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.