Grim was in Luck
The Bobarosa Reborn
Paradise Lost but Rediscovered.
US 25/70 is also the road that goes by the Bobarosa Saloon, hard by the confluence of the Pigeon and the French Broad rivers. Because their destruction was more complete than Hot Springs', they had nothing to rebuild; as a result, they have gotten back underway more quickly and completely. In place of the historic bar and compound, they simply put down new gravel, threw up a pole barn to serve as a bar, and also brought in a food truck to replace their kitchen.
The staff survived the hurricane and has returned to the place now that it's back in service. There's a bandstand on one side of the bar, picnic tables outside in place of the restaurant they used to have, and a campground they are still restoring a bit at a time. Still, there's food, drink, and music by the river, and a large number of bikers passing in and out. The beer is American and inexpensive, as is the food. (As for the music, the singer said that he'd had many requests, but was going to keep playing anyway.)
Their old rules still apply: In God we Trust; all others, cash only. They do have an ATM.
View of the pole-barn bar and the river.
Food truck and restroom trailer.
Ragged old flag, which survived Helene and was cleaned but not restored.
Riding Report: The Rattler
I wanted to ride to Hot Springs, NC today, which I had heard was a fun mountain town on a pretty creek.(More about this later.) The road between here and there entails a section of NC 209 that is one of the 'named' motorcycle roads locally, called "The Rattler."
One of the things that draws tourists to the area are the twisty roads of the mountains, which are basically old mule trails someone later paved. Sports car enthusiasts as well as motorcycle riders flock to the Appalachians to ride the twisties, and some of the roads become famous enough to gain a name. By far the most famous of these is the Tail of the Dragon, which is US 129 at the TN/NC border. I've mentioned it several times here. There are many others, though, of great to modest fame.
The Rattler is actually fairly tame for a named road; there are plenty of far more twisty and dangerous roads around here than it. Having ridden it out and back, I can only assume that it became famous enough to get a name because it links the resort communities of Lake Junaluska and Hot Springs. There are short sections that are fairly twisty at each end, especially in the north in the Pisgah National Forest. There are a few surprises here and there in the middle. There was one curve marked with a warning for fifteen miles an hour that I took at thirty, for example. Nevertheless, there are also long sections where you can get to top gear and go just as fast as you'd like. I exceeded seventy-five at points on this route; on the Tail of the Dragon, there is no section where that speed is even possible.
However! It is a very pretty ride through lovely valleys and gorges. Not having quite so many curves means that you can spend more time enjoying the scenery. Especially in the Pisgah it is quite beautiful.
Hot Springs, by the way, is not a fun town at all right now. It must have been once. Hurricane Helene flooded that pretty creek to the point that it devastated the whole of the small downtown, gutting the historic buildings and leaving misery in her wake. They have not rebuilt enough to reopen almost any of them. Some that had patios have now brought in food trucks since their kitchens are long gone; others remain closed.
In spite of that it is plagued by massive and terrible traffic. The recent closure of I-40 means that US 25/70 from Asheville to Knoxville, which passes through Hot Springs, is now the major artery of NC/TN traffic. There are lines of cars miles long trying to pass through the town in either direction on that road, barely creeping along through the central intersection of a dead town.
Solstice
A beautiful shot from Stonehenge Dronescapes.
Today marks the coming of astronomical summer -- also astrological summer, as the sun enters Cancer at 10:42 PM EST. I remember Thomas was curious about that terminology the last time around.
I saw several pictures of Arthur Uther Pendragon of the Loyal Arthurian Warband, the biker turned druid and wielder of the movie sword Excalibur, as well as a couple of quick interviews as well. I'm always glad to see he's still doing his thing. We used to run into members of the Loyal Arthurian Warband at Scottish Highland Games around the South sometimes.
Today is also my son's birthday. The guy hosting his birthday party was excited to meet me. He made Beowulf remind him of his last name so he could call me "Mister," respectfully, and then came down and offered me his hand.
I used to accidentally surprise people with my handshake, as some readers may recall, so I've learned to be more gentle (while still of course being firm). But once I took his hand he started to squeeze as hard as he could. He was definitely a weightlifter.
Once I realized that he wanted to play I gave it to him, and when he finally relented he told me he'd been wanting to try that since my son showed him a video of me lifting in my home gym. He said he wanted to have one like it some day. I wish him well in his quest.
Summer is a season of questing in the Arthurian tradition; in the South it was often a little hot. The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games are upcoming shortly in the very high mountains of North Carolina, where even mid-July is temperate (although MUCH wetter than I imagine Merry England to have been). The massive heat wave predicted for next week is expected to top out at 87 here, which would be if true three degrees hotter than I've ever seen it locally. You only have to go down to the valley to get into the 90s, though. Go just a bit south into Georgia, and you can find the low hundreds this time of year.
"Carefully Explain What You're Going to Do....
...then when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." For those with a subscription, the NYT explains exactly how this B-2/GBU-57 plan works, with diagrams.
Actually, if you can pull this off it's much more terrifying than Sun Tzu's approach. "Here's what's coming. There's not a thing you can do to stop it."
Reading the Iliad after October 7
With thanks to AVI, a story about the war in Israel from another perspective.
Major Amir Skoury entered my class in October 2022. He was 30 years old, married with two daughters, and an officer in Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) special forces. Like many officers, he took a leave to attend college... Like all students at Shalem, he began his studies reading Homer’s Iliad, the great epic about the Trojan War. By the time Amir took the seminar, I’d been teaching it for nine years.Amir approached me after the second class and said he was frustrated. He couldn’t get into the Illiad. We had a short conversation, and by the next meeting he came prepared like a skilled warrior, not a young man enjoying a cultural experience. He learned the text as an officer would learn a map before navigating his company to its destination. I expected to meet him again on October 9, 2023, at the opening of his sophomore year, but instead, I stood before his grave and eulogized him. Two days earlier, Amir had led a team of soldiers toward the Gaza border communities that were being attacked by terrorists. He was one of the Israelis killed on October 7.
The reason I have friends in Israel is because of their devotion to Western civilization, which caused them to invite me to travel there in 2014 to attend a conference. We usually hear about 'Judeo-Christian civilization,' a concept which may hide as much as it illuminates given the deep divisions in both theology and history (as well as the more obvious connections). Israel, though, is unique in the region as being an outpost of Western civilization.
They are deeply interested in the Greeks. They study Abraham Lincoln. The long diaspora exposed their predecessors to generations of being embedded in parts of the West, from France and Germany to Poland and Russia. They also participated in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and though their experiences of those things were different they were part of the overall experience.
You can see that in the fact that every student at this college begins their studies with Homer, as is proper. If you want to study philosophy, Homer is a good start because Plato and Aristotle both quote him and make analogies to him. If you want to study anything else, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle are still good places to begin. Natural philosophy gave rise to all the modern sciences, and Aristotle gave the foundations for most of them -- after he finished studying with Plato.
The Iliad is also a worthy study for warriors because it treats its enemies as human beings throughout. This is unusual and valuable in a study of war. Read on in the linked piece for more on that subject.
Juneteenth
I still haven't gotten used to this holiday; I was working at my desk for an hour this morning before I realized that I was supposed to have the day off. Well, a liberating holiday after all! I wrote about Aristotle for you instead.
I-40 Closed Again
Recent spring rains and flooding have closed I-40 again at the pass through the mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina. Be advised if any of you were planning to visit the Great Smoky Mountains soon.
The price of despotism
From Seth Mandel:
The price Iran has paid has not, in fact, been steep or cruel and unusual. In the history of mankind, no nation’s civilians have been safer while an enemy state controls their airspace during a live war. There’s nothing really to even compare it to. We are watching something no one has ever watched before. Israel, in response to Iran’s pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish people, not to mention its role in the worst daylong mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, took control of Iran’s airspace and used that to patiently eliminate the sources of the Iranian regime’s power to oppress its people.
Trump supports this.
Nicomachean Ethics I.13
Today we end the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics. This last chapter lays the foundation for most of the rest of the work.
Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of happiness.
This answers some of the objections that have been raised in the comments. We have now a definition of happiness, but it entails a definition of virtue. We need to study the virtues now, in order to better understand even the defined concept of "happiness."
The true student of politics, too, is thought to have studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.As an example of this we have the lawgivers of the Cretans and the Spartans, and any others of the kind that there may have been. And if this inquiry belongs to political science, clearly the pursuit of it will be in accordance with our original plan.
Emphasis added. The student of politics isn't studying virtue to make himself better, note, but to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws. This is a point of discontinuity between Aristotle and American society, and to some degree between the Modern world and Aristotle. Americans think of virtue as a private matter. The function of the law is not to make us good people, but to set the most minimal limits possible on human behavior in order to enable us to be free within those limits. What we choose to do with that freedom is where we find out whether or not we are virtuous. It isn't anyone else's business.
Among the other Moderns, a less-strong version of this idea prevails. Kant, for example, divides his Metaphysics of Morals into two Doctrines: the Doctrine of Right, and the Doctrine of Virtue. The dividing point between those two is whether or not the state has the right to use physical force against you to require you obey. The Doctrine of Right is where force is permitted -- interestingly, marriage law is included here -- and the Doctrine of Virtue is where no one is allowed to force you to do the right thing. There is still a right thing, but it is yours to decide whether to be good or bad.
That is not true for Aristotle. As we will see when we reach his discussion of Justice, the point of the laws is to mandate virtuous behavior, to make everyone behave as if they were virtuous. You may not get genuinely virtuous people that way, but you at least get a society in which people are treating each other as if they were the virtuous people they aren't really.
Aristotle also wants people to develop the internal virtues, and to come to that point we have already discussed in which they want to be virtuous and find it pleasant to be. However, virtue is a matter of habituation; being forced to be better for a while can help you internalize the habits, and at least takes care of some of the bad behavior.
But clearly the virtue we must study is human virtue; for the good we were seeking was human good and the happiness human happiness. By human virtue we mean not that of the body but that of the soul; and happiness also we call an activity of soul.
Thus, this will not be a book on weightlifting or fast running, but on courage and justice.
But if this is so, clearly the student of politics must know somehow the facts about soul, as the man who is to heal the eyes or the body as a whole must know about the eyes or the body; and all the more since politics is more prized and better than medicine; but even among doctors the best educated spend much labour on acquiring knowledge of the body. The student of politics, then, must study the soul, and must study it with these objects in view, and do so just to the extent which is sufficient for the questions we are discussing; for further precision is perhaps something more laborious than our purposes require.
Socrates would have taken this and made a problem out of it for showing that the inquiry wasn't working well. Aristotle manfully accepts that we have to understand the subordinate questions in light of our inquiry into the prior questions. This is a difference between him and his predecessors.
This is a longer chapter, so I will put the rest after a jump break. There's an important new concept here, so don't skip it.
On the Eve of War
This is not a political post. I have expressed my thoughts on what is wise and desirable, but I am not in charge of anything: my fellow citizens have elected me to no public office, nor have I sought one in any case. This is just a discussion of the facts as I see them through the lens of decades of involvement in war.
I don't know if this leak is accurate, but it lines up with my own expectations. There's really only one reason that Israel would even ask us to join the war: Fordow. They've done a much better job of dismantling Iran's leadership and air defenses than we would have. Their intelligence service and military have demonstrated great superiority to that of our ossified, bloated agencies: compare the campaign of the last few days with any period from any of our long wars. They have lived up to Sun Tzu's dictum: "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."
Our President seems to think that he is doing the same thing, telling the press that he is still open to talks and that he won't make a decision until a second before, that no one knows his plans. In the age of open source intelligence, that's not good enough for a military as large as ours. Everybody knows that we deployed a dozen F-22s to Jordan and KC-130 tankers to southern Europe (not northern Europe, where they might do something regarding Ukraine). Everyone knows that our ships are at sea and we will soon have three aircraft carriers in range. Diego Garcia has hosted extra B-2 bombers since March, and how has some extra B-52s as well.
Prime Minister Starmer isn't the only world leader reacting to this. Russia's President Putin has affirmed Russia's neutrality -- no help is coming, comrades -- as he calls for new diplomacy.
While a B-52 bombing campaign would likely shorten the war, there is as I said just one thing that Israel can't do for itself that it desperately wants done. The Fordow nuclear facility is buried under a mountain, and a deep earth penetrating weapon is the only way to reach it without a substantial ground invasion. The latter is out of Israel's reach, even if they weren't fighting a war in Gaza already. So both horns of the dilemma posed by Fordow require a US solution: either we send the Marines to seize it and dismantle it, or we bring in a B-2 -- the only bomber that can carry the only bomb that can do the job.
I wouldn't be surprised to see us use more than four to crack a hole deep enough, and perhaps even follow up with a nuclear weapon. That would also have the advantage of rendering the site impossible to reoccupy for some time. The point that the US would like to make, our major strategic interest, is the same point that was made when Obama ignored the War Powers Act to ensure the destruction of Gaddafi in Libya: no one else may have the Bomb. As in Dune, where the Great Houses all had Atomics because having Atomics was how you became a Great House, the possession of nuclear weapons determines the power structure of the world. Holding that power structure together with America at its top is the only real reason to consider doing this. The opportunity to completely eradicate a nuclear weapons program that is so close to completion may likely prove impossible to resist, especially given the vocal commitment of the involved nation on the subject of "Death to America."
Thus I suspect that, dissembling aside, Trump intends to issue the order. Despite both Houses of Congress introducing resolutions opposing it, semi-bipartisan in the Senate where Thomas Massie has joined it, unpassed resolutions are not even empty gestures.
Reportedly -- who knows if it's true? -- Trump asked Israel not to assassinate the Ayatollah Khamenei. The reasoning given in the brief quote aside, a better reason to leave him alive is that he is the only one who can plausibly negotiate a surrender. You have to leave someone alive that the losing side recognizes as their legitimate leader if you are to have any hope of getting them to accept the legitimacy of the order to lay down arms.
With the air defenses already effectively destroyed, a US air campaign will face relatively easy sailing. I would expect the Fordow strike to be done in more than sufficient force to leave it obviously and permanently destroyed. The psychological effect of having that fortress reduced to ash in one night might compel the aging Ayatollah to consider surrender, especially if more generous terms than "unconditional" are truly on offer behind the scenes.
If not, a B-52 campaign can go on for quite a while. That would be quite tragic, as it would harm a lot of people who have no more control over all of this than you or I do. Many of them would doubtless prefer a different government than the one they find themselves with no control over. As to that, this guy at least has been angling for this moment for decades; I have been running into his people for years. Long organization may pay off for him. I don't think he has a lot of support within the US government, but he may have some support in Iran especially among the true Persians. They are the largest and most powerful of the various ethnic groups and will have a lot to say about any future.
Nicomachean Ethics I.12
Another short chapter today.
These questions having been definitely answered, let us consider whether happiness is among the things that are praised or rather among the things that are prized; for clearly it is not to be placed among potentialities.
As I've mentioned in the discussion of I.2 and I.6b, this is following a parallel argument from the Rhetoric. Aristotle holds, I said, that when "incomparable things are being weighted against each other -- should I prefer this meal, or that victory at war? -- honor provides the common ground for valuation." Here we are going to talk about things like that, but we have a further mechanism for differentiating them into the merely 'praised' versus the more valuable 'prized.'
Everything that is praised seems to be praised because it is of a certain kind and is related somehow to something else; for we praise the just or brave man and in general both the good man and virtue itself because of the actions and functions involved, and we praise the strong man, the good runner, and so on, because he is of a certain kind and is related in a certain way to something good and important. This is clear also from the praises of the gods; for it seems absurd that the gods should be referred to our standard, but this is done because praise involves a reference, to something else. But if if praise is for things such as we have described, clearly what applies to the best things is not praise, but something greater and better, as is indeed obvious; for what we do to the gods and the most godlike of men is to call them blessed and happy. And so too with good things; no one praises happiness as he does justice, but rather calls it blessed, as being something more divine and better.
So when we praise strength or bravery, a fast runner or even a just man, we are celebrating those qualities because they point to the easier acquisition of something that is a good in itself. Strength is good because it lets you do more work, which is good because it obtains whatever the end result of the labor was meant to be. Bravery is good because it can help you obtain victory in war and peace through strength -- but victory is good because it can bring a just peace, whereas such peace is good because it enables the best kind of human life.
This is to be contrasted with the truly prized things, the things we really want for themselves rather than as a mere means to something else.
Eudoxus also seems to have been right in his method of advocating the supremacy of pleasure; he thought that the fact that, though a good, it is not praised indicated it to be better than the things that are praised, and that this is what God and the good are; for by reference to these all other things are judged.
This thread will grow only stronger in the Christian period, though Aquinas and others will have to point out that the Goodness of God is not equivalent to the goodness of men; rather, that the word 'good' just has a different and categorically lesser meaning when applied to any created thing. Eudoxus was another head of the Academy, one of Aristotle's teachers as Iakovos was one of mine. Sadly, all of his works have been lost.
Praise is appropriate to virtue, for as a result of virtue men tend to do noble deeds, but encomia are bestowed on acts, whether of the body or of the soul. But perhaps nicety in these matters is more proper to those who have made a study of encomia; to us it is clear from what has been said that happiness is among the things that are prized and perfect. It seems to be so also from the fact that it is a first principle; for it is for the sake of this that we all do all that we do, and the first principle and cause of goods is, we claim, something prized and divine.
So there you have it. There's a little bit of an ambiguity in this discussion, as even the things that are prized are also praised, and encomia turn out to be just higher and more formal forms of praise.
The real issue is whether you seek the thing in order to obtain other things, or if the thing itself is your end. Happiness is an end in itself. Bravery gives you the victory, which combined with justice can give you a lasting peace, which itself enables the conditions for the best kind of life. The thing you are seeking in such a life is happiness, eudaimonia.
Nicomachean Ethics I.11
A quite short section today.
That the fortunes of descendants and of all a man's friends should not affect his happiness at all seems a very unfriendly doctrine, and one opposed to the opinions men hold; but since the events that happen are numerous and admit of all sorts of difference, and some come more near to us and others less so, it seems a long- nay, an infinite- task to discuss each in detail; a general outline will perhaps suffice.
It is strange to see the philosopher weigh in against a doctrine as being "unfriendly." That is also how Terence Irwin gives it, though, in his translation. In the Greek original it is ἄφιλον, which is usually 'friendless' rather than 'unfriendly,' but I trust either of these translators' Greek more than my own very limited Greek. Harris Rackham's translation gives it as "heartless."
In any case it's not a proof or a logical argument; it's a sense that the doctrine isn't desirable and that it is widely rejected and without popularity. That doesn't mean it isn't true.
If, then, as some of a man's own misadventures have a certain weight and influence on life while others are, as it were, lighter, so too there are differences among the misadventures of our friends taken as a whole, and it makes a difference whether the various suffering befall the living or the dead (much more even than whether lawless and terrible deeds are presupposed in a tragedy or done on the stage), this difference also must be taken into account; or rather, perhaps, the fact that doubt is felt whether the dead share in any good or evil.
That sentence could use some analysis. If some misadventures have more or less weight than others, then also our friends' misadventures may be more or less important to them. Also, it seems to Aristotle that it matters whether the misfortunes happen to a living or a dead man.
That's sensible enough. It would bother almost anyone if a financial disaster befell them that cost them literally everything they own; but every dead man immediately yields up all his worldly goods, and seems not to suffer from it much at all. The ancients sometimes buried men and women with grave goods, but not all of their goods; and even in the famous Viking funeral sequence recorded by Ibn Fadhlan at least some was left to the inheritance.
Aristotle says that this living/dead distinction is even more important than the truth/fiction distinction: a dead man seems to suffer less than a fictional one from the loss of his goods, say. So perhaps the dead do not suffer any evil, or any good. That was the unfriendly doctrine. It might be true.
For it seems, from these considerations, that even if anything whether good or evil penetrates to them, it must be something weak and negligible, either in itself or for them, or if not, at least it must be such in degree and kind as not to make happy those who are not happy nor to take away their blessedness from those who are. The good or bad fortunes of friends, then, seem to have some effects on the dead, but effects of such a kind and degree as neither to make the happy unhappy nor to produce any other change of the kind.
Aristotle ends on some middle ground. There is something about the fortune of friends or descendants that might affect the dead; but it can't be very strong. The blessed remain blessed; the unhappy dead cannot be made happy by us afterwards, no matter what we try to do.
This seems consistent with much of later theology, although the Church has sold pardons and indulgences at times, and many a man has donated in the hope of Masses sung for the repose of his soul. It is doubtful that these do much good; but why not hedge your bets?
Some Sober Reflection on Trans Issues
Ezra Klien interviews Sarah McBride in the NYT (there is the usual paywall).
[T]he one thing that’s maybe different here is there’s a set of narrow policies, like nondiscrimination, and then a broader cultural effort — everybody should put their pronouns in their bio or say them before they begin speaking at a meeting — that was more about destabilizing the gender binary.And there people had a much stronger view. Like: I do know what it means. I’ve been a man all my life. I’ve been a woman all my life. How dare you tell me how I have to talk about myself or refer to myself!And that made the metaphor break. Because if the gay marriage fight was about what other people do, there was a dimension to this that was about what you do and how you should see yourself or your kids or your society.I think that’s an accurate reflection of the overplaying of the hand in some ways — that we as a coalition went to Trans 201, Trans 301, when people were still at a very much Trans 101 stage....I think some of the cultural mores and norms that started to develop around inclusion of trans people were probably premature for a lot of people. We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it. Part of this is fostered by social media.We decided that we now have to say and fight for and push for every single perfect policy and cultural norm right now, regardless of whether the public is ready. And I think it misunderstands the role that politicians and, frankly, social movements have in maintaining proximity to public opinion, of walking people to a place....
I will say, while the left made this mistake of fostering an illiberalism based on a false sense of cultural victory, the right is now making the exact same mistake. I think they’re overplaying their hand.
They’re interpreting the 2024 election to be a cultural mandate that is much greater than what it actually is. And if they continue to do that, there will be a backlash to the illiberalism — the cultural illiberalism, not just the legal illiberalism — of the right, in the same way that there’s been a backlash to the cultural illiberalism of the left.
In general people like to be left alone. Making everyone put pronouns out there was not leaving them alone. That wasn't really the issue, though it was aligned to it. Telling parents that the state would take their children away and then castrate their children was intolerable. That's not just the sort of thing that causes you to lose elections; governments get overthrown over things like that. As well they should, since that action violates natural law in such a clear and deep way. Telling fathers they had to watch their daughters beaten up in sports arenas by physically more powerful males was intolerable. Telling parents they would lose their parental rights for not going along with all this was intolerable.
McBride may be correct that the cultural right is going to far the other way. It is good to see some actual reflection on all this, and likewise the admission that they went too far and were in fact illiberal. It's a genuine start.
Nicomachean Ethics I.10
There are thirteen chapters in the first book, if you are wondering.
Aristotle was just talking about a complete life being necessary for the fullness of happiness. He now continues on the topic of describing and analyzing this 'completeness' requirement.
Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead? Or is not this quite absurd, especially for us who say that happiness is an activity?
Remembering that this is pre-Christian, this discussion of being happy after death is differently pointed than it would be after the conversion of Europe. Hades was described in the Odyssey as a pretty miserable place; not Hell exactly, but not happy for certain. Achilles appears to Odysseus and basically explains that life is always better than being dead, and that there's nothing good in the underworld.
Philosophically, it is a puzzle to suggest that a dead man can be happy if happiness is an activity. That deserves further exploration, which we get:
But if we do not call the dead man happy, and if Solon does not mean this, but that one can then safely call a man blessed as being at last beyond evils and misfortunes, this also affords matter for discussion; for both evil and good are thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who is alive but not aware of them; e.g. honours and dishonours and the good or bad fortunes of children and in general of descendants. And this also presents a problem; for though a man has lived happily up to old age and has had a death worthy of his life, many reverses may befall his descendants- some of them may be good and attain the life they deserve, while with others the opposite may be the case; and clearly too the degrees of relationship between them and their ancestors may vary indefinitely. It would be odd, then, if the dead man were to share in these changes and become at one time happy, at another wretched; while it would also be odd if the fortunes of the descendants did not for some time have some effect on the happiness of their ancestors.
It's worth noting that honor turns out to be the principal consideration for the happiness of the dead. Whether their descendants flourish might concern them, if they could be concerned after death; but whether they are honored or dishonored pertains to them themselves.
But we must return to our first difficulty; for perhaps by a consideration of it our present problem might be solved. Now if we must see the end and only then call a man happy, not as being happy but as having been so before, surely this is a paradox, that when he is happy the attribute that belongs to him is not to be truly predicated of him because we do not wish to call living men happy, on account of the changes that may befall them, and because we have assumed happiness to be something permanent and by no means easily changed, while a single man may suffer many turns of fortune's wheel. For clearly if we were to keep pace with his fortunes, we should often call the same man happy and again wretched, making the happy man out to be chameleon and insecurely based. Or is this keeping pace with his fortunes quite wrong? Success or failure in life does not depend on these, but human life, as we said, needs these as mere additions, while virtuous activities or their opposites are what constitute happiness or the reverse.
This section treats what I think is a real problem with the approach of thinking of happiness as being judged once overall. If happiness is an activity, you can only be happy when you're doing it. It's in your control, at least while you're alive, but you won't always be doing it. Thus, you won't always be happy.
Aristotle notes that it would be incoherent to say that we can only judge happiness after death, because at that point action is no longer possible. (Those of you who are serious students of philosophy, note the talk about predication. This is a very serious matter for Aristotle, as it will be for Kant and others; but it is inside baseball for those who are not deeply committed to the study of philosophy.)
The question we have now discussed confirms our definition. For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences), and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these; for this seems to be the reason why we do not forget them. The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by preference to everything else, he will be engaged in virtuous action and contemplation, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if he is 'truly good' and 'foursquare beyond reproach'.
Emphasis added. There's a lot going on there. Your actions echo in permanence if they are virtuous, and those who are virtuous do more of them more often; and therefore, they are among the honored dead. This is almost exactly what Odin tells his listener in Havamal 77.
Yet we also see a tension that will continue through the book: the perfectly vicious are very similar to the perfectly virtuous. You will always remember the events of 9/11, and everyone knows the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. They too found what they did to be pleasant, indeed worthy of dying for. For now I will just raise this problem and not resolve it. Why is the life of virtue preferable to the life of committed vice? They look surprisingly alike, but as a vicious man you'd get to do whatever you want all the time.
Now many events happen by chance, and events differing in importance; small pieces of good fortune or of its opposite clearly do not weigh down the scales of life one way or the other, but a multitude of great events if they turn out well will make life happier (for not only are they themselves such as to add beauty to life, but the way a man deals with them may be noble and good), while if they turn out ill they crush and maim happiness; for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.
AVI has pointed us to studies that indicate that in fact this stuff matters much less than we think it does: an individual has a kind of happiness level, and shortly after either a great fortune or misfortune they return to it. Aristotle did not consider that as a possibility, and I think would have been surprised by it. He does however suggest that one's character is important to whether one is easily disturbed by misfortune; see two quotes down.
If activities are, as we said, what gives life its character, no happy man can become miserable; for he will never do the acts that are hateful and mean.
Here's one reason to prefer virtue to viciousness.
For the man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances, as a good general makes the best military use of the army at his command and a good shoemaker makes the best shoes out of the hides that are given him; and so with all other craftsmen. And if this is the case, the happy man can never become miserable; though he will not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like those of Priam.
So here this isn't inherent, as AVI's data suggests; it is instead a product of having become wise and good. Aristotle thinks this hardens you against misfortune.
Nor, again, is he many-coloured and changeable; for neither will he be moved from his happy state easily or by any ordinary misadventures, but only by many great ones, nor, if he has had many great misadventures, will he recover his happiness in a short time, but if at all, only in a long and complete one in which he has attained many splendid successes.When then should we not say that he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life? Or must we add 'and who is destined to live thus and die as befits his life'? Certainly the future is obscure to us, while happiness, we claim, is an end and something in every way final. If so, we shall call happy those among living men in whom these conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled- but happy men. So much for these questions.
Emphasis added. That may be surprising, since how could happiness be both an 'activity' and an 'end'? Well, all activities aim at ends, so it's not a crazy thing to say: you exercise to have the ability to perform, so that performance is both the activity of exercise and the end of it.
Happiness is an activity, then, but also the end being sought by the activity: it is an end in itself.
Horsemanship
So horses aren't actually great for riot control because they tend to panic. Police like to use them when they want to push crowds around with the weight of the animals, but it's kind of a terrible idea unless you're a real horseman.
Having the infantry covering the cavalry worked well in Iraq, where the cavalry was tank crews providing fire support and the dismounted infantry could keep them from getting surrounded and beaten up with Molotov cocktails or worse. Having 'infantry' police covering the cavalry police entirely defeats the purpose of having brought the horses at all. If the guys on foot are pushing protesters around to protect the horses, what were the horses even for?
I'm rarely impressed with police efforts, but this is silly and dangerous to the animals. If you're not going to use them, take them back to the barn where they won't get hurt.
Happy Father's Day
To all of you who are or have fathers, may you have a happy day. For those of you who are fathers, may it be completely happy in Aristotle's sense from the post just below.
Nicomachean Ethics I.9
For this reason also the question is asked, whether happiness is to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance.
Those of you who have followed my earlier commentaries know that this question was one of Plato's regular subjects, and had been Socrates' as well. For example, the Meno -- which we looked at recently during our reading of the Anabasis -- comes down on the side that it must be a kind of divine gift, because the issues around treating virtue as a kind of knowledge that can be taught are so problematic and deep. If it were knowledge, you should be able to teach it; but even very good men often can't convey virtue to their sons. If it's knowledge, you should be able to define it if you know it; but it turns out to be devilishly hard to define even a relatively simple virtue like courage correctly (this is the subject of the Laches).
Socrates was apparently really bothered by this, and the puzzle was something that Plato worried about extensively also. It is the main subject of the Protagoras, where the two thinkers Socrates and Protagoras end up adopting the position that virtue is knowledge but can't be taught, or that it isn't knowledge but can be. It comes up in various forms in many other dialogues, such as the Lesser Hippias (which I wrote my Master's thesis partly about). In his major political works, the Republic and the Laws (see commentary on sidebar) Plato tried to deal with the problem practically. In the first of these, he decides that the problem is that not all that many people are rational enough to really learn these things, so that political power should be invested only in a select class of philosopher kings who would rule but be stripped of their families and raised with that class consciousness instead. In the second, he apparently abandons that idea, but instead suggests that virtue could be instilled by an elaborate system of social controls and laws, overseen by a secret police led by a hidden nocturnal council of the virtuous. Both of those ideas are totalitarian and implausible to the point of being ridiculous, but they were the best Plato could come up with after a lifetime of thinking about it.
So this is a short section of Book One of the EN, but it's aimed at a huge problem that two of the greatest minds in history had been struggling with for both of their generations. Virtue doesn't seem to be knowledge, and obtaining it requires more than reading about it or having teachers instruct you.
Aristotle has an answer to the problem that is highly satisfying. I've written about it many times here, so you all know how it goes. Happiness -- eudaimonia -- is an activity, so it is something you have to do. Specifically, you have to engage in the practice of doing virtuous acts. Virtue -- aretḗ -- is both the excellence you will practically display by acting with practiced skill from having done such acts many times, and also the character you develop by doing these virtuous things.
An example: the reason we still have Airborne school isn't because we're going to drop an army of paratroopers again; it's because it requires the practice of courage, as well as several other virtues. Getting into the habit of acting courageously will eventually make you a courageous person. Once you get there, it'll be pleasant to do what was terrifying before. Technical Rescue doesn't do paratrooper school, but it does require rappelling and rope rescue as its first discipline. It's the same thing more or less: you have to get used to stepping out into nothing with only your faith in the equipment you helped prepare. It is eventually quite fun.
Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training, to be among the most godlike things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something godlike and blessed.
It will also on this view be very generally shared; for all who are not maimed as regards their potentiality for virtue may win it by a certain kind of study and care. But if it is better to be happy thus than by chance, it is reasonable that the facts should be so, since everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.
The answer to the question we are asking is plain also from the definition of happiness; for it has been said to be a virtuous activity of soul, of a certain kind. Of the remaining goods, some must necessarily pre-exist as conditions of happiness, and others are naturally co-operative and useful as instruments. And this will be found to agree with what we said at the outset; for we stated the end of political science to be the best end, and political science spends most of its pains on making the citizens to be of a certain character, viz. good and capable of noble acts.
It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any other of the animals happy; for none of them is capable of sharing in such activity. For this reason also a boy is not happy; for he is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age; and boys who are called happy are being congratulated by reason of the hopes we have for them. For there is required, as we said, not only complete virtue but also a complete life, since many changes occur in life, and all manner of chances, and the most prosperous may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances and has ended wretchedly no one calls happy.
Emphasis added. Happy children in our more usual sense of the term in natural English aren't what Aristotle means; one hopes that children will be happy in that sense as often as they can be. What he's talking about here is how a boy isn't capable of being 'a happy man,' with his children gathered about him and his accomplishments, perhaps a wife he has joined with in a long and happy marriage, good friends of the kind we were just discussing. That's the kind of completeness that he is describing here.
An Actual Effect on Immigration
The Washington Post today admits that there might be a net negative change in immigration this year, "economists warn." That's not the only dodgy phrasing in the article. Check out this chart:
"...under President Biden's liberal immigration policies" is a strange way of phrasing what happened over the last four years. One might instead have phrased it "under President Biden's flat refusal to keep his oath of office and enforce the laws of the United States on the subject of immigration."
I don't get the sense that people on the political left actually realize that this crisis we are having now is predicated on their own lawbreaking. When their side's President refuses to enforce a law, and indeed actively undermines the enforcement of it, that's "policy." When their opponent's President doesn't cross every t and dot every i of the law, such as when this President called out the National Guard in California without either involving the governor or invoking the Insurrection Act, suddenly they start talking about the importance of "the rule of law" and the "lawlessness" of their opponents.
The only reason we're here at all is those titanic spikes over the last four years. Those were illegal. Does that matter?
Perhaps not really. I notice the same effect when they violate the 2nd Amendment. It's not that they're cognizant of behaving in a blatantly unconstitutional manner; it's that they just can't see that it really is part of the constitution and has to be treated with respect.
It has been amazing to see left-wing judges citing the 10th Amendment, though. That one is one of my favorites, and it's been treated like an absolutely dead letter for a century. Of course, the judges only apply it to the President -- not to themselves. Of course a Federal judge can tell everyone in every state how to behave, just not the Federal executive.
To return to the economics for a moment, the Post focuses on heartbreak and rising costs -- but they also admit that this will mean rising wages for American workers. That's always been the big thing driving the mass illegal immigration: corporations' desire for an easily exploited class of cheaper labor that can't turn to the courts for protection because they lack legal status. They don't want to pay Americans market rates, and they don't want to have to deal with OSHA or other worker protections. Even President Trump is backing off for that reason, but see what the Post quietly allows to slip in:
“We are heartbroken. Their sudden removal is both destabilizing and deeply unjust,” said Blumberg, who expects her labor costs to rise by $600,000 a year as she tries to attract new workers with higher wages. “Unfortunately, higher costs will be passed on to the residents of every senior living facility in the entire country that’s affected.”
So, she is planning to start paying higher wages to American workers instead. Duly noted.
UPDATE: The NY Post says the number of people who have self-deported already is about one million.
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