Tom asked me recently why I don't read contemporary philosophy; this is a good example of why. For thousands of years at least some have striven for the virtues, and those who have lived lives that we often still remember.
Edward Abbey wrote a few critical things about philosophy, although he was deeply interested in the subject. Once he wrote, "I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife."
Yet I think the most devastating thing he wrote was this: "In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy."
The idea that the virtues are impossible, because some psychology researchers in rooms somewhere found that they were difficult, is no kind of argument. It's another indoor philosophy. Go tell the Spartans.
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Ooh, ooh, let me be the first: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” GK Chesterton "What's Wrong With the World"
Also Garrison Keillor: "Philosophers are people who give advice to others who are happier than they are."
I have a link tomorrow to an essay about Continental philosophers
I asked because Grim likes anarchism, a thoroughly modern philosophy.
- Tom
The name isn’t modern; it’s Greek. An-archon; without a ruler. An-archy; a political system set up to avoid rulers.
Was it an ancient philosophy? Or did any ancient philosophers discuss it as a reasonable system?
- Tom
As I imagine you know, many scholars attribute anarchism to various ancient figures, especially the Cynics. The word appears in plays by Sophocles and Aeschylus, so it wasn't a wholly foreign concept. The ancient philosophers were in danger of being killed by authorities -- as Socrates was, and Aristotle almost was -- so they're possibly a bit circumspect about ascribing the description to themselves.
They say Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was the first to call himself an anarchist, but I'm reading scholars who mainly focus on the early modern and modern, so they may have missed an ancient source.
The next question along those lines is, what did the ancients mean by anarchy? Was it originally intended to convey a kind of political chaos and only in the 19th century turned to mean a coherent political system or philosophy? Or did it have the original meaning of an actual political system without a ruler? I don't know the answers, and I'm going to be late for church if I go find them now.
Interestingly, Proudhon served in the French parliament after 1848 and started calling himself a federalist.
Later!
- Tom
So when Plato and Aristotle use the word 'anarchy,' they mean something bad, and also something connected to democracy (which is a sort of anarchy -- i.e. there's no archon, which is what the word literally means -- especially in a direct democracy of the radical Athenian type). Plato worries about mob rule by less rational, more emotional men (who, he thinks, are the mass of men, and thus will be the most powerful class in a democracy); Aristotle thinks that it is one of the corruptions that democracy inclines to (the other being overthrown by a tyranny).
But you should read Politics III.13, in which he admits that "all these considerations appear to show that none of the principles on which men claim to rule and to hold other men in subjugation are strictly right."
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.3.three.html
There Aristotle is pondering the question of whether the best kind of men need a state, or should be entrusted with power in one. Surprisingly, he concludes against it: the genuinely virtuous are dangerous to any state, and the laws aren't fit to rule such men nor really capable of it. The genuinely virtuous might even have to be exiled, he says, because they are a kind of living disproof of the idea of a rough proportionate 'equality' that a stable state has to try to maintain.
In such a case, the only issue remaining is to get enough genuinely virtuous men who don't need and won't benefit a state. Then you can have a stateless society, and indeed a lawless one, because they will be have like laws onto themselves anyway. The problem is the one we ended the EN with: most people don't seem to have a sufficient potential for virtue, and thus Aristotle thinks that mostly they have to be ruled because they aren't good enough to rule themselves.
Yeah, it's a problem.
As I mentioned in my comment on EN X.9, the study of virtue ethics has been useful and I look forward to reviewing all of these posts. I also plan to read other philosophers & thinkers on virtue ethics. Thanks again!
- Tom
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