aristotle's understanding of what he sometimes calls "the so-called Pythagoreans" is helpfully explained here.

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices,* that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.

* Or three, or more; when we get to courage you will see that he has two different defects on the excess side of the ledger. 

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft, murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to do any of them is to go wrong.

There is no virtuous way to commit adultery, then; and he mentions murder as well. It's worth thinking about all those 'would you go back to kill Hitler' thought experiments, then. The only reason to consider such a thing (were it possible) is that it might be virtuous; here we are told there can be no right way to do it.  

It would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly, and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess, and a deficiency; for at that rate there would be a mean of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, and a deficiency of deficiency.

This is a very Aristotelian point.  

But as there is no excess and deficiency of temperance and courage because what is intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and deficiency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean.

All of that will become clearer once we get to the examples of specific virtues.  

Riding Report: I-40 at the Pigeon

Yesterday I took I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge for the first time since Hurricane Helene. The interstate was closed again by recent flooding, but is now partly re-opened. I do not recommend it at this time. 

The road is beautiful, running through impressive sections of the Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests and near the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, it is still greatly congested due to the fact that only one lane is open each way in places. Semis and other heavy traffic need that road to get over the border without having to make long detours. 

On the other hand, US 25/70 was much clearer than it was when I went through a couple weeks ago. It's now resumed its normal role as a scenic highway by the beautiful French Broad River. If you're planning a ride, or are in a passenger car, you might want to take the scenic route and leave the interstate to the big rigs. You'll probably get there faster anyway.

One of my fellows on yesterday's ride had a battery cell failure, which first caused him to need to seek a jump box from fellow travelers at the rest stop, and then caused the bike to fail entirely outside of Newport, Tennessee. I gave him a lift into town. Fortunately there was an auto parts store close to the interstate that sold the right kind of battery for his bike. Of course he dropped one of the bolts into the middle drive, so we had to fish for it with a magnet for a long time in the very hot July sun. Eventually, however, we got back underway.

It's a whole lot hotter down in the valley. Here on the mountain today it is 82, which is about as hot as it gets up here. I've seen it as high as 84. If you ride up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is as much as 2,500 feet higher than I am here, it's pleasant camping weather. If any of you are considering that, the Grandfather Mountain Scottish Highland Games is next weekend. It is one of my old favorites, part of our honeymoon trip 26 years ago and an event we have returned to many times. Pack rain gear, though: it's pleasant, but this time of year you can bet on a good hard rain for at least a half-hour of every afternoon. 

The Spirit of Rebellion

 

UPDATE: 

Happy Independence Day.

Mike Rowe Teaches Everyone How to Sing the Star-Spangled Banner

And 249 years ago today ...

BBB passes the House

About an hour ago. Will be signed into law by this evening.

Pig in the Smoke

Conan stands watch over the pork

In preparation for the Independence Day feast, I have had a pork butt in the smoker since the early morning. There will also be three kinds of sausages reflecting the America 'melting pot' of cultures: German bratwurst, French/Cajun andouille, and Spanish/Mexican chorizo. The pulled pork is a classic of Southern American cuisine, of course.

American beer will be served, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Dale's American Pale Ale. Prospective guests must get past a German Shepherd dog who doesn't know you.

Comedy & Tragedy

WaPo's Monica Hesse on the subject of Alligator Alcatraz:

[Trump] added: “Snakes are fast but alligators — we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don’t run in a straight line, run like this,” he said, motioning in a zigzag. “You know what, your chances go up about 1 percent.”... 

Oh, right, I have forgotten to tell you about the swag. Earlier this week, the Florida GOP began selling Alligator Alcatraz merch. You can buy Alligator Alcatraz black mesh trucker hats and T-shirts in both charcoal and heather gray. You can buy a set of two beer coozies for $15.... The aesthetics of the merchandise is also important, and so I will mention that the font is one you would normally associate with a slasher film or with the kind of roller coaster for which riders are required to sign waivers.... 

The point is that serious matters — the most serious matters, the matters of constitutionality, due process, citizenship and who gets to be an American — are, in this administration, being increasingly presented as cheap entertainment. You see it in the U.S. Border Patrol playing the power ballad “Closing Time” over footage of a scared looking young man being placed in handcuffs and shepherded on a plane. You see it in the White House posting a video of detained migrants being processed for deportation, set to a hit from Bananarama.

Is it funny? Is it awful? Is it trolling or real life? The point is that we are not supposed to know. Alligator Alcatraz is a dehumanizing place, but when it is treated as spectacle, it’s not just the prisoners there who lose their humanity. We all do. The effect is to tell Americans not to take any of this too seriously. Families are being ripped apart, but it’s all for the lulz. We are dancing on the edges of constitutionality, but it’s making great television. We have become tonally incoherent, incapable of even determining tone....

But then you see Benny Johnson cheering online for the millions of hungry alligators, and you see the storefront of the Florida GOP, and you realize that it’s almost July 4, the 249th birthday of America, and major officials of our country are spending the holiday week celebrating the fact that migrants from other countries loved the United States so much they risked their lives to come here and our reaction is to hope they are eaten by alligators.

It is, according to a retired professor of rhetoric that I know, the fact that Trump operates in the comedic mode. As such he is able to invert and reject the tragic norms under which the very serious people of the usual elite operate. The SEP explains:

While there is only speculation about how humor developed in early humans, we know that by the late 6th century BCE the Greeks had institutionalized it in the ritual known as comedy, and that it was performed with a contrasting dramatic form known as tragedy. Both were based on the violation of mental patterns and expectations, and in both the world is a tangle of conflicting systems where humans live in the shadow of failure, folly, and death. Like tragedy, comedy represents life as full of tension, danger, and struggle, with success or failure often depending on chance factors. Where they differ is in the responses of the lead characters to life’s incongruities....

Tragedy valorizes serious, emotional engagement with life’s problems, even struggle to the death. Along with epic, it is part of the Western heroic tradition that extols ideals, the willingness to fight for them, and honor. The tragic ethos is linked to patriarchy and militarism—most of its heroes are kings and conquerors—and it valorizes what Conrad Hyers (1996) calls Warrior Virtues—blind obedience, the willingness to kill or die on command, unquestioning loyalty, single-mindedness, resoluteness of purpose, and pride.

Comedy, by contrast, embodies an anti-heroic, pragmatic attitude toward life’s incongruities.... comedy has mocked the irrationality of militarism and blind respect for authority. Its own methods of handling conflict include deal-making, trickery, getting an enemy drunk, and running away.... it extols critical thinking, cleverness, adaptability, and an appreciation of physical pleasures like eating, drinking, and sex.

Along with the idealism of tragedy goes elitism.... In comedy there are more characters and more kinds of characters, women are more prominent, and many protagonists come from lower classes. Everybody counts for one. That shows in the language of comedy, which, unlike the elevated language of tragedy, is common speech....

While tragic heroes are emotionally engaged with their problems, comic protagonists show emotional disengagement.... By presenting such characters as role models, comedy has implicitly valorized the benefits of humor that are now being empirically verified, such as that it is psychologically and physically healthy, it fosters mental flexibility, and it serves as a social lubricant.... With a few exceptions like Aquinas, philosophers have ignored these benefits. 

Emphasis added. It would strike a member of Hesse's team as at least partly deniable because it places her, rather than Trump of the recent military parade and Iran strikes, on the side of militarism. Yet it was Joe Biden who gave this speech:

Flanked by Marines, he spoke in the terms of tragedy about ideals like democracy, the duty for all of us to fight against his opponents whom he described as inheritors of the most serious sins of authoritarianism (even of being analogues to Nazis), and called us all to sacrifice ourselves and our interests as necessary to keep his opponents out of power -- for the good of these supposedly common ideals, although they somehow always work in the elite's favor. It was, too, their side that was so committed to fighting rather than to ending wars: eternal war in the Ukraine seems to be their motto even now, eternal war rather than any workable settlement in Israel, in Iraq, in Syria...

Trump, whose rhetoric is from Professional Wrestling, is indeed the comedy version of American politics. His is our comedic mode. This is for good and for ill. Humor is something we all share, but not something we have ever been able to understand completely. It has a touch of madness, of death, or of the divine.

The account of laughter in the Philebus, Heath observes, cannot explain all the instances of humor in Plato's own writings. Over time, the negative view of laughter hardened. Aristotle had observed that among animals, only human beings laugh. For Iamblichus, this was precisely a sign of our mortal nature, whereas we ought to aspire to the divine. What, then, are we to make of the "unquenchable laughter" of the Homeric gods? Answer: it "signifies divine providence towards the phenomenal world" ... It is not so much a guffaw as a sign of play.

It doesn't make Americans worse people to engage these very serious matters in the comedic mode. The comedic mode has always been there, throughout human history, as humanity's alternate mode. The comedic mode is a relief from the tragic mode; perhaps it is the only relief life offers us from the tragic. Sometimes it is the only thing that can solve the problems the tragic mode has found impossible.

A Holiday for the Holiday

I will pause the discussion of the Nicomachean Ethics there for the Independence Day holiday, which I hope will be an extended one for all of you. It is one of the great holidays of the year, much deserving of celebration. We may resume on Monday.

Nicomachean Ethics II.6a

We must, however, not only describe virtue as a state of character, but also say what sort of state it is. We may remark, then, that every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well; e.g. the excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good at running and at carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy. Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well.

This is a surprising section because the examples Aristotle chooses aren't to states of character, or even any of the elements of the soul he mentioned before: they appear to be not examples, but analogies to organs and animals.  

Now as we frequently discuss here, all analogies always break. Because you are making comparisons between two things that are not alike, there will always come a point of difference. This insight is known to Aristotle, so we have to question that apparent use of analogy. When he says, "...if this is true in every case..." we should ask if he is making a claim about something that all three kinds of things have, something that isn't an analogy after all because they are really the same kind of thing. 

The claim involves not merely states of character in people, but also the telos of organs and the telos of an animal.* We might assume, then, that this is a claim about teloi in general. The telos is the end of the thing, whatever kind of thing it is; and it is, coincidentally, the telos against which the thing is to be judged. You can tell good eyes from bad ones by how well they see. You can tell a good horse from a bad one by how well it performs. 

So this seems to be the right kind of answer: you can tell a good from a bad man by how virtuous he is. Why? Because of the standards established in I.3: the EN is highly pragmatic. A virtuous man will perform better ('always or for the most part' given the existence of chance) when tested against objective reality. That's also how Aristotle closes this paragraph: "the virtue of man will also be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well."

The next paragraph requires a bit of explanation about Aristotle's math.

How this is to happen we have stated already, but it will be made plain also by the following consideration of the specific nature of virtue. In everything that is continuous and divisible it is possible to take more, less, or an equal amount, and that either in terms of the thing itself or relatively to us; and the equal is an intermediate between excess and defect. By the intermediate in the object I mean that which is equidistant from each of the extremes, which is one and the same for all men; by the intermediate relatively to us that which is neither too much nor too little- and this is not one, nor the same for all. For instance, if ten is many and two is few, six is the intermediate, taken in terms of the object; for it exceeds and is exceeded by an equal amount; this is intermediate according to arithmetical proportion. But the intermediate relatively to us is not to be taken so; if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises. The same is true of running and wrestling. Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this- the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us.

When talking about 'everything that is continuous and divisible' the contemporary mind probably turns to something like the number line, or the set of Real Numbers. This is not what Aristotle meant. There were no negative numbers in Ancient Greece, nor in fact even zero. Aristotle spends quite a lot of time worrying about the status of the infinite in both the Physics and the Metaphysics (especially the former, where he treats Zeno's problems). His solution is the infinite conceptual divisibility of any unity. If you have one, you can divide it in half; and then the half into halves; etc. Even if you can't physically do this to, say, an apple, you can do it conceptually forever. Thus, his 'real potential infinity' problem is solved; he rejects actually real infinities. 

Here we get a clear and unambiguous statement that the 'intermediate' or 'mean between extremes' is not just the middle position. He distinguishes the true middle of a division of a unity from the kind of division that is appropriate to ethics. The true middle of the thing is "the intermediate in the object," which is the same for all (math being objective) and not what he is talking about. The intermediate we should be aiming at is "the intermediate relative to us." He gives some examples to show how that will differ from person to person: Milo of Croton is going to need more food than the novice who is just starting out on building muscle. The 'intermediate' amount of food, which is neither excessive nor insufficient, will therefore not be the same depending on which of them is being considered.**

That should clarify what is meant by 'the mean between extremes' or 'the intermediate' once and for all for students of Aristotle's ethics. If you run into anyone who thinks he's arguing for simply avoiding the extreme in all cases, refer them here: Milo might really need those extra calories. 

*We can note that the horse might see its own telos differently from the one Aristotle gives -- it might not think that 'awaiting the attack of the enemy' is any part of its good life, and that even running is only in the service of defending a good long life of peacefully eating grass. Aristotle has an answer to that kind of objection, which is in Physics II.8. That section requires quite a bit of interpretation that might be distracting here, but the upshot is that he accepts that reality admits of different teloi from different perspectives, as the grass might consider the purpose of the rain the good of the corn, but things look different from other perspectives. There is a way of sorting out the priority laid out there for those who are interested in it. There's also in this section Aristotle's rejection of the contemporary scientific assumption that telos isn't required because things just happen due to necessary natural forces.

** This mathematical proof of an ethical concept is, by the way, exactly the sort of thing he warned us to avoid in I.3. We'll skip over that.