Speaking of the Free Press....

 ...they have a profile of Harmeet Dhillon, the forthright and effective DOJ Civil Rights Division director. 

“I have sued numerous hospitals and medical institutions for butchering young girls under the guise of a lie, a Mengele-like lie that you can change your sex,” she told me, referring to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who experimented on his patients at Auschwitz. “You cannot change your sex. That’s a lie,” she said. “Selling children that lie harms thousands of American children and families forever. So we’re making it difficult for them to do that.”

Those are uncompromising words. But Dhillon speaks them with barely perceptible emotion. “The strength of Harmeet is that she has a calm fearlessness about her,” friend and right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza told me. “She doesn’t come across as a wild woman. She has a sobriety about her, but she is hardcore. That sobriety is tactically directed at achieving results. You take a ferocious point of view, but it’s presented in a decorous legalese.”

Since Dhillon was confirmed in April, around half of the career attorneys in her office have resigned. Welch put the number at 368 in his July 23 memo. At a Senate oversight hearing at the end of that month, Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, was nearly apoplectic. “There’s been a mass exodus from the Civil Rights Department,” he said. “It is just a shell of what it used to be; they’re being canceled; they’re being canceled, by you, by the department.”

Under the old rules of Washington, a tongue-lashing like that from a senator—even from the opposing party—would be an ominous warning.

Dhillon doesn’t see it that way. When I asked for her reaction to the mass resignations, she said, “Great. Excellent.”

Indeed! Seeing a part of the Federal Government eviscerated is usually good news, but most especially when it is a part that focuses the power of the government against American citizens and institutions for what are essentially political reasons. She's still doing plenty of that, probably more than I'd like; but a great deal less, and in an environment that is a great deal less welcoming to people who feel like it is their calling to be moral Crusaders against their own country.

Free Speech is even (especially) for Offensive Speech

You have to stand up for offensive speech because that's always where the attempts to restrict free speech begin. Nobody objects to grandma posting about the church service this weekend at first. They object to the prickly jerk who says things that rightly ruffle feathers. They get agreement to go after him, to shut him down, and then they start to move the window. Eventually, grandma gets busted because her post about the church service is offensive to atheists or Muslims or whoever is willing to claim to be offended by it.

So this ex-cop is probably a jerk, and his speech acts are offensive. That's why we have to stand up for his rights.

A Confession

Matt Taibbi of the Free Press writes:

I apologize for Racket readers for my recent absence. I had an accident at the end of the last week, taking a fall after losing keys and trying to break into my own house. I was unconscious for a few minutes. Apparently upon waking I knew my date of birth and name, but not the current President (!). EMTs and a nearby hospital took good care of me... 

My lesson from this week: if you’re older and have kids, act like it. Beware of thoughts like, “When I was 22 I could make this jump without a problem.” You’re not 22, you’re one of earth’s most dangerous animals, middle-aged and delusional. 

I have a Strongman competition coming up on Saturday, which I have intended to be my last one and after when I have intended to retire. The run-up to it has gone so well, though, I keep finding myself thinking: "You know, maybe I shouldn't retire from the sport after all..." 

Perhaps I need a different sport. We're all getting older. 

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.12

Book VIII continues exploring the similarities and differences of friendship from other social relationships.  

Every form of friendship, then, involves association, as has been said. One might, however, mark off from the rest both the friendship of kindred and that of comrades. Those of fellow-citizens, fellow-tribesmen, fellow-voyagers, and the like are more like mere friendships of association; for they seem to rest on a sort of compact. With them we might class the friendship of host and guest. The friendship of kinsmen itself, while it seems to be of many kinds, appears to depend in every case on parental friendship; for parents love their children as being a part of themselves, and children their parents as being something originating from them.

This is also the division between the 'friendship' that constitutes political friendship and the natural authority of the family, as we were just discussing in VIII.11. This is in other words a basic distinction in human relationships: it is the reason that Aristotle considers man a political animal, as he puts it in the Politics I.2ff, i.e. that human beings have to extend their relationships beyond these natural family ties and form compacts that allow non-family members to trust that they will be fairly treated. 

How could such a compact be enforced? The traditional solution has been to set up a state according to one of the three types of constitutions that Aristotle has been discussing. Is it possible to do so without a state? Yes, apparently: the medieval Íslendingar did so with significant success for a time. However, the occasions have been rare and have not tended to survive without the kind of isolation that Iceland enjoyed at the time. 

Now (1) parents know their offspring better than there children know that they are their children, and (2) the originator feels his offspring to be his own more than the offspring do their begetter; for the product belongs to the producer (e.g. a tooth or hair or anything else to him whose it is), but the producer does not belong to the product, or belongs in a less degree.

One might see the point better with an acorn than with a tooth or a hair; the tooth or the hair is arguably a constituent part of the organism that generated it, and the good of the organism is the purpose of the tooth (or the hair). The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, but it is from the start both a product of its elder -- we as observers could tell that the older oak and the younger one were related, as well as which was the elder and which was the younger. Yet from the beginning the younger oak has its own existence and purpose, its own life-cycle: and it is to some degree in competition with the parent for sunlight and resources from the beginning. (There is some evidence now that trees share, however, especially with their own but also with their analogs to friends, with fungal networks as a kind of necessary interlocutor.)

And (3) the length of time produces the same result; parents love their children as soon as these are born, but children love their parents only after time has elapsed and they have acquired understanding or the power of discrimination by the senses. From these considerations it is also plain why mothers love more than fathers do. 

Parents, then, love their children as themselves (for their issue are by virtue of their separate existence a sort of other selves), while children love their parents as being born of them, and brothers love each other as being born of the same parents; for their identity with them makes them identical with each other (which is the reason why people talk of 'the same blood', 'the same stock', and so on).

This is the first use of the concept of 'another self.' That will become important later, but it is worth noticing that it originates as an idea in the text in the context of the love a parent has for their own scion. 

They are, therefore, in a sense the same thing, though in separate individuals. Two things that contribute greatly to friendship are a common upbringing and similarity of age; for 'two of an age take to each other', and people brought up together tend to be comrades; whence the friendship of brothers is akin to that of comrades. And cousins and other kinsmen are bound up together by derivation from brothers, viz. by being derived from the same parents. They come to be closer together or farther apart by virtue of the nearness or distance of the original ancestor.

Commonality of age remains one of the largest divisions in American society, if anything only increased by the technological change of the era. People from my generation remember a time without smart-phones or the internet or computers, a time when we'd be turned out in the morning by our parents and expected to survive unsupervised until dinner. That is unknown to the youth of today, or even the generation immediately before them, and the results have created a division between us: they literally cannot imagine the world I remember from my youth. For those of a generation older than me, the effect is even greater. 

The friendship of children to parents, and of men to gods, is a relation to them as to something good and superior; for they have conferred the greatest benefits, since they are the causes of their being and of their nourishment, and of their education from their birth; and this kind of friendship possesses pleasantness and utility also, more than that of strangers, inasmuch as their life is lived more in common.

The kinship between parents and gods is one contemporary psychology has made much of, and consequently our literature: in Fight Club the imaginary version of Tyler Durden makes the point explicitly that 'our fathers were our models for God.' It may be true to some degree: I have sometimes thought that the unshakeable quality of my faith was built on the fact that I had a good father who was always there if I really needed him, but willing to trust me to go free about my business when I didn't call on him. Aristotle isn't making the psychological point, neither Freudian nor Jungian: he means gods, which really exist out there, and have the same relationship by extension that a parent does to children.

The friendship of brothers has the characteristics found in that of comrades (and especially when these are good), and in general between people who are like each other, inasmuch as they belong more to each other and start with a love for each other from their very birth, and inasmuch as those born of the same parents and brought up together and similarly educated are more akin in character; and the test of time has been applied most fully and convincingly in their case. Between other kinsmen friendly relations are found in due proportion.

Aristotle has made that point several times now: the types of constitutions that seem plausible to us seem to him to derive from these different family relations.  

Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples-even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more necessary than the city, and reproduction is more common to man with the animals. With the other animals the union extends only to this point, but human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together.

Another point underemphasized by our contemporaries: Aristotle not only expects that husband and wife will be friends, he regards the friendship of man and wife as even a more basic feature of human nature than the formation of cities. Given that 'civilization' in the West derives from the formation of cities (not in China, where it linguistically points to the formation of a system of writing), Aristotle is saying that the friendship of man and wife is more natural to humanity than civilization itself. 

How man and wife and in general friend and friend ought mutually to behave seems to be the same question as how it is just for them to behave; for a man does not seem to have the same duties to a friend, a stranger, a comrade, and a schoolfellow.

Here we get another return to the analogy between justice and friendship, which is as we've noted strange given that the sorts of equality that are appropriate to both are quite different. Likewise, justice was meant to be 'fairness' and 'lawfulness,' where 'fairness' pointed to proportionate equality and the law pointed to things that required virtuous behavior from each other. Mostly we don't regulate our friendships by law (although we do our marriages, to some degree at least). That seems to leave fairness: but the equalities aren't the same, so the kind of fairness required isn't the same either. 

A Glorious Time of Year

Some more photos for you, since the beauty won't last and ought to be enjoyed while it can.

Looking Glass Rock, looking south from the Blue Ridge Parkway over Cherry Gap.

The distant white over the saddle in the second-most distant ridge is Asheville. Looking north from the Parkway near the Graveyard Fields.

Those are from yesterday afternoon, when I had a few moments towards sunset to get up there and look around.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.11

I ended yesterday's short reading on constitutions with a note that Book VIII is chiefly about friendship, so we need to tie the political discussion of the last few chapters back to the problem of human friendships. Aristotle starts moving in that direction in today's reading.

Each of the constitutions may be seen to involve friendship just in so far as it involves justice. The friendship between a king and his subjects depends on an excess of benefits conferred; for he confers benefits on his subjects if being a good man he cares for them with a view to their well-being, as a shepherd does for his sheep (whence Homer called Agamemnon 'shepherd of the peoples'). Such too is the friendship of a father, though this exceeds the other in the greatness of the benefits conferred; for he is responsible for the existence of his children, which is thought the greatest good, and for their nurture and upbringing.

Now this is an interesting move because we started this book by laying out the ways in which the 'equalities' of justice aren't the same as the 'equalities' of friendship. There are several of each, and they differ significantly. So now the 'friendship' involved in political communities is tied to the justice equalities -- which are, you will recall, proportionate in several different ways for the most part, arithmetical when providing rectificatory justice to the injured. These are all unlike the 'equalities' of friendship, which have to do with things like 'each giving the other the same thing (e.g. love or honor or pleasure).'

Thus we can see that political friendship is purely analogical to real friendship, even more than frienship-for-pleasure-or-utility was merely analogical to true friendship. 

These things are ascribed to ancestors as well. Further, by nature a father tends to rule over his sons, ancestors over descendants, a king over his subjects. These friendships imply superiority of one party over the other, which is why ancestors are honoured.

Two of those are more 'by nature' than the third one. As we recently discussed, the natural authority of parents over children really does come from nature: children are born helpless and need guidance as well as protection to survive ("Don't eat those berries!"). Those who brought them into the world tend to provide that guidance, and in return are due honor and respect; and if you break that law of nature by ignoring or rejecting their guidance, nature itself will punish you (as for example if you ate 'those berries' anyway). 

Ancestors, to a more extended degree, are due respect because they did the work that laid the grounds for your present prosperity (whatever it is). You look back on whatever goods you have, and you find that you have them in part because those who came before you spent their lives toiling to create some conditions of prosperity from the world that you inherited. Even bad ancestors did at least some of this, or you and your parents wouldn't have survived to exist now. The superiority mentioned here of ancestors is thus really priority in the literal sense, i.e., they came first.

Kings, however -- there's nothing natural about kings. We used to tell stories about royal lines that tried to imbue them with power and authority from God, but it's been clear for a long time that those stories were fictions. As Jefferson put it, "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god." Arrangements like kingship are artificial: indeed, all such political relationships are artifices, meaning things made by men rather than found in nature. That doesn't necessarily make them bad, but it does mean that such arrangements aren't rooted in anything like natural law.

The justice therefore that exists between persons so related is not the same on both sides but is in every case proportioned to merit; for that is true of the friendship as well. The friendship of man and wife, again, is the same that is found in an aristocracy; for it is in accordance with virtue the better gets more of what is good, and each gets what befits him; and so, too, with the justice in these relations.

This 'the better gets more of what is good' is not thought proper to marriage today. However, the same idea underlies the superior pay of commissioned officers in the military to that of NCOs, even when the NCOs might be greatly senior to the junior officers as Sergeants Major are to First Lieutenants. The notion is that the officers are better, traditionally by birth but in the United States purely by education, and thus deserve higher pay and privileges. Yet, at least in the Marine Corps, this is formally balanced by a recognition that they also have a duty of care for those under their command, such that at mess the officer may not eat until he has seen that all of his men have been fed.

We don't have to do things that way with our military, just as we don't run our marriages that way anymore. We could pay instead by proofs of virtue, for example years of honorable service or by awards and recognitions earned. Because these arrangements are artifices, we are free to arrange them differently if we think of a better way.

The friendship of brothers is like that of comrades; for they are equal and of like age, and such persons are for the most part like in their feelings and their character. Like this, too, is the friendship appropriate to timocratic government; for in such a constitution the ideal is for the citizens to be equal and fair; therefore rule is taken in turn, and on equal terms; and the friendship appropriate here will correspond.

This is meant to be the worst of the true forms of government, recall. 

But in the deviation-forms, as justice hardly exists, so too does friendship. It exists least in the worst form; in tyranny there is little or no friendship. For where there is nothing common to ruler and ruled, there is not friendship either, since there is not justice; e.g. between craftsman and tool, soul and body, master and slave; the latter in each case is benefited by that which uses it, but there is no friendship nor justice towards lifeless things. But neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua slave. For there is nothing common to the two parties; the slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave.

The transformation of a living man with all his joys and pains and experiences into a thing that can be disposed of for one's own ends is a base violation of human dignity. It is one of the apparent advances of our era over the glories of the ancient world to have understood that, though few places even today go as far to secure it as to recognize the individual right to keep and bear arms that best secures it.

Qua slave then, one cannot be friends with him. But qua man one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be friendship with him in so far as he is a man.

That was the last refuge of justice even in slavery that the Dred Scott decision rejected.

Therefore while in tyrannies friendship and justice hardly exist, in democracies they exist more fully; for where the citizens are equal they have much in common.

Indeed, quite a lot in common insofar as they are in any sense 'equal.' It's not clear which equality Aristotle is thinking of here, but it might be the equality before the law, so that all citizens are held to the same rules even when the rules are unfairly slanted to allow the majority to extract what it wants from the minority.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.10

Today we get what amounts to the nickel tour of the Politics; Aristotle gives us his basic typology of political systems in one paragraph instead of a whole book.

There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity.

"Republic" is another popular translation of that last one, with "democracy" often being given as the perverted form. A timocracy can have other qualifications for voting/citizenship than property; for example, military service could be the qualification, a la Starship Troopers. Yet in the original form it did work this way, military service being required of citizens in any case: Solon's laws actually limited the category of military service you could perform by the kind of wealth production your property could produce. 

The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant.

This is going to hold for all the systems and perversions: the true form has the empowered looking out for the good of the whole, with the perverse form following self-interest by the individual, the narrow class of oligarchs, or the majority voting itself wealth from the minority. 

 Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations; for in its case the form of constitution is but a slight deviation. These then are the changes to which constitutions are most subject; for these are the smallest and easiest transitions.

So the best true form -- monarchy, allegedly -- has the worst of all as its deviation, whereas the worst true form has the least-bad deviation. Thus, given that it is hard to keep a government from corrupting, it seems like you are hedging your bets by adopting the less-good that also is limited to the least-harmful perversions.

Following that, Aristotle makes some analogies between government and private relations.

One may find resemblances to the constitutions and, as it were, patterns of them even in households. For the association of a father with his sons bears the form of monarchy, since the father cares for his children; and this is why Homer calls Zeus 'father'; it is the ideal of monarchy to be paternal rule. But among the Persians the rule of the father is tyrannical; they use their sons as slaves. Tyrannical too is the rule of a master over slaves; for it is the advantage of the master that is brought about in it. Now this seems to be a correct form of government, but the Persian type is perverted; for the modes of rule appropriate to different relations are diverse. The association of man and wife seems to be aristocratic; for the man rules in accordance with his worth, and in those matters in which a man should rule, but the matters that befit a woman he hands over to her. If the man rules in everything the relation passes over into oligarchy; for in doing so he is not acting in accordance with their respective worth, and not ruling in virtue of his superiority. Sometimes, however, women rule, because they are heiresses; so their rule is not in virtue of excellence but due to wealth and power, as in oligarchies. The association of brothers is like timocracy; for they are equal, except in so far as they differ in age; hence if they differ much in age, the friendship is no longer of the fraternal type. Democracy is found chiefly in masterless dwellings (for here every one is on an equality), and in those in which the ruler is weak and every one has license to do as he pleases.

Since we are chiefly interested in friendship, which is based upon (one of what have turned out to be many notions of) equality, presumably a friendship should be like a democracy. Yet one might surpass the other in virtue, as we have discussed, in which case it might be like an aristocracy in an analog to the way that a marriage might be. 

Scottish Cowboy

He makes the point that lots of Scots handled cattle in the Highlands, and came to America in the Clearances in the 1700s and 1800s. They didn't have much of a horse culture, although Scotland during the War of Independence in the 1280s-1330s had a famous pony cavalry that could manage much more difficult passages than English war horses and consequently could traverse areas that the English cavalry couldn't cross or where they couldn't follow. 

Still, once they got to America the Highlanders could learn to ride if they didn't know how to do. It's an interesting project to hear what the old cowboy songs might have sounded like in a Scottish burr. 

From my Front Porch

It’s really getting nice. Tom said he wants to see Appalachia in autumn. This is the best I can do remotely. 

Challenging the National Firearms Act

The FPC is at it again, along with a host of other upstart gun rights groups.

Zeroing out the tax stamp isn’t nothing. As we and others have pointed out, eliminating the tax stamp undercuts any remaining argument that the NFA is a tax…because there is no longer a tax involved. On top of that, cans and SBRs are in common use. That means they pass the Heller test. There’s also no text, history or tradition of regulating them which means doing so doesn’t pass the Bruen test.

There's also no real gun control argument for controlling either "silencers" (which definitely don't silence, just reduce the volume of the gunshot to levels less likely to damage hearing) or short-barreled rifles (as long arms of all sorts put together constitute very little of gun crime, almost all of which is committed with handguns). All the money to be made in reducing gun crime points to addressing illegally-possessed handguns, not in point-of-sale restrictions on new guns anyway.

What "Anarchy"?

The philosophical concept I talk about occasionally has a troubled relationship with some practical difficulties that are really unrelated: they mostly have to do with failures of government rather than attempts to set up a voluntaristic system. Indeed, the word itself refers to such a failure.

1530s, "absence of government," from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader[.]"

There was no archon in most of 404 BC, but there was a government: it was imposed upon Athens by Sparta after they executed their archon Cleophon and accepted what became known as the Thirty Tyrants (including Charmides). It was not the case that there was no government, let alone that there was anything intentional going on with regard to what Athens wanted to accomplish that year: there was the collapse at the loss of a punishing war.

I was thinking of this while reading Jeffrey Carter's post this morning about Democratic leaders in places like Chicago "needing anarchy." He doesn't mean anything like anarchism, and certainly not the absence of government.

When there is no law, and there is no will to enforce the law, or there is only a selective will to enforce some laws, anarchy will reign. Totalitarians love anarchy. It’s what Lenin brought to Russia to take control. It is the playbook of Saul Alinsky. Anarchy begets totalitarianism. 

The other commonality in all this is that it seems consistent that career politicians favor anarchy. Career politicians are a bane on the existence of our country. I had a conversation with a VC in SF about this once. His research backed it up. Term limits and getting people out of government and into the private sector are a great thing for freedom...

Career politicians are terrible in any form in any party. They hold and concentrate power. Our government is structured to be decentralized. Career politicians are terrible if they are fully developed... Terrible if they are young and using various offices as stepping stones to a higher office, like they are climbing some corporate ladder....

Every single thing a Democratic politician does today is designed to concentrate power, eliminate competition, and create anarchy so they can grab more power and continue to centralize.  

Emphasis added. So that kind of 'anarchy' is built around not only the existence of government, but the stability and long-term continuance of the same government by the same governors. It's not about an absence of powerful leaders, but the concentration of power among existing leaders. It's a kind of failure of government, but not one that leads to the absence of government, the kind that leads to the corruption of government.

Lenin obviously wasn't trying to usher in any sort of anarchism either; in fact, the anarchists who were deported by the US to Russia, as well as the ones native to Russia, ended up in gulags and graveyards. The last thing the Soviets wanted was a leaderless society without the possibility of coercive force being deployed by the government against citizens. If what he is talking about 'begats totalitarianism,' it's increased and unceasing government rather than the absence of rulers.

When I see people on the right talking this way -- people who do want things like term limits and to "get people out of government and into the private sector" or to oppose "concentrated power" -- I wonder what they're intending by the term. Obviously Chicago is not an anarchy: it has a government that is deeply embedded, impenetrable to outsiders not approved by its power structurer, and consequently wickedly corrupt. Getting rid of the Chicago archons would be a significant step forward.

Camerata Nordia Octet

Most likely none of you are planning to be in Athens, Georgia this Wednesday; but if you are, Sweden's leading chamber orchestra will be appearing at the University's Hodgson Concert Hall that evening. While on the subject, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will be performing that greatest of symphonies, Beethoven's No. 9, on 14 November of this year.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.9

We continue to discuss friendship and community. I've mentioned several times that Aristotle conceives of politics as a sort-of friendship, and therefore the relationships between fellow citizens as being friendly. Today he's going to talk about how this sort of 'friendship' invokes justice, which is the 'virtue of the others' governing how we treat other people. 

Friendship and justice seem, as we have said at the outset of our discussion, to be concerned with the same objects and exhibited between the same persons. For in every community there is thought to be some form of justice, and friendship too; at least men address as friends their fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers, and so too those associated with them in any other kind of community.

Indeed, comrade. 

(This translation actually uses 'comrade' for 'friend' in parts of this section, which I will replace to avoid the contemporary connotation of a Communist fellow-subject).

And the extent of their association is the extent of their friendship, as it is the extent to which justice exists between them. And the proverb 'what friends have is common property' expresses the truth; for friendship depends on community. Now brothers and [friends] have all things in common, but the others to whom we have referred have definite things in common-some more things, others fewer; for of friendships, too, some are more and others less truly friendships.

For the most part we in America do not practice this commonality of property except in the sort-of friendship we refer to as marriage (and even then not in every state). Even in marriage we usually maintain a sense that certain things belong to me rather than to us. One would be aggrieved if one's spouse sold one of those treasured possessions that belonged to me, even though legally they might be permitted to do so. That would seem like a betrayal.

We can see it even more clearly in the case of a friend to whom one had granted a durable general power of attorney. That was done because it was intended to be used for one's good, as for example because one was long absent on a military deployment abroad, or because of the possibility of medical issues disabling one's ability to make informed decisions for a while. If it were instead used to enrich the other at one's expense, it would seem like a violation even though such a usage is perfectly legal under the terms of the arrangement. 

This gets to the point Aristotle is making about some relationships being 'more, and others less, than true friendships.' A very good marriage is one in which you can trust your spouse with both community property laws or a durable general power of attorney and know they will loyally defend your interests. A very good friend, a true friend, would be trustworthy to that degree.

And the claims of justice differ too; the duties of parents to children, and those of brothers to each other are not the same, nor those of [friends] and those of fellow-citizens, and so, too, with the other kinds of friendship. There is a difference, therefore, also between the acts that are unjust towards each of these classes of associates, and the injustice increases by being exhibited towards those who are friends in a fuller sense; e.g. it is a more terrible thing to defraud a [friend] than a fellow-citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than any one else. And the demands of justice also seem to increase with the intensity of the friendship, which implies that friendship and justice exist between the same persons and have an equal extension.

This is a common sense remark rather than a logical deduction, which I mean in the best sense of the term "common sense." I think almost any human being at any time in history would agree with that remark, which arises from our first nature and the consequent natural authority of family. It is not always the actual father who performs the role of protecting and providing for you when you are helpless as a baby and a child, but it is always someone: and that someone you owe a moral debt to that isn't due to strangers. Even if they did it poorly, you owe something to them for what they did for you when you needed them. Friendship is akin to that in that we each end up giving of ourselves and ours to help our friends, and they for us; this creates a special debt between us and our true friends by which we are glad to be mutually bound because it sacralizes our relationship. 

However! Much of Modern and postmodern ethics would deny this basic, humane point. Probably Kant himself would not have, but Kantians often do: they reason from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that morality depends on universalizable maxims that can be framed as universal laws. Universal means that it doesn't matter if it's your father or your brother or a stranger; you should behave the same way towards everyone. The absurdity of that is quickly evident, but take it with the commentary above: would you trust just anyone with a durable general power of attorney over you? Only perhaps the truest Communist would even consider that possibility, and such a person would quickly find themselves in the place that Communists generally end up: that is, stripped of everything and starving. 

Utilitarianism, the other major school of modern ethics besides deontology, likewise holds that what we are supposed to be doing is a kind of universal calculation of pleasure/pain -- and not for ourselves or our fathers or brothers or friends, but for all of humanity equally. If it increases pleasure for most, the one may be sacrificed to a greater or lesser degree; indeed, to the greatest degree if the increase is great enough. This universalizing impulse ends up sacrificing as well all these basic human connections. "Sorry, comrade, but the communal utility demands that we give you up; those organs could benefit all of them more than you." 

This universalizing tendency in modern ethics is quite dangerous, even though it is well-intentioned: its advocates think that it will make our ethical decisions more rational, and less given to special-pleading for those we care about more than others. One can judge a tree by its fruits, however; no matter how lovely the tree, certain trees are poisonous. The common sense of humanity across millennia and many successful civilizations is more reliable here.

Now all forms of community are like parts of the political community; for men journey together with a view to some particular advantage, and to provide something that they need for the purposes of life; and it is for the sake of advantage that the political community too seems both to have come together originally and to endure, for this is what legislators aim at, and they call just that which is to the common advantage. Now the other communities aim at advantage bit by bit, e.g. sailors at what is advantageous on a voyage with a view to making money or something of the kind, fellow-soldiers at what is advantageous in war, whether it is wealth or victory or the taking of a city that they seek, and members of tribes and demes act similarly...

For some reason the translator chose to give the Greek word here rather than to translate it; the word is the root of "democracy," and refers to 'a people' in the sense of one that forms a political community rather than, say, as a genetic origin. 

...(Some communities seem to arise for the sake or pleasure, viz. religious guilds and social clubs; for these exist respectively for the sake of offering sacrifice and of companionship. But all these seem to fall under the political community; for it aims not at present advantage but at what is advantageous for life as a whole)...

This is in line with Aristotle's conclusion that the political community, and not the family, is the most natural form of human organization because it is only in a political community that the highest forms of human life (e.g. the pursuit of philosophy) are attainable. This discussion is in Politics I, continuing to Politics II.

...offering sacrifices and arranging gatherings for the purpose, and assigning honours to the gods, and providing pleasant relaxations for themselves. For the ancient sacrifices and gatherings seem to take place after the harvest as a sort of first-fruits, because it was at these seasons that people had most leisure. All the communities, then, seem to be parts of the political community; and the particular kinds friendship will correspond to the particular kinds of community.

Greek, Roman, and Hebrew religions of the ancient period had a first-fruits festival; likely he is correct that it is common in agricultural societies (probably not, for the obvious reason, in pastoral ones). It is retained today also in some of the older forms of Christianity, such as at the Catholic feast of Lammas, named for the Old English word hlafmæsse.

In Politics III.9, Aristotle distinguishes a state by the existence of such festivals and brotherhoods, which form a friendship to go along with the mere living-together: "These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together."

Yet we are left with the fact that, however similar friendship and politics might ideally be, the justice conditions are quite different between them. "Equality," as we have discussed at length, means something very different in a friendship from what it did in Book V's long consideration of justice. It may be that it is best if we have a society of family connections, brotherhoods, common festivals and amusements; that may indeed be a much better form of human life than a modern city full of strangers thrown together from different parts of the world, of different religions and worldviews, brought together only by commerce and the pursuit of wealth. It is not, however, the same thing as friendship.

Some Autumnal Riding Interspersed with Hiking

The Devil's Courthouse in Autumnal colors.

View of the Middle Prong Wilderness from Black Balsam Knob.

Above Caney Fork, looking south into the fork.

Above Caney Fork, looking north.

Overlooking the Woodfin Cascades, except that it is currently hidden by foliage.

By the cascades overlook I met an older couple with their little dog Piper, the latter of whom was a Scottish terrier. For some reason they wanted me to hold her so they could take pictures of me with her. The dog was very friendly, so the people probably weren't so bad. 

Yesterday at the campground I met a guy who was very excited by the motorcycle camping rig I'd put together. He turned out to be a retired game warden from Georgia, not a bike rider himself but one who'd always admired it. He told me a bit about his career. "Whenever we had problem bears," he said, "we'd catch 'em and turn 'em loose over the river in North Carolina." That'd be the Hiwasee River. A bear could swim it if he wanted to do, but North Carolina's a good place for bears. 

Today was my birthday. The gift I was most surprised and pleased by was a penny I found by my rear tire as I was finishing up a rest stop near Licklog Gap. It’s always nice to know that Lady Luck is thinking of you. 

Early Medieval Math Problems

Medievalists.net have a short collection of ten math problems by Alcuin of York (who I assume needs no introduction here, but is introduced there anyway by his full name). Many of you will find them amusing, some of you because you like math, some because you like history, and some because they are inherently interesting. 

UPDATE: I worked through these last night, and my conclusion is that the early Medievals probably had a form of arithmetic similar to the Greek love for proportions. It's possible to do these problems using algebra, but it's clunky by comparison; we wouldn't even think of problems like "if only there were twice as many, plus half of half as many, plus half of that, plus two: then we'd have a hundred!" The fact that the problems take that form implies training in recognition of ratios, and probably an easy familiarity with common ones. Proposition 4, for example, seems easy for those who are used to recognizing that this is equivalent to the ratio of 4 to 5.

Good Boy

An interesting account of a duel in the Jacob Burns Law Library:

In 1400, the last trial by combat (judicial duel) of note was fought in France. This contest pitted man against dog. The dog’s master, Montdidier, had been murdered by an ill-meaning friend, the Chevalier Maquer. Maquer buried the body and departed. The dog, masterless and hungry, journeyed to Paris and sought out the Chevalier Ardilliers, a friend of his master Montdidier, and led him back to his master’s grave. This loyal dog scratched the dirt covering the grave until Ardilliers dug up the corpse of Montdidier. Later the dog spied Maquer, his master’s killer, and attacked him viciously. The dog renewed his attacks at each encounter with Maquer, soon arousing suspicion since heretofore his nature had been gentle. Friends recalled that Maquer had shown hostility to Montdidier, and reported this situation to the king. The king ordered trial by combat between Maquer and the dog to uncover Maquer’s guilt or innocence.

At combat, Maquer was unable to contain the frenzied attack of the dog, who focused on Maquer’s throat. Maquer, undone by the dog’s fervor and tenacity, confessed to his crime and was duly hanged. Alas, we have no word regarding the fate of Montdidier’s faithful greyhound, nor even his name.

Wikipedia says the story is related in a letter from much later, so quite possibly not true. But it's a good story.

Birthday Weekend Camping

Just a man and his faithful steed this weekend. 

US 64 through the forest near Winding Stair Gap

Nantahala National Forest above Franklin

Walhalla

Mike G mentioned in the comments to the Helen post that Walhalla's Oktoberfest was this weekend. It's actually not: it's next weekend, the same weekend as my Strongman competition. I can't promise I'll make it, though I was planning to go if it had been tomorrow morning. As the name suggests, Walhalla is a real German town by heritage. 

There's an outside chance I'll make it on Sunday the 19th, but no promises. 

A Little Vigorous Discussion

A man from Atlanta -- the report says "Georgia man," but let's be clear, he's an Atlanta man -- came up here to enjoy a little time on the beautiful Tuckasegee river. He was, however, incensed to discover that a paddle shop owner was a Trump supporter.

A Georgia man accused of tearing down a pro-Trump banner at a rafting business before exchanging gunfire with the business owner has been extradited to Swain County.

Benjamin Michael Campbell, of Atlanta, is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury, discharging a firearm within an enclosure to incite fear, and willful and wanton injury to personal property.... Mark Thomas, the owner of the Paddle Inn Rafting Company, told News 13 he was watching his CCTV cameras when he saw the driver of a Jeep slam on the brakes, exit the vehicle, walk across the road, and tear down a Donald Trump banner. Thomas said he took his rifle to his porch and fired two shots into the air. In response, he said, the man in the Jeep fired back several rounds from the road.

It might be an interesting trial, if the guy doesn't plea to a lesser version of the charges (which is how almost all 'trials' end these days). He was fired upon first, after all. A good lawyer might argue that he was in legitimate fear of his life from deadly force as he didn't realize that the rifle was pointed 'in the air.' 

An appropriate aside: 'shooting in the air' or 'warning shots' are generally unwise practices that all of my dear readers should avoid. Either lethal force is rational and appropriate, in which case it should be used without warning or apology, or it is not. If it is not, gunfire should be avoided; even pointing a gun at someone when lethal force is not authorized can result in 'brandishing' charges or, as in this case, return fire.

When I first saw this headline I assumed the guy was at least a customer of the paddle shop who took exception to the owner's politics, perhaps after a discussion turning into an argument. But no, he was just some guy traveling down the highway when he saw a Trump flag and decided he should tear into the place and rip it down. 

To get here from Atlanta he would have had to have passed at least two and probably three of the local flagpole-mounted Confederate flags that are prominently displayed on the highways. That might have been an early indication of the 'diversity of opinion' in the area he was visiting; I'm not sure why the Trump flag was the bridge-too-far for him.

Unamerican Foolishness in Virginia

A lot of ink has been spilled on the Jay Jones controversy in Virginia, where a would-be Attorney General wished his political opponents' wife should have her children killed and die in her arms in order to 'create movement on policy' in favor of gun control. I'm not going to add to the weight of that ink, which focuses on the evilness of the wish or the character of the man, or of the fundamental disconnect between rhetorically opposing 'gun violence' or 'political violence' while endorsing this hope.

What I want to say, however, is how un-American this thinking is. 

America has a mythology, as all civilizations worth the name do. The American mythology has considered the question of "What should an American do if his loved ones are murdered by violent people?" many, many times. We have a vast literature on the subject, both in the form of novels and television shows, and especially in the form of the Western movie. 

What never happens in any of these stories is that the American is chastened by being subjected to violence, becomes a pacifist, and yields up all means of self-defense while crawling to Authority to beg for protection.

You know what happens? Of course you do.

Who are these people? Not any one of us.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.8

We are about halfway through Book VIII, after which there are two more books. Presumably this is good for you, those of who who are reading through all of it. Dad29 once told me that sitting through the bad church music that has become commonplace is a way of reducing your time in Purgatory, front-loading it as it were; perhaps this is something similar, except hopefully by increasing one's understanding of and ability to actualize virtue.

Most people seem, owing to ambition, to wish to be loved rather than to love; which is why most men love flattery; for the flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, or pretends to be such and to love more than he is loved... 

Most of us would say that a flatterer is not a true friend, rather than a 'friend in an inferior position'; the dishonesty involved sets the relationship on different ground than any sort of real friendship.  

...and being loved seems to be akin to being honoured, and this is what most people aim at. But it seems to be not for its own sake that people choose honour, but incidentally. For most people enjoy being honoured by those in positions of authority because of their hopes (for they think that if they want anything they will get it from them; and therefore they delight in honour as a token of favour to come); while those who desire honour from good men, and men who know, are aiming at confirming their own opinion of themselves; they delight in honour, therefore, because they believe in their own goodness on the strength of the judgement of those who speak about them. In being loved, on the other hand, people delight for its own sake; whence it would seem to be better [to be loved] than being honoured, and friendship to be desirable in itself.

Here we see again the now-familiar distinction between 'what is worthy of honor' and 'concern with being honored.' The former is a reliable guide to best action (IV.3-4), as it allows us to identify what is exceedingly virtuous, and it is virtue that is worthy of honor. The latter was dismissed from the outset of the EN (I.5) as a proper end for ethics, as it surrenders one's own judgment about what is right and places the end of one's own ethics in the hands of others. This is unworthy. 

But [the best thing] seems to lie in loving rather than in being loved, as is indicated by the delight mothers take in loving; for some mothers hand over their children to be brought up, and so long as they know their fate they love them and do not seek to be loved in return (if they cannot have both), but seem to be satisfied if they see them prospering; and they themselves love their children even if these owing to their ignorance give them nothing of a mother's due. Now since friendship depends more on loving, and it is those who love their friends that are praised, loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures.

It is noteworthy that Aristotle resorts to 'a mother's love' as the proof of the superiority of loving rather than receiving love. The purity of this, when it occurs, has been universally moving across the millennia. We have in our own era serious reasons to doubt that a mother's love is something that is reliable or even fully natural; the frequency of abortion in our culture suggests that many mothers don't love their children, or even want them enough to endure the difficulties of parenthood. Yet the example remains moving when it does occur, for when it does it is a kind of love that is especially pure and selfless. 

It is in this way [i.e. giving love to the other] more than any other that even unequals can be friends; they can be equalized. Now equality and likeness are friendship, and especially the likeness of those who are like in virtue; for being steadfast in themselves they hold fast to each other, and neither ask nor give base services, but (one may say) even prevent them; for it is characteristic of good men neither to go wrong themselves nor to let their friends do so. But wicked men have no steadfastness (for they do not remain even like to themselves), but become friends for a short time because they delight in each other's wickedness.

The claim that the wicked do not have steadfastness because they don't remain 'like to themselves' is striking. Virtue and vice are both habits that become habitual states of character; thus, we ought to expect the wicked (being vicious) to have a habitual character that is in its way just as steadfast a set of habits as the virtuous. What distinguishes the virtuous from the vicious isn't the having of habits, but the goodness of the habits -- a goodness that is empirically testable against their ability to reliably create good outcomes in the world (I.3). 

What I do think of when I reflect on this is the regret that the wicked sometimes suffer, in what the Pulp Fiction assassin Jules refers to as "a moment of clarity." The alcoholic has periods of hangover in which he may swear he will never drink again, knowing that of course he will; the gambler may sob piteously at the knowledge that he has lost everything he ever worked for, but will be gambling again when he has scraped up a new stake. The virtuous rarely has these moments of regret for his character -- rarely, I say, because as Aristotle points out in I.3 sometimes even courage leads to death, and even riches can lead to ruin. Chance and fortune play a role, so that even the virtues are not fully proof against harm; but their reliability means that regret for one's character will come up less often. Even when a brave man dies of his courage, those who mourn him can feel pride in having known a man of such character.

Friends who are useful or pleasant last longer; i.e. as long as they provide each other with enjoyments or advantages. Friendship for utility's sake seems to be that which most easily exists between contraries, e.g. between poor and rich, between ignorant and learned; for what a man actually lacks he aims at, and one gives something else in return.

Capitalism has made 'friends' of the utility model out of many men who might otherwise have despised one another; but the workman needs the wealthy man's coin, and the wealthy man comes to respect the quality of the workmanship.  In the spirit of showing analogs with the other historical traditions, this has two New Testament analogs, Lk. 10:7 and 1Tim 5:18. (There are Old Testament verses about not withholding pay from laborers too, but they do not imply friendship or a sense that the workman is worthy, just needful of the pay to survive, e.g. Deut 24:14-15 and Lev 19:13.)

But under this head, too, might bring lover and beloved, beautiful and ugly. This is why lovers sometimes seem ridiculous, when they demand to be loved as they love; if they are equally lovable their claim can perhaps be justified, but when they have nothing lovable about them it is ridiculous. Perhaps, however, contrary does not even aim at contrary by its own nature, but only incidentally, the desire being for what is intermediate; for that is what is good, e.g. it is good for the dry not to become wet but to come to the intermediate state, and similarly with the hot and in all other cases. These subjects we may dismiss; for they are indeed somewhat foreign to our inquiry.

This passage seems strange to contemporary readers, but Aristotle is talking about the sort of homoerotic love common in his day between a young man (and presumably 'beautiful'  in the manner of youth) and an older, uglier man. The older man would provide benefits such as social introduction or access to wealth or station to the younger man, taking the younger under his wing and guiding him towards greater success (and, allegedly, virtue); the younger man would provide access to himself and his beauty to the elder. Socrates and Alcibiades playfully mock this in the Symposium, for example, Socrates being notoriously (and rather proudly) ugly. 

Aristotle's criticism of homosexuality doesn't occur in the ethics; he rejects it as irrational and a lifting of pleasure over reason's capacity to see what the sexual function is actually for on biological rather than ethical grounds. His criticism makes up the root of the Western rejection of the homoerotic for centuries, though it is also reinforced by Biblical authority after Christianization. It is curious that he doesn't really take it to be an ethical concern, however, but a concern based on his understanding of science and reason: ironic, too, given that our own Supreme Court rejected all laws based on this tradition as being fundamentally lacking a rational basis. 

Some Local News from the Bondi Hearing

Apparently during the long Bondi hearing, the more scurrilous of my Senators had some things to say about my neighbors the Eastern Band of Cherokee. (That link is to a marijuana-focused newspaper, which I don't mean to suggest is objective; I'm merely citing it because it's the only place I've been able to find an extended quotation of his remarks rather than a characterization of them by the media.)

The Eastern Band put out a statement on the subject, since he didn't bother to talk to them about it.

I don't know if I agree that the Senator "knows full well" anything at all except how to line his pockets with corporate donations. His point in calling them an "island" is that they have some degree of sovereign control over their boundary lands here in Western North Carolina, where they are good neighbors and provide a welcoming place to travelers should you drop in to visit them. They even welcome bikers, sometimes.

The EBCI have decided to sell marijuana for consumption, even recreational consumption, on their own land. I've never used marijuana and can't attest to the quality of it or indeed anything about it except its popularity: to my great amusement I find tribal police are used to direct traffic at their dispensary rather than busting people for using the stuff as the police might be doing anywhere else. I like to tease the deputies I know, for whom busting people for drugs remains a major part of their day, that they'll probably soon be re-tasked in the same manner and ought to start getting used to the idea.

The EBCI are following what has become an established business model of catering to what people want; they run their casinos on money trucked in from outside themselves, and they sell marijuana mostly to people who come visiting to buy it. You can play with their system here; it seems to allow you to place an online order so that you can skip the line when you come to pick it up locally, at which time I'd imagine they check your ID if they are supposed to do so. It doesn't seem to have a delivery option at all, which Tillis might have known if he'd bothered to check (or to just ask them).

Tillis went on: "We’ve got to get it solved at the federal level. We’ve got to capture revenue,” he said. “That revenue needs to go back to federal law enforcement, and we need to have a lot more focus on what I think are unsafe and inconsistent practices across the state." With all due respect, which is none, 'capturing revenue' is his job and not hers; if he wants to raise taxes even higher, that's Congress' department. Giving that money to Federal law enforcement is almost certainly a bad use of it; he might instead do something to pay down the gigantic debts he and his ilk have consistently produced through their so-called governance. Or, better yet, he might turn his attention to cutting spending rather than finding new sources of 'revenue' for him to spend.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.7

We continue to explore equality and inequality in friendships in today's chapter.

But there is another kind of friendship, viz. that which involves an inequality between the parties, e.g. that of father to son and in general of elder to younger, that of man to wife and in general that of ruler to subject. And these friendships differ also from each other; for it is not the same that exists between parents and children and between rulers and subjects, nor is even that of father to son the same as that of son to father, nor that of husband to wife the same as that of wife to husband. For the virtue and the function of each of these is different, and so are the reasons for which they love; the love and the friendship are therefore different also.

It's commonplace today to hear feminist objections to this passage as demonstrating the inequality of men and women in Ancient Greece, which was never in doubt; what is rarely noticed is the demonstration that Aristotle expected a husband and wife to be friends. 

The society of even the Greek city-states had some noteworthy inequalities, some of which we have come to consider manifestly unjust. Chief among these is slavery. It's noteworthy that there's nothing here suggesting that a slave and his master should be friends; there's nothing to suggest that a wife should be friends with the female slaves who kept her house. All the relations that are designated here are ones that Aristotle would have considered not to be shameful relationships to be in: everyone is a child first and a parent, if at all, only later; most citizens of this era are never rulers, only subjects. The inclusion of husband and wife in these honorable relationships, relationships in which friendship is to be expected as the normal and just condition, ought to be important.

The point Aristotle is making about inequality here is the inverse of the one he was making about the equality of unequals in VIII.6. There the uenqual friends were equals 'in a way' because they were getting the same things from each other. Here, the unequals are not getting the same things from each other: a father's friendship to his son gives the son different things entirely than the father receives in return. Presumably something analogous is true of rulers and citizens, wives and husbands: the relationship is a sort of friendship, but it is not a friendship based on equality, neither of condition nor of things received. (It is also not 'proportionate equality' of the sort we considered in Book V).

Each party, then, neither gets the same from the other, nor ought to seek it; but when children render to parents what they ought to render to those who brought them into the world, and parents render what they should to their children, the friendship of such persons will be abiding and excellent.

Since Aristotle intends this remark to apply of all of these analogous cases, I have bolded the universal language. He expects that, when these kinds of people do right by each other, these friendships will be "abiding and excellent." Indeed, those who have successfully had good friendships with their parents or with their spouses might consider those relationships as some of the very best friendships of their lives. 

In all friendships implying inequality the love also should be proportional, i.e. the better should be more loved than he loves, and so should the more useful, and similarly in each of the other cases; for when the love is in proportion to the merit of the parties, then in a sense arises equality, which is certainly held to be characteristic of friendship.

Here "in a sense arises equality" merely means that each is giving the other their due, and so both are treating each other 'in the same way' by each doing so for the other. 

Equality talk can be confusing under the best of circumstances; even in our era, as it almost never actually means "equality" in a strict mathematical sense. From Aristotle's perspective, 'equality' in ethics or politics only ever means mathematical equality when dealing with restitution for crimes or harms. Yet we have inherited from the Greeks a notion that we should seek some sort of 'equality' even when the people involved are manifestly, even rightly, unequals (as for example when a citizen who became an astronaut is compared with another citizen who is a drug addict). 

This is not an inheritance shared by civilizations not influenced by Ancient Athens to the same degree; there is no 'equality' expected in Confucian civilization, for example, especially not between parents and children (that is indeed their model for why inequality is right and proper in society). There is no equality between Muslim and non-Muslim in Islamic civilization: non-Muslims may be allowed to pay a tax in order to become protectorates of the Muslims, but the non-Muslims may never be armed nor capable of self-defense against the Islamic society, and as such they are not considered dignified human beings. The Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd, better known in the West as Averroes, did inherit Plato's ideas about equality between men and women: but even he had to interpret those within the context of Islamic law, so that he could suggest that women deserved to have an 'equivalent' to a right to divorce such as their husbands have, or a equal right to participate in jihad (if they were able) in order to obtain non-Muslim slaves and to please God. For similar scholars who didn't read Plato's Republic, or weren't as convinced by it, even those 'sort-of equalities' aren't important or extant.

Aristotle is going to reinforce the point, now, that this expectation of friendship implies a closeness in condition. He uses 'equality' language again, which confuses the point he is trying to make.

But equality does not seem to take the same form in acts of justice and in friendship; for in acts of justice what is equal in the primary sense is that which is in proportion to merit, while quantitative equality is secondary, but in friendship quantitative equality is primary and proportion to merit secondary. This becomes clear if there is a great interval in respect of virtue or vice or wealth or anything else between the parties; for then they are no longer friends, and do not even expect to be so. And this is most manifest in the case of the gods; for they surpass us most decisively in all good things. But it is clear also in the case of kings; for with them, too, men who are much their inferiors do not expect to be friends; nor do men of no account expect to be friends with the best or wisest men. In such cases it is not possible to define exactly up to what point friends can remain friends; for much can be taken away and friendship remain, but when one party is removed to a great distance, as God is, the possibility of friendship ceases.

For the purpose of the question of the relations between husband and wife, then, this shows that Aristotle conceives them as being sufficiently close in virtue, vice, wealth, "or anything else" as to be fit for friendships; so too parents and children, and ordinary rulers and citizens. Kings and princes may be too far removed, as we have already discussed. They may have to seek their friendship from the gods, who are too far for us ordinary mortals. 

This is a remarkable point of dissonance with Christianity, which expects to receive and pursues friendship with God, and especially with Jesus; but I think this was also true of northern European pagan faiths, which invited the gods into their homes and sought to have an older-relation-to-younger-relation relationship of friendship; Odin is frequently claimed as an ancestor, and the Rígsþula claims that all men are descended from Heimdall. 

This is in fact the origin of the question whether friends really wish for their friends the greatest goods, e.g. that of being gods; since in that case their friends will no longer be friends to them, and therefore will not be good things for them (for friends are good things). The answer is that if we were right in saying that friend wishes good to friend for his sake, his friend must remain the sort of being he is, whatever that may be; therefore it is for him oily so long as he remains a man that he will wish the greatest goods. But perhaps not all the greatest goods; for it is for himself most of all that each man wishes what is good.

Ancient Greek religion did posit that men could become gods in a process called the apotheosis. This is another point of dissonance. Aristotle intends that discussion seriously and unironically. 

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.6

Today's chapter builds on the discussion of the previous one.

Between sour and elderly people friendship arises less readily, inasmuch as they are less good-tempered and enjoy companionship less; for these are thou to be the greatest marks of friendship productive of it. This is why, while men become friends quickly, old men do not; it is because men do not become friends with those in whom they do not delight; and similarly sour people do not quickly make friends either. 

One expects that the elderly of Aristotle's day were indeed much less "good-tempered" than currently, given the absence of any pain relief other than wine or pharmakon so primitive that there was no distinction made between 'medicine' and 'poison.' I don't think it's necessarily a comment on the elderly in general; I don't find older folk to be especially akin to sour people as a rule -- some are, and some aren't. 

But such men may bear goodwill to each other; for they wish one another well and aid one another in need; but they are hardly friends because they do not spend their days together nor delight in each other, and these are thought the greatest marks of friendship.

Certainly sour people don't seem to delight in much. The elderly may here as above be in a happier case in our generations; they are more mobile, for one thing, given the advent of cars and other sorts of mobility technology. 

One cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them, just as one cannot be in love with many people at once (for love is a sort of excess of feeling, and it is the nature of such only to be felt towards one person); and it is not easy for many people at the same time to please the same person very greatly, or perhaps even to be good in his eyes. One must, too, acquire some experience of the other person and become familiar with him, and that is very hard. But with a view to utility or pleasure it is possible that many people should please one; for many people are useful or pleasant, and these services take little time.

There are two important points being made here, one of which is more debatable than the other. True friendship is time intensive, and it's also attention intensive. You can't have many very deep friendships just because of the mutual investment that is required. 

The more debatable point is how many. Is it really possible to love only one person at a time? Not obviously given that we tend to have wives and also children, parents and extended family and a close friend or two or three as well. It can't be many for the reasons spelled out above, but it isn't obvious that he's right that 'it is the nature of such to be felt only towards one person.' He's making a close analogy between love and friendship, and clearly intends for the 'only one' to apply to love per se, but the analogy is so close -- that is, the point of disanalogy comes so very late in the comparison -- that it's not clear that love and friendship really differ here. 

Of these two kinds that which is for the sake of pleasure is the more like [true] friendship, when both parties get the same things from each other and delight in each other or in the things, as in the friendships of the young; for generosity is more found in such friendships.

Generosity and openness to it is important partly because it overcomes the inequalities that friends may find between themselves, as discussed in VIII.5. If a richer friend is very generous, and the poorer friend is very open to being treated that way without feeling indebted by it, the two can exist as functional equals in a way that would otherwise be more difficult. They can dine together more often, go on trips together, even live together (likely in our time only if they are either young enough to be roommates, or if older have come to a point in their lives in which a roommate arrangement makes sense). 

Friendship based on utility is for the commercially minded.

Indeed business relationships can be friendly without being true friendships; this is not at all uncommon, and may even be desirable. After all, we have to spend time with these people in any case; why spend time with people who don't like you? Cultivating at leas a sort of friendship is common sense.

People who are supremely happy, too, have no need of useful friends, but do need pleasant friends; for they wish to live with some one and, though they can endure for a short time what is painful, no one could put up with it continuously, nor even with the Good itself if it were painful to him; this is why they look out for friends who are pleasant. Perhaps they should look out for friends who, being pleasant, are also good, and good for them too; for so they will have all the characteristics that friends should have.

Yes, true friendship has all the good qualities.

We now begin to discuss something I warned yesterday was coming: what about friendships with, or for, those in power? 

People in positions of authority seem to have friends who fall into distinct classes; some people are useful to them and others are pleasant, but the same people are rarely both; for they seek neither those whose pleasantness is accompanied by virtue nor those whose utility is with a view to noble objects, but in their desire for pleasure they seek for ready-witted people, and their other friends they choose as being clever at doing what they are told, and these characteristics are rarely combined. Now we have said that the good man is at the same time pleasant and useful; but such a man does not become the friend of one who surpasses him in station, unless he is surpassed also in virtue; if this is not so, he does not establish equality by being proportionally exceeded in both respects. But people who surpass him in both respects are not so easy to find.

A man in authority would do well to have friends who are better than him both in power and virtue; and indeed, we can readily see how that would be beneficial to him. How it 'establishes equality' to be surpassed in both areas is not as evident. Aristotle goes on to explain what he means:

However that may be, the aforesaid friendships involve equality; for the friends get the same things from one another and wish the same things for one another, or exchange one thing for another, e.g. pleasure for utility; we have said, however, that they are both less truly friendships and less permanent.

So there is a kind of equality even given the clear inequalities: the equality of 'getting pleasure' or 'getting utility' or 'getting good' from each other, and likewise an equality of wishing these goods for each other.  

But it is from their likeness and their unlikeness to the same thing that they are thought both to be and not to be friendships. It is by their likeness to the friendship of virtue that they seem to be friendships (for one of them involves pleasure and the other utility, and these characteristics belong to the friendship of virtue as well); while it is because the friendship of virtue is proof against slander and permanent, while these quickly change (besides differing from the former in many other respects), that they appear not to be friendships; i.e. it is because of their unlikeness to the friendship of virtue.

We talked about the slander issue already. Those in authority are particularly likely to become targets of slander, as tearing down their reputations is a way for competitors to move in on their position. Having friends who have the right qualities to test them and find the goodness in the authority allows them at least someone whom they can trust, and who won't believe the lies about them. 

Yet the people in authority are unlikely to have true friends in the unrestricted sense due to the rarity of candidates. More, the greater their authority the fewer the potential friends: if the best case is someone who surpasses you in both station and virtue, those at the highest positions will find no human beings whatsoever who can surpass them in both. If they want to find a friend who surpasses them in station, they must turn to the divine (who presumably also surpasses them in virtue!). 

Just as Aristotle has argued that having friends makes people better because it brings out goodness in them that they wish to bestow on the other, so too having a dearth of friends -- or no friends -- makes one worse. Thus, as power insulates the powerful it also strips them of one of the chief factors that can improve one's character in quality and nobility. We are aware that power corrupts; it also isolates, and removes that which might have kept such a person better than he or she turns out to be without such good influences.