I gave the example of a drug addict as a case in which we might agree. A drug addict knows that what they are doing is bad for them, and may even want to stop -- but their rational understanding and their ability to be ruled by their reason don't line up. It would be better for them to be ruled, Aristotle says, by someone who will help them achieve what they themselves know is best for them.
Joseph W. noted that Aristotle also lists barbarians as suitable for slavery, but actually he is quoting a poet rather than making that argument: "as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature." You have to be careful with Aristotle's citations, because a normal way in which he argues is to put forward the common opinions of the time before spelling out his own view. It's important to be clear about when he is giving his own view, and when he is citing or raising a common or alternative view.
Sometimes he isn't clear about why he raised a point, although here the 'as if they thought' suggests he doesn't agree. Many people think that what we have of Aristotle isn't formal writings, but something like lecture notes from his students. I'm not sure I agree -- I think his style is unique, and takes some adjustment from us. We expect contemporary writers to cater to us, but one of the rewarding things about reading an early writer is learning to shape our minds in a new way.
After today's readings we'll be moving on to Book II, where he talks about a sort-of communism that some Greek thinkers, including Plato, sometimes advocated.
UPDATE:
I want to suggest that the big lesson from Book I is contained in the opening sentences.
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.It's easy for contemporary Americans to get bogged down in the writing on sex and slavery, because these are so objectionable to us; or, possibly, with the question about the proper place of earning money in one's life.
We are thinking about the question of how to persuade people to allow us to govern, or possibly about what kind of a state we'd set up if we were to start fresh. Either question really revolves around this opening point. What is the purpose of a state? We don't establish one for no reason, as a sort of thoughtless reflex, but for some good we want to achieve.
"The highest good" for Aristotle is human happiness. He defines happiness as pursuing excellence (arete, which is both "excellence" and "virtue") with all your vital powers. The purpose of the state is to create the conditions in which such pursuit is possible.
The whole purpose of the state, Aristotle is suggesting, is supporting us in our pursuit of excellence. Supporting us how? Not by giving us anything -- Aristotle clearly thinks that the household is the chief economic unit. Rather, it exists to provide physical security and -- as we will see -- with good institutions that support the kind of culture needed for a free people.
What kind of culture is that? That's the real force of Aristotle's opening remarks on what is worthy of a free man and what is servile or irksome or injurious. Here we find significant common ground between Americans we might wish to persuade and Aristotle: he is suggesting enough focus on work to be able to be independent, but not letting it take over your life. He is giving advice on careers that is similar to the advice we give: don't end up digging ditches, or doing some other physically ruinous labor.
I pointed out in the comments below an alignment between Aristotle's remarks on being trapped in the household, and the mid-century feminist critique of the life of a housewife. It's a point on which I think they agree, and rightly: keeping a well-run house is a kind of necessary condition for happiness, but it's not enough for the good life. Some sort of public engagement is necessary too, whether it is with church or charity, public service, singing in a choir, or otherwise using your vital powers within the community.
18 comments:
I'm looking at the language in part 2 --
But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say,
"It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians"
...isn't the first part of this quote Aristotle speaking in his own voice, and so implying that he thinks the barbarians are slaves to a man? (And then quoting a poet who thinks along the same lines.) And in today's reading I see a little of his theory of warfare --
And so, in one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for the art of acquisition includes hunting, an art which we ought to practice against wild beasts, and against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit; for war of such a kind is naturally just.
...implying that there are whole peoples who are "intended by nature to be governed," and can justly be conquered for that reason.
I think there's an error here -
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good...
I don't agree even with that; men often act to obtain what they want, or can live with, and justify it afterwards as "good." Savage desert tribes conquer their neighbors' fertile land, and explain that God gave it to them...
I think this is part and parcel of this way of thinking -
He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them.
A very geometric way of looking at things, but for this kind of knowledge, you're better off looking at behavior we can actually observe (or at least that got written down sometime near the time it happened) then guessing at prehistory and making myths of it.
I suggest that Aristotle knew no more than we do about how states actually got started, and maybe less. It's tempting to postulate that states got started with some kind of "design" or agreement, but I highly doubt it. I'd guess the first states owed more to chimp-like domination games -- the strong-arm man with the will to power -- than to men "establishing them with a view to some good..."
This may not matter to his later analysis.
On economics, he's simply hopeles. I suppose I can't blame him for that, living twenty centuries before Wealth of Nations - and reflecting some common worldwide prejudices that we still have with us today. (I've read, though I'm definitely subject to correction, that the Japanese historically rated the farmer higher than the merchant, and Martin Luther's most famous anti-semitic line was the desire to put into the hands of the Jews "flails, axes, mattocks, spades...and make them earn their food in the sweat of their brows...")
retail trade...is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest...
"Intended" by whom? "Nature" I suppose, but this is rubbish. Interest is perfectly natural and in reality can occur without money at all -- it represents the basic fact that future goods discount against current goods, which is pretty understandably baked into human nature. But in his day perhaps he couldn't see how much prosperity trade could bring - freeing up more leisure for the "higher" things he admires than all the slavery in his primitive world.
Bastiat wrote - in this essay as well as The Law - that socialism grew out of the French revolutionary leaders' uncritical acceptance of their classical educations, and this kind of writing certainly supports the idea.
"I suggest that Aristotle knew no more than we do about how states actually got started, and maybe less. It's tempting to postulate that states got started with some kind of "design" or agreement, but I highly doubt it. I'd guess the first states owed more to chimp-like domination games -- the strong-arm man with the will to power -- than to men "establishing them with a view to some good..."
I saw this too, but on further reflection, I think he's right. Even the chimps who band together under the alpha male are seeking a good- protection of both the alpha male, and the numbers he can control as a group, perhaps also a ready stock of breeding partners, and maybe even companionship- perhaps not in the human sense of emotional health, but in the sense of learning and practice at certain things happen more easily in social conditions. It's important to note he speaks of 'some good', not an absolute good or truth.
First of all, I just wrote a long response on the subject of "Nature" in the post below. It's worth thinking about as it applies here, too. Aristotle doesn't have an over-arching nature (although later Aristotelians often do). You're several centuries early in attributing that view to him: "Nature and Nature's God" is a modern formulation, and even the idea that the unmoved-mover implies a universal governing order in nature is much later; I would tend to give Avicenna title to that view, though it is explicated at length by Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Gersonides in that order.
What Aristotle has to say in the Metaphysics suggests that there is a universal order for intellectual things; but when he's talking about "nature," he means the nature of a thing, an individual substance or species, which is to be explained in its own terms. By the way, what he usually means by "substance" is actually closer to what we mean by "species," because it is important to his concept of what it means to be "substantial" that you have reproduction of yourself as a defining end.
So, when you ask 'Who intended money to be used in one way and not another?' the answer is not found in nature, or some divine or universal order of the world. It is to be found in the art that creates money. This is a political art -- the creation and use of money is part of political science -- and the proper end of it is determined by the art.
In that case, it isn't actually controversial to say that money wasn't intended for usury: the same polis that created the money also passed laws against using it for usury. The artist had a clearly defined purpose from which usury was excluded. That's Aristotle's point here.
...knew no more than we do about how states actually got started...
In living memory, Athens had undergone several revolutions in forms of government. While the polis had existed already, there's a way in which you can speak of it forming new political communities with very different orders.
For example, Ephialtes and Pericles had moved the state from its traditional aristocracy (one of Aristotle's forms of government, as we shall see) to a form of democracy. That democracy was later radicalized, so that decisions were actually taken by polling the citizenry. (This is how Socrates got put to death, a point that neither Plato nor Aristotle forgets.)
That democracy was responsible for the disaster of the war with, and loss to, Sparta. It was replaced by a tyranny (actually, on Aristotle's terms, an oligarchy; but we call them the Thirty Tyrants). Later, however, this group was overthrown and a form of democracy was restored.
All that was in the generation before Aristotle, when Plato and Socrates were around. In Aristotle's time the democracy was finally destroyed by the incorporation (on the battlefield) of Athens into the territories ruled by the kingdom of Macedon.
So if you mean in the anthropological sense of how states are formed where they have never existed before, that was long before Aristotle. But if you mean how states with kinds of government such as the ones he is describing come to be, he saw quite a bit of it directly or nearly.
By the way, I think Aristotle agrees with you to a certain degree that states arise from nature. But again, that's not 'overarching Nature,' it's the nature of the thing. In this case, the thing with the nature is the human species: and this is the force of his comment that man is by nature a political animal. So he would suggest that we've always had a polity of some kind; just that it may have been family-based earlier.
Re: barbarians being ruled by Greeks, I think that is chiefly a reference to the Helots, and the Spartan arguments in favor of their domination of same. As with slavery in the American South, there were numerous think-pieces floated to explain why it was proper and just, including poetry.
I don't think arguments of that form are very good, but neither does Aristotle: he's clear that capture in war is merely slavery by law, and not by nature. He might be persuaded that a whole community lacks the capacity to be ruled by reason for some cause, but he seems to be speaking of individuals when he justifies 'natural slavery.'
I think there's actually something of value in that argument, but that it must be applied carefully. For example, you and I were agreeing that some animals seem to share access to reason -- I mentioned horses. These are kinds of beings that might be a sort of 'natural slave' -- not true chattel, because as a rational being you are obligated to use your ownership of them to help them achieve the rationally best kind of life. What is that for a horse? Well, there are some clear answers about what it is not: so I think you get a functional idea about how to justify anti-cruelty laws, but also how to limit them so that they don't have us morally obligated to the happiness of the fire ants on the front lawn.
One more thing about Aristotle's general approach:
A very geometric way of looking at things...
No, surprisingly. He does use geometry heavily in various places, but his particular way of thinking about it is actually the opposite.
Aristotle explains that you can't assume that a simpler part is prior to a more elaborate part, because it just doesn't work. The point can't be prior to the line, because then a line (which is by definition extended) would be composed of things without extension. Priority has to lie where you can find the quality basic to the thing.
So a line is prior to the points that may lie on it: another way of saying that is that points get their being from the line. What they are is a potential division of the line. If you imagine an infinite line on a grid, the point at (0,2) draws its whole being from the line and the grid. It exists only as a location within those higher-order objects: thus, they are prior.
Therefore, when he is making a geometrical metaphor, it will run the other way. Consider the surface of your desk: it is a three dimensional object out of which we could divide a two-dimensional plane, although only intellectually. Thus the two-dimensional plane doesn't have as much real existence as the three dimensional object. A line on that plane has less, and a point on the line on the plane less still.
What's really real is the desk. This actually allows Aristotle to solve some pretty tricky theoretical problems the Greeks were having with geometry, but it's also just a very empirical and intuitive way of thinking. Of course the desk is real, and the plane is a kind of abstraction or theoretical division of it. Thus if we want to understand what is most real and most basic in geometry, we have to look at the highest level, not the lowest.
So, when you ask 'Who intended money to be used in one way and not another?' the answer is not found in nature, or some divine or universal order of the world. It is to be found in the art that creates money. This is a political art -- the creation and use of money is part of political science -- and the proper end of it is determined by the art.
I don't see that. Fiat money is created and issued by the state, but hard money (which is the only kind I see him talking about) isn't. Besides, he's just been referring to retail trade as getting "gain from other men" and so "unnatural" (a nonsensical judgment), with usury simply listed as the worst variety of this unnatural behavior -- implying that the censure really is from nature and not the state.
"Art" doesn't have intentions. People do. So in your reading of this passage, which people is he saying are privileged to decide that money "was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest"?
I've read your answer on Nature and thank you for it - I would never have gleaned that from this book for sure. But if I'm reading you right these "ends," "intents," and "purposes" are then metaphorical after all...by which I mean he isn't postulating a mind, either inside or outside the raindrop, that is saying it will fall for the sake of nourishing the grass...there is simply physical causation that makes it happen.
(Which is the way we often use "Nature" and "design" metaphorically to talk about evolved charateristics - "Nature gave the rattlesnake folding, hollow fangs to deliver its venom more efficiently..." - recognizing that we are not really talking about any thinking being that ever gave anything to anyone.)
So if you mean in the anthropological sense of how states are formed where they have never existed before, that was long before Aristotle. But if you mean how states with kinds of government such as the ones he is describing come to be, he saw quite a bit of it directly or nearly.
Then when we get to those parts I'll see how well he supports this central lesson you mention.
JW:
I don't see that. Fiat money is created and issued by the state, but hard money (which is the only kind I see him talking about) isn't.
It is, actually, both created and regulated by the state. The ancient Greek drachma (lit. "handful," originally metal rods rather than coins) was believed to have been invented by Pheidon, the king of Argos. They were minted at reliable weights by mints owned by the government.
This was true in Anglo-Saxon times as well: every new king would require that existing currency be handed in, so that it could be melted down and re-struck with his own image instead of the old king's. That is why we have so few Anglo-Saxon coins. This helped ensure the value of the coin by re-weighing the coins somewhat regularly, and also provided a means for the government to collect taxes (a certain amount of the gold or silver was kept as a fee).
In thinking of money as predating the state, you're following an idea put forward by John Locke in the Second Treatise on Government. Locke, though, isn't obviously right about money being pre-political, in two ways: first, it isn't clear that there ever was a "pre-political" state at all. Aristotle seems to be on more solid ground here in talking about humankind as "a political animal," which always had some sort of political organization -- even if originally the politics internal to the family, and then relations of nearby families. (That is roughly how tribal politics worked in Iraq, actually.)
Second, even if we want to talk about formal states, it may well be that barter or trade pre-dates the formation of such states, but money seems to be a product of the states. One thing that even Locke points out is that usury is impossible before some form of money comes to be, because natural goods degrade: food rots or is eaten, etc. Even well-preserved forms of natural goods like blocks of stone weather and lose value as building materials. It is only with money that usury really becomes possible, because it allows for a form of wealth that really can be 'stored up' indefinitely.
So I think it may be right to regard the ancient world's horror of usury as a conservative reaction to people doing something new, with an invention that the political systems had intended just to simplify the old function of trade or barter (or sacrifice, which was another thing that people did with their wealth).
Besides, he's just been referring to retail trade as getting "gain from other men" and so "unnatural" (a nonsensical judgment), with usury simply listed as the worst variety of this unnatural behavior -- implying that the censure really is from nature and not the state.
It's not nonsense in the sense that we can't understand what it could mean. We may disagree, in light of experience and new evidence, but I think we can see why it was a judgment that might have appeared reasonable at the time.
"Art" doesn't have intentions.
Ah, but it does have ends! Remember that even nature has ends: the species is organized with an end of reproducing itself. That end really does seem to be found in nature (again, we can talk about whether it is the gene or the animal that really has the end; but the end seems obvious enough, and a real function of the form of organization).
So the end of shoemaking is walking (or running or mountain-climbing), because it is that end to which the art is directed. If you make a shoe, you make it for a purpose.
Aristotle's claim here is that the end of the art is noble in a way that trading the good is not. After all, the artisan has knowledge, and is using his knowledge to make it possible for us to do something more effectively than we could otherwise.
The retail agent -- who is not himself a shoemaker, but who merely buys shoes and then sells them elsewhere for more money -- is like Al Bundy. A shoe salesman just isn't due the same respect due to a craftsman.
Again, that's a value judgment we don't have to share -- although, as the reference to Al Bundy shows, in a way we really do. An artist or an artisan is respected for his knowledge, for crafting a product that really serves its end. The trader of shoes is not as respected, even today.
So in your reading of this passage, which people is he saying are privileged to decide that money "was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest"?
The privilege here is the political privilege of making laws, so it would be the lawmakers. These are the same people who made the laws governing the minting and weighting of the money, so the privilege isn't really surprising. It would be different under different political systems, though: it might belong to the king, or to an aristocracy, or to a statesman in a constitutional system, who had been elected and entrusted with the office by the people.
It is, actually, both created and regulated by the state.
No. When the money is a commodity -- whether gold, silver, tobacco, or what have you -- it is never created by the state. Thus, when the Old Testament refers to "shekels" of silver, these are weights, not denominations created by a government. Per this, metal was being traded as money 4000 years before the first coins; and when goldsmiths served as bankers, their certificates might circulate as money, though the certificates weren't issued by any state. And it would be laughable to say that the goldsmiths had some kind of moral authority over how you spent the certificates simply because they issued them.
As Aristotle mentions - the state might put a mark on it to certify its weight or purity, but it wasn't the state that made people willing to accept it as a medium of exchange. When western Americans used gold dust for money, they had no need to consult any "state" to decide for them how this money was "meant" to be used; they only had to weigh the stuff and decide how much they'd trade for what.
One thing that even Locke points out is that usury is impossible before some form of money comes to be, because natural goods degrade: food rots or is eaten, etc.
Whether Locke said it or not it isn't so. Interest isn't dependent on whether goods (or services) are durable; it's dependent on the simple fact that future goods discount against current goods. The goods in which the interest is to be paid may not exist when the contract is made, and they don't have to be durable.
There does need to be some level of economic stability and sophistication if long-term contracts are going to be made at all, and money comes naturally with that, but is not required for interest to exist.
"Art" doesn't have intentions. Ah, but it does have ends! Remember that even nature has ends: the species is organized with an end of reproducing itself. That end really does seem to be found in nature (again, we can talk about whether it is the gene or the animal that really has the end; but the end seems obvious enough, and a real function of the form of organization).
These "ends" and "intentions" and "organizations" are 100% metaphorical, though. There's no mind that "wants" a given species (let alone a given individual) to survive or reproduce. There's simply a complicated set of natural processes that eliminates the ones that don't - sometimes a great many in a short time.
I think it's correct that usury is impossible before money exists- it has the added element of time of payback of the capital with a rising cost over that time. A barter for ten bushels of wheat today for ten donkey carts I'll make once I can focus on that because I know my family can eat for a few weeks is still just a barter- perhaps a bad deal for the cart maker, but how does one call it usury? The problem with interest bearing loans is that one can become stuck paying interest with low prospects of ever paying the principal. Any barter deal has a clear end, even with time involved, what is needed to fulfill payment is a known constant.
"Ah, but it does have ends! Remember that even nature has ends: the species is organized with an end of reproducing itself. That end really does seem to be found in nature (again, we can talk about whether it is the gene or the animal that really has the end; but the end seems obvious enough, and a real function of the form of organization).
So the end of shoemaking is walking (or running or mountain-climbing), because it is that end to which the art is directed. If you make a shoe, you make it for a purpose."
So we've established that nature has ends but no 'motive' or 'intent'. But then, we talk of shoes and their form of organization being aimed at a particular function- as say the folding fangs of the rattlesnake- but a shoemaker has the intent that the shoes serve a purpose, and makes the shoes thusly, but nature does not? Nature has no intent? Is this conflicting, or are there things that are simply results of other things, with no intent whatsoever? I think I'm missing something here.
It has the added element of time of payback of the capital with a rising cost over that time.
But these things do not require money. They only a require enough stability to make a long-term contract, and the understanding that if you have to wait for your payment, you get more. Even in your wheat for carts example...if you've got the wheat, and two different fellows are offering you the same deal, but one of them will deliver the carts next month and the other will deliver them next year...the second man will have to give you more carts before you'll take his deal; and, fundamentally speaking, the payment for the extra waiting is interest. You're getting back the value you gave to him, plus more, even though you're not getting it back in the same form as you would with a monetary loan. That makes it easier to see in the latter case.
On "ends" or "intents" the important distinction is between literal and metaphorical speech. When we talk normally and literally, only a thinking being has "ends" and "purposes" and so forth. Shoes are made by thinking beings for real "purposes." Snake fangs have evolved, and are "designed" only in a metaphorical sense. I don't agree that Nature has any "ends" in the literal sense.
JW:
We're going to hear more about Pheidon, actually, so hold that thought about whether the state creates money, and what right it has to regulate either money or wealth. It'll come up in the section on redistributionism.
As for usury-without-money of the type you're describing, I think of sharecroppers. I'll provide you with seed and fertilizer, and maybe the loan of some tools; in return you agree to devote a percentage of your land to growing a crop that I want (a cash crop like cotton, although if we're talking about pre-cash it could be some other sort of crop that was transportable at a profit -- wine grapes, maybe).
Of course, if I make the same deal with everyone, the supply of the cash crop goes up, the price comes down, and the one thing you might have sold to make money for your family is no longer profitable except to those (like me) trading in large volumes.
In general, we tend to regard sharecropping as a highly immoral scheme. I think it's not just because it was used by whites to exploit blacks in America, but because there's something about the scheme that seems to disadvantage the guy who does all the work, to the wild profit of the guy who did none of the work but who did issue some loans.
These "ends" and "intentions" and "organizations" are 100% metaphorical, though. There's no mind that "wants" a given species (let alone a given individual) to survive or reproduce.... I don't agree that Nature has any "ends" in the literal sense.
They're not 100% metaphorical. When we're talking about rain, insofar as we can say something like 'the end of the rain is the grass,' that's a metaphor.
But when we say that 'the end of the horse is being a horse, and hopefully making more horses,' we're talking about an end that the horse really has. If he becomes aware of something trying to kill him, he'll react to it in a way that clearly indicates his preferences, and points toward his desire to continue being a horse. If the opportunity to reproduce comes along, he will generally take it.
So there is some overlap between the ends of art and the ends of nature. At least some ends arise naturally. Arguably all of them do, actually: if one were an atheist and a materialist, there's no alternative. Because humans have ends, at least at times, these must come from nature: there's nowhere else for them to come from. In that case, it's the artificial/natural distinction that is itself the error: artificial ends are natural ends, because we (like horses) are wholly natural and material beings.
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