There is a point nearly allied to the preceding: Whether the virtue of a good man and a good citizen is the same or not. But, before entering on this discussion, we must certainly first obtain some general notion of the virtue of the citizen. Like the sailor, the citizen is a member of a community. Now, sailors have different functions, for one of them is a rower, another a pilot, and a third a look-out man, a fourth is described by some similar term; and while the precise definition of each individual's virtue applies exclusively to him, there is, at the same time, a common definition applicable to them all. For they have all of them a common object, which is safety in navigation. Similarly, one citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member. If, then, there are many forms of government, it is evident that there is not one single virtue of the good citizen which is perfect virtue. But we say that the good man is he who has one single virtue which is perfect virtue. Hence it is evident that the good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.So, citizens have different roles. But because different roles excel in different ways, Aristotle wants to say that the 'good man' -- who is excellent in one way, as a good man -- is not the same as the good citizen.
The same question may also be approached by another road, from a consideration of the best constitution. If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen- thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good.Here the objection is that all citizens cannot be expected to be good people. Yet insofar as we still expect them to be good citizens, they must be capable of a virtue of a sort. Good argument?
Again, the state, as composed of unlikes, may be compared to the living being: as the first elements into which a living being is resolved are soul and body, as soul is made up of rational principle and appetite, the family of husband and wife, property of master and slave, so of all these, as well as other dissimilar elements, the state is composed; and, therefore, the virtue of all the citizens cannot possibly be the same, any more than the excellence of the leader of a chorus is the same as that of the performer who stands by his side. I have said enough to show why the two kinds of virtue cannot be absolutely and always the same.This is the first argument again. Here we get different problems, but the same issue: people fill different roles in the state. Some are husbands and some are wives, some police and some policed. How can they have the same virtues?
At this point Aristotle seems to take it as proven that the good citizen and the good man have a different moral structure. That strikes me as an alarming conclusion. He carries on to consider examples -- please read them -- concerning rulership and similar cases.
I would like to say that he goes wrong here. Perhaps you would care to agree; or perhaps you would care to defend him. Where and why, ladies and gentlemen?
I think his argument rests on this pervasive idea we've been talking about before -- that the "states" he considers are fundamentally totalitarian, and that the "constitution" of each state is not simply a set of rules that govern the government, but governs and controls every aspect of the people's lives - including how much property they may own and what kind of work they can do. And as he notes early in this section - since there are different kinds of constitutions, there are different kinds of "virtue" tha are appropriate to them.
ReplyDeleteSo, for example, the Spartan constitution works from the premise that the good citizen (the way Aristotle uses "citizen") is necessarily a good soldier; and if you do not have the "virtue" of using arms well and being obedient to the hierarchy, you are not a "good citizen." Yet there are many good men who are simply not cut out to be soldiers. And there are good soldiers who are not, overall, good men -- I've prosecuted and defended a few.
Aristotle goes on to suggest that an ideal "best constitution" would encompass men who might not all be good, but who would all "have the virtue of the good citizen." That sounds like the popular idea that with the right public institutions you could eliminate crime (since the criminal is by definition a bad citizen) - but I can't believe that now. Crime is strongly linked to low IQ and lack of self control; and neither of these things can be eliminated by the State. (It can certainly have an effect, even a beneficial one, but not wipe them out.)
Anyway, my point is, Aristotle's reasoning applies to a very unfree conception of the State, but not to the kind of liberty you and I enjoy and want to defend. To us the Constitution is not a broad determination of what we have to worship or what we're allowed to own, and the State is not "us" (in the sense of our last discussion). The government, ideally, is simply one player in our lives, with particular functions to fulfill related to violence; and a huge scope of what we do is none of the State's business. It is not the business of the State or the constiutiton to determine what kind of people we shall be, or what virtues shall predominate in the republic.
Under that kind of regime, it seems to me that the good man and the good citizen can and will be the same. The good citizen obeys the laws, does his civic duty, and is a good neighbor; but that's just what you'd expect the good man to do if there are (respectable) laws and civic duties around.
Mind if I quote myself a little bit?
"Heroic disobedience" is an issue we talked about long ago - and I believe it is a hallmark of liberty under the rule of law, that disobeying the law is not heroic. (What I mean is, if you find situations where violating the law is a noble and heroic act, that is a sign of tyranny.)
I have a notion that this is a special case of a broader truth - that in a free country, personal virtue and the virtues of a good citizen naturally tend to line up; but in tyrannical systems, they don't. (For example, I'm told that being financially dishonest was a survival skill in Communist Europe; you've lived in China and can tell me whether there were virtues better not practiced in order to get along in that order.)
I think you are on to something here. I'm thinking also about Tex's occasional statement that a free society of the type we were intended to enjoy requires a certain virtue from the citizenry -- to whit, not to take public charity unless they really need it. (Or else it requires Davy Crockett's discipline, as a Congressman, not to provide charity via government hands.)
ReplyDeleteHowever, let's give Aristotle a moment's defense. It wasn't just the Spartan constitution that required a good citizen to be a good soldier: it was something to do with the military facts of the era. A citizen's duty included being prepared to stand up and defend the state as war required it: to produce himself in arms and armor, to hold the line, and to die in place if necessary.
That used to be a common understanding -- as recently, here, as WWII or Korea. We made exceptions, but this was the rule.
And this is also, as it happens, the canonical example of virtue. Courage is the virtue that Aristotle treats as a clear example in the Nicomachean Ethics, because it most clearly explains what he means by the term. Being courageous means that you are able to do things that you couldn't do if you were not courageous. You can hold the line, you can tame horses, you can speak the truth.
Aristotle thinks you can take it too far -- that's also emblematic of his idea of virtue, which is that it is the rationally appropriate amount of a quality. Thus, you can fail to be courageous not only by being a coward but by being rash; or, as he says, you can fail by being one who "fears nothing, neither earthquakes nor waves, as they say of the Celts."
...or you can possess "distilled essence of heroism," courage and an eagerness to fight regardless of the cause - which we were talking about in the Foreign Legion thread.
ReplyDeleteHowever, let's give Aristotle a moment's defense. It wasn't just the Spartan constitution that required a good citizen to be a good soldier: it was something to do with the military facts of the era. A citizen's duty included being prepared to stand up and defend the state as war required it: to produce himself in arms and armor, to hold the line, and to die in place if necessary.
That word "required" is important...if I understood the earlier sections and what I've read elsehwere, a Spartan who couldn't do that, or wasn't cut out to do it well enough, simply wasn't a citizen.
Even in our all-volunteer Army, as you know, there are a lot of troops who get chaptered out for one reason or another...in many cases, not because they're bad people per se, but because they simply didn't belong in the Army. We don't strip them of the vote, and in some cases their leadership and I can even admire them for having made the effort - while preferring to admire them from a distance...
That used to be a common understanding -- as recently, here, as WWII or Korea. We made exceptions, but this was the rule.
But there is such a difference between this -- and even Swiss or Israeli universal service -- than what I was talking about with the Spartans. There, the entire constitution was built around the idea that "good citizen" means "good soldier," and that the state has an "end" of making its people good soldiers. You couldn't be a good citizen at all without the military virtues, because the constitution that determined what "citizenship" meant was built around that assumption.
For us, by contrast, if you have the ability, you're sometimes expected (and when we had a draft, sometimes forced) to use it -- but that is only a means to an end, not an end; and a person who is not suited to military life or martial deeds (as a great many of our fellow citizens are not) is not any less a citizen, or any less capable of being a good one.
Well, let's focus in on the canonical case, because it's demonstrative. Can you be a good citizen without courage?
ReplyDeleteWithout any courage? No, I don't think you can.
ReplyDeleteI mean, supporting yourself, being a good neighbor, and performing your civic duties are part of being a good citizen. But that means we have to face at least a few fears in our lifetimes - like confronting a peer when we'd rather avoid the confrontation, or facing rejection when we knock on the door looking for work. Or testifying in court as a witness when we've observed things, even though that will make someone mad. And if you aren't prepared to face those fears, at least, you can't be an all-around good citizen.
But you can certainly be a good citizen without having near as much courage as, let's say, your average paratrooper.
Well, that's OK for Aristotle: virtues are contingent on circumstances. The right 'amount' of courage for a paratrooper attacking into an ambush is different from the right amount for a doctor facing an unknown disease in Africa: a very high degree of courage in the first case and a very high degree of caution in the second case is the virtue, because it is where the greatest capacity lies. It's always about finding the right balance.
ReplyDeleteBut having made that leap, what now? The virtue of courage -- in some degree -- is necessary. What of the other virtues? Self-control or moderation of desire, for example: that's Tex's example.
What is the virtue of a citizen that is different from these ordinary virtues?
What is the virtue of a citizen that is different from these ordinary virtues?
ReplyDeleteWell, lemme think of some examples here, from my own line of goods.
An accuser claims assault. Several people who know the accuser also know he's a liar, creates "drama" by any means possible, and has a motive to lie in this case. Do they (1) freely share this information with the police and the defense counsel, or (2) declare they "don't want to get involved" and refuse to say anything (or even lie to avoid "getting involved")? Choice (1) is the choice of a good citizen per se. I think it lines up well with "ordinary virtues" - since an ordinarily virtuous man doesn't want to see the innocent condemned, and is willing to go to some trouble to stop it from happening.
Or suppose the citizen has been called for jury duty and is serving. A good citizen will be true to his oath and the judge's instructions, and will not conceal the fact that he's disqualified (because he's good friends with the accused), nor vote "not guilty" just to save someone he sympathizes with, nor vote "guilty" because the accused is a bad man (even though he didn't commit the crime he's accused of), nor vote to redistribute wealth from an unsympathetic (but innocent) defendant to a sympathetic plaintiff who's not entitled under the law.
If he's thought about it, it's because, as a good citizen, he recognizes that the rule of law - "a government of laws and not of men" - is more important than his personal notions of deserving and undeserving - in other words, he's upholding the law, giving moral weight to the system itself and not just to the individuals in front of him.
Now, to me, I think even this is really "ordinary virtue" - but in less free systems there really is a divergence between the two - say, if you're a witness to a harborer of fugitive slaves and keep your mouth shut, or you're a juryman in a "racial defilement" case and vote to acquit.
Now that's an interesting claim: "giving moral weight to the system itself." What do you mean by it?
ReplyDeleteI favor marijuana legalization; I get put on the jury in a pot case; the evidence is dead against the boy; how do I vote?
ReplyDeleteIf "I don't care about the law; I only care about people" - then maybe I let him go.
I don't do that. Because I value the rule of law itself, and the system by which we administer it. Other people out there (the legislature, Congress) have the job of changing the law; and others still (the governor, the convening authority, etc.)have the job of granting clemency, and yet other (parole boards etc.) the job of taking the edge off the punishment. Mine, as a jury member, is to decide - have the prosecution proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that this guy did this? In sticking to that job, I am showing respect to this whole system - and giving it a greater weight than both (1) my own opinions, and (2) the boy in front of me. (I believe Socrates in the Crito imagined himself talking to the laws of Athens, and finding himself unable to justify an escape.) My ultimate concern is about human beings, but they're better off under the laws, even some laws I disagree with, than under the whims of men.
This will matter if Captain Planet gets to the jury against Mark Steyn and NRO; D.C. went 87% for Gore (I believe) and no doubt they've been through schools that didn't teach them much - but taught them to be Green. If they follow the law, as the Supreme Court has laid it down, they'll find no liability; but if they don't care about the law, but only People (and of course the Planet), why then, here's their chance to bankrupt the villains and enrich the heroes, and go home feeling great about themselves.
But I, even if you changed the parties around and had (let's say) Steyn bringing a defamation suit against the Earth Liberation Front and the Socialist Workers' Party -- or if there really were evidence that Steyn wrote with "actual malice" -- I would take the view of Thomas More:
"Were it my father on the one side and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have his right."
(I don't think any reader here needs context; More loved his father extremely, and believed in the devil quite literally; it was a far more extreme statement in his day than it would be read now.)
That is what I mean.
(I believe Socrates in the Crito imagined himself talking to the laws of Athens, and finding himself unable to justify an escape.)
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but you wouldn't like his terms. He had the laws argue so:
"Well, then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you? And if this is true you are not on equal terms with us; nor can you think that you have a right to do to us what we are doing to you. Would you have any right to strike or revile or do any other evil to a father or to your master, if you had one, when you have been struck or reviled by him, or received some other evil at his hands?"
Now if I understand you correctly, you're saying that a system that becomes tyrannical justifies 'heroic resistance' -- in other words, defiance of just the sort that Socrates' laws are saying is not justified. A state that thinks of you as a child OR a slave, and that takes to itself the power to do wrong, has lost something of its claim to be free from reprisal -- or defiance. Yes?
Yes. Depending on how far it acts on those "thoughts," and how much "something" we're talking about here. And the more tyrannical and arbitrary the state becomes, the more resistance (and other uncitizenlike actions, such as dishonesty, and even violence in rebellion) are justified -- maybe even necessary as survival skills -- per my examples in the other comment.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I think. How about you?
I have -- as you probably already know -- less reverence for the law than you, but I don't think we're all that far apart. I don't take the law to be an end in itself, no more than I do the economy. Both of these things are means to an end, which is the good of the community. And the human community, of course, starts with the family -- however that happens to be constructed in a given age.
ReplyDeleteSo (to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence) when a set of laws becomes destructive to those ends... well, if changes can be made lawfully and peacefully, good. And if not, ever-increasing resistance on a very similar model to yours, up to a point at which we are instead quoting the Declaration of Arbroath ('it is not in truth for glory we fight, nor honor nor wealth... but for freedom alone, that freedom that no good man lays down but at the grave').
I would say practically that we're very close, but theoretically we may not be. I've always been persuadable by cases in which the law has manifestly failed: say in the O.J. case, where the killer gets off and then laughs it off, golfs for a few years, and then publishes a book about how he killed your daughter. These are cases in which I think the proper response is extrajudicial, followed by a judicial response involving jury nullification.
In other words, it's not that the state was bad or tyrannical; the law may have been properly applied in O.J.'s case, and the father might be clearly and even admittedly guilty of the crime of premeditated murder. In most cases the good citizen on a jury will fairly apply the law; and mostly, the good citizen does not take the law into his own hands. Nevertheless, in cases like these... well, it should be clear what I think about it.
I've always been persuadable by cases in which the law has manifestly failed: say in the O.J. case, where the killer gets off and then laughs it off, golfs for a few years, and then publishes a book about how he killed your daughter. These are cases in which I think the proper response is extrajudicial, followed by a judicial response involving jury nullification.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting choice of example. Do you admit the possibility that the O.J. Simpson verdict was itself an act of jury nullifaction, racially motivated, possibly including fallout from the Rodney King police acquittals...? (You yourself told me a story of a prosecutor who couldn't get a conviction to save his soul for a while after that; but he was dedicated enough to keep plugging away 'til the jurors figured out they were hurting themselves...)
And if so, where does your solution leave us? Orenthal James Simpson kills Nicole Brown Simpson. A black jury "nullifies" and acquits him. Nicole Brown Simpson's family kills O.J. A white jury "nullifies" and acquits them. A black mob, enraged, kills the family members who did the execution. A black jury "nullifies" and acquits them. And so on. Before we're through, we might as well just reintroduce the blood feud - only this is a racially divided blood feud, not something to be settled at a Thing -- especially since neither race expects a fair trial, but treats the courts as instruments for racial solidarity and revenge.
And do you step in along the line and say, "No, wait a minute! Your extrajudicial revenge killing was wrong and should be excused by nullification...but mine wasn't and shouldn't!" The answer becomes, "Says who?" (Or, "Says who, white man?")
Right. The function of the jury nullificiation is to bring it all back again within the realm of the law: the idea is that, the jury having endorsed the idea that a father need not endure having his daughter murdered, we might return to the balance that the law could not defend.
ReplyDeleteBut if we aren't even there -- if the idea is that we must defend 'our interest' regardless of the law -- then there is no law to defend. We are already past the point at which the law can do us any good. All it can do is give you certainty that you have not done to others what they do to you, regularly and well.
That may be worth something, but it is not justice. Truth being what it is, I don't care if the jury nullifies the verdict against the father or not: it's ideal, because it gives the form of law another chance. But if it does not happen, because racial feelings are too strong, then we are already at the point of war and pas the point of law. Our failure to recognize that may be worthwhile, if it gives us a second chance at the good you describe from the law; but if it does not, well, speaking the truth is always a good in itself.
[T]he idea is that, the jury having endorsed the idea that a father need not endure having his daughter murdered, we might return to the balance that the law could not defend. But if we aren't even there -- if the idea is that we must defend 'our interest' regardless of the law -- then there is no law to defend.
ReplyDeleteBut jury nullification is the fast track to getting to that evil place - and to the competing fascisms you were worrying about not so long ago.
If the link I provided above is correct - and the O.J. verdict was a kind of visceral response to the Rodney King acquittals...don't forget, those acquittals were widely seen as race-based jury nullification in the opposite direction. The sooner the tit-for-tat stops, the less likely we are to abandon the law completely.
You want to take it one stage further (Nicole Brown's family does the deed and is let go by a sympathetic jury), but maybe not two steps further (black mob kills Nicole Brown's father and is let go by a sympathetic jury), or three steps further...or into the territory where there really is no law anymore.
We had that in Atlanta, too: I was doing an internship at the Stone Mountain DA's office at about that time. They couldn't convict anyone for anything, for months, after the Rodney King verdict.
ReplyDeleteI have said before, though, that I thought that was a valuable thing. It demonstrated that -- for the black community, which is not a negligible part of most Southern cities -- the state had lost its legitimacy. It was a kind of rebellion against a state that was no longer seen as worthy of support.
And, eventually, that passed. It passed in part because, over time, people began to see the harm to the community of letting criminals go free: in other words, they began to remember what it was that was valuable about the state to begin with. But, also, the state's behavior changed: it was more careful about what kinds of charges it brought, and the quality of its evidence.
Finally I see these things as valid and valuable. The legitimacy of the state and its law is a matter of constant negotiation. If it's worthy, then it will enjoy support. If it isn't, then it will not. If it loses support, then the road back is one of being extra careful to do the right thing and avoid the wrong things. You can't ask for more than that; as a simple fact of human nature, the law enjoys as much support as it has recently deserved.
You can't ask for more than that; as a simple fact of human nature, the law enjoys as much support as it has recently deserved.
ReplyDeleteHere's a question, though - do the misdeeds of juries redound upon the law itself? I mean, if the legal standards and the standards are right, and the judges are playing fair, and the jury ought to have the power it has in that case - but misuses that power - does the law deserve less respect?
(In the minds of some it will, especially if there's a racial issue - as people will imagine some overarching "establishment" that includes the jurors as well as the legislators. But I'm asking, should it?)
I think that the answer has to be "no" - and to accept the opposite view is to say that juries should feel themselves under pressure to make popular decisions -- which can happen but which is a very bad idea.
Jury nullification has always struck me as the counterpart to the Presidential (or governor's) pardon. It's a mechanism for making an exception to the rules, only instead of being exercised by the most powerful man in the land -- of old it would have been the king -- it is in the hands of ordinary people. These ordinary people aren't accountable for how they use it, though, in the way that a governor or a President can be turned out of office; but on the other hand, it takes a large number of people rather than the decision of a single man.
ReplyDeleteAs such, and just like the pardon, it has a proper use and an improper one. I see it as very much part of the system of laws: no healthy system of rules governing human behavior can afford to be applied without exception. Nevertheless, it can be improperly applied.
Does that redound on the law? I would say it must, because it's a critical part of the system of law. If a jury does something improper, that's one thing, but if a series of juries does something improper -- each one composed of different people -- then there is a basic flaw in the society that needs to be addressed. There's some reason why the rules aren't acceptable to the people, and that's a big problem for the law in a nation that is supposed to be based on consent of the governed.