DC Report: Urban Hiking

It was a beautiful afternoon, especially for late August. Since I had a few hours, I walked across the city to see how it’s doing.

Honestly, with one exception that I will get to directly, I’ve never seen it this nice. 

Reagan Intl., “DCA”

19th & K, a famous street for lobbyists

DC’s unarmed Public Safety

The Old Executive Building in Second Empire architecture 

The White House

The equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, which BLM protesters tried and failed to destroy because his jealous spirit watches over it

First sign of anything criminal going on (end of street)

The FBI building

Clear evidence of criminal behavior now in view

Outside Union Station

Inside Union Station 

When I lived in Virginia more than twenty years ago, Union Station was nicer. It used to have many more stores and restaurants, some of which I miss. It’s not crime but mismanagement that has caused it to decline; it’s still perfectly safe. 

Otherwise DC seems pleasant and happy in spite of the occasional protesters (which there always are protesters in DC). I talked to several groups of Guardsmen, though not the 150th Cavalry so far; these were from South Carolina and Louisiana, and were all MPs. They were armed with handguns, but I am not surprised to see police units armed. They were all friendly and said most people are treating them well. 

I hiked a little bit more than 20 blocks this afternoon. I’ll keep going and see if the evening brings anything different. So far it looks pretty good. 

RETVRN

Getting medieval with college students:

The University’s Best Weapon Against A.I.: The 14th Century

...In 1355 the arts faculty at the University of Paris forbade masters to lecture at a slow speed that would have allowed students to copy their words verbatim.

You can still see traces of that old academic culture in Ph.D. programs, in which students have to pass oral exams and defend their thesis in a viva voce (“with the living voice”) in conversation with their examiners. Cambridge and Oxford, the inspiration for most early U.S. colleges, did not meaningfully adopt written exams until the 18th and 19th centuries, half a millennium after they were founded. The shift to original, written student work was partly in response to instruction in increasingly technical fields and partly due to the fact that written work made it easier to teach more students.

Even in the U.S. our earliest colleges followed the tradition of oral examinations. Emphasis on students writing compositions did not spread until we started copying German research universities in the 1870s. Freshman comp, the standard U.S. writing class, shifted to expect more unique and expressive content from students after World War II.

All of which is to say that our current practices around student writing are not part of some ancient tradition. Which assignments are written and which are oral has shifted over the years. It is shifting again, this time away from original student writing done outside class and toward something more interactive between student and professor or at least student and teaching assistant.

Though the return of the blue book exam is one sign of this change, a number of older practices for assessing student learning are being revived.... 

There's still a chance they might learn something, but only in a harder school.  

Nicomachean Ethics V.7

 Another short chapter today, still on justice. We're about two-thirds through Book V after this.

Of political justice part is natural, part legal, natural, that which everywhere has the same force and does not exist by people's thinking this or that... 

The "natural" here refers to human nature. What Aristotle is saying is that human nature is such that certain things have to be done a certain way no matter who or where (or when!) you are. Human beings come to be in a certain way, and they reliably have certain needs and certain capacities. These have to be answered. 

The alternative is that things are merely conventional, things that a society does in a certain way because of traditions or laws or cultural values. Often critical theorists today call these "social constructs." 

In general our contemporaries agree with this distinction, although some few deny that there really is any sort of thing that might be called "human nature." (Transhumanists, for example, believe that we will shortly be able to transcend many traditional limitations like death or illness; in principle, we could with technology become totally different sorts of beings than have ever existed before.) Where we disagree with Aristotle and each other is often in drawing the line between what is natural and what is socially constructed. When we moved to China in 2000, I had many ideas about things that I thought were human nature that proved to be conventional, for example, that men naturally recognized that women deserved protection and care due to their smaller size and in recognition of their great value as actual or potential mothers. It turns out that was a value that the American South had trained into me; in China women were seen as less valuable and targets for exploitation because of their relative weakness.  

Aristotle is calling the conventional the "legal," although that implies a formalization that isn't necessary.

...legal, that which is originally indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not indifferent, e.g. that a prisoner's ransom shall be a mina, or that a goat and not two sheep shall be sacrificed, and again all the laws that are passed for particular cases, e.g. that sacrifice shall be made in honour of Brasidas, and the provisions of decrees. 

Now some think that all justice is of this sort, because that which is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force (as fire burns both here and in Persia), while they see change in the things recognized as just. This, however, is not true in this unqualified way, but is true in a sense; or rather, with the gods it is perhaps not true at all, while with us there is something that is just even by nature, yet all of it is changeable; but still some is by nature, some not by nature. It is evident which sort of thing, among things capable of being otherwise, is by nature, and which is not but is legal and conventional, assuming that both are equally changeable.

Again, it is less evident than he suggests because this is often where disputes arise. Of the moment, how much of sex and sexuality is natural and how much is 'a social construct' like gender has been hotly debated.  

And in all other things the same distinction will apply; by nature the right hand is stronger, yet it is possible that all men should come to be ambidextrous.

Obviously not quite right, but the point holds even if we allow that some people are left-handed. By nature one hand is stronger because it is favored and more frequently used, etc. 

The things which are just by virtue of convention and expediency are like measures; for wine and corn measures are not everywhere equal, but larger in wholesale and smaller in retail markets. Similarly, the things which are just not by nature but by human enactment are not everywhere the same, since constitutions also are not the same, though there is but one which is everywhere by nature the best. Of things just and lawful each is related as the universal to its particulars; for the things that are done are many, but of them each is one, since it is universal.

That's an interesting claim about constitutions. It seems to reduce the legal/conventional sphere to zero ideally, leaving just one way to order human life that would -- by nature, i.e. our nature, human nature -- be best for everyone. Aristotle does not give that prescription anywhere that has survived, not even the Politics. There we get a typology of types of states, each of which has a corrupt form that it is likely to pass into and each of which has instabilities that make it likely eventually to transition to one of the others via revolution or collapse. 

He has a few clear recommendations, but this ideal constitution may simply be theoretical: it ought to be true that a constitution exists that ideally fits our nature, which is the same everywhere as fire burns both here and in Persia. I rather suspect it is not true that such a constitution exists, though I can see the attractiveness of the idea that it should. 

There is a difference between the act of injustice and what is unjust, and between the act of justice and what is just; for a thing is unjust by nature or by enactment; and this very thing, when it has been done, is an act of injustice, but before it is done is not yet that but is unjust. So, too, with an act of justice (though the general term is rather 'just action', and 'act of justice' is applied to the correction of the act of injustice).

Each of these must later be examined separately with regard to the nature and number of its species and the nature of the things with which it is concerned.

That will be the subject of the next chapter. 

Nicomachean Ethics V.6

Today we examine a question of character.

Since acting unjustly does not necessarily imply being unjust, we must ask what sort of unjust acts imply that the doer is unjust with respect to each type of injustice, e.g. a thief, an adulterer, or a brigand. Surely the answer does not turn on the difference between these types. For a man might even lie with a woman knowing who she was, but the origin of his might be not deliberate choice but passion. He acts unjustly, then, but is not unjust; e.g. a man is not a thief, yet he stole, nor an adulterer, yet he committed adultery; and similarly in all other cases.

This is a place where Christianity offered a real shift, I think. If a man steals he is a thief, but only among all the other things he is, including beloved by God. In any case Jesus was hung between two thieves, one of whom he invited to accompany him to heaven. 

Even in that story, you can see the effect of the ancient world's moral code. The thieves were condemned to death, and condemned precisely for 'being thieves'; and the penitent thief admits the justice of that condemnation, for they had committed the crimes for which they were being punished. There is thus a serious question involved in whether 'a man is not a thief, though he stole,' or whether in fact his character is thus defined. 

Now we have previously stated how the reciprocal is related to the just; but we must not forget that what we are looking for is not only what is just without qualification but also political justice.

We normally speak of justice in terms of political justice, so it's nice to see this distinction drawn out. Aristotle now gives an account of political justice that happens, by the way, to spell out the difference between just states and unjust tyrannies.  

This [i.e. political justice] is found among men who share their life with a view to self-sufficiency, men who are free and either proportionately or arithmetically equal, so that between those who do not fulfil this condition there is no political justice but justice in a special sense and by analogy.

We've already seen that 'equality' means 'proportional equality' in most senses, but can mean 'arithmetical equality' when we are trying to balance the effects of crimes and other injustices. Aristotle points out that the reason we need such laws is that, in fact, these free and equal men treat each other badly:

For justice exists only between men whose mutual relations are governed by law; and law exists for men between whom there is injustice; for legal justice is the discrimination of the just and the unjust. And between men between whom there is injustice there is also unjust action (though there is not injustice between all between whom there is unjust action), and this is assigning too much to oneself of things good in themselves and too little of things evil in themselves.

There is then a warning against letting any man have too much power, and instead trusting to the laws and the courts to find what is really just. (An interesting reflection for the present moment.)  

This is why we do not allow a man to rule, but rational principle, because a man behaves thus in his own interests and becomes a tyrant. The magistrate on the other hand is the guardian of justice, and, if of justice, then of equality also. And since he* is assumed to have no more than his share, if he is just (for he does not assign to himself more of what is good in itself, unless such a share is proportional to his merits-so that it is for others that he labours, and it is for this reason that men, as we stated previously, say that justice is 'another's good'), therefore a reward must be given him, and this is honour and privilege; but those for whom such things are not enough become tyrants.

The "he*" there is ambiguous. Structurally it looks like it should point to the magistrate as its antecedent, but the sentence doesn't make as much sense as if "he" is the ruler. Irwin goes ahead and translates this line as, "If a ruler is just, he seems to profit nothing by it." If he does not profit by his rule, he is just and deserves honor and privilege; but if he does profit from ruling, he is a likely to become a tyrant. 

The justice of a master and that of a father are not the same as the justice of citizens, though they are like it; for there can be no injustice in the unqualified sense towards thing that are one's own, but a man's chattel, and his child until it reaches a certain age and sets up for itself, are as it were part of himself, and no one chooses to hurt himself (for which reason there can be no injustice towards oneself).

There are many highly debatable assertions in that sentence. They are obvious enough that I will leave them as an exercise for the interested reader. 

Therefore the justice or injustice of citizens is not manifested in these relations; for it was as we saw according to law, and between people naturally subject to law, and these as we saw' are people who have an equal share in ruling and being ruled. Hence justice can more truly be manifested towards a wife than towards children and chattels, for the former is household justice; but even this is different from political justice.

The idea that family business is not resolvable in the public political courts is Aristotle's more than it is ancient Greece's. A wife could initiate a divorce if she wished, apparently without the state having the power to contest her decision; but the state would be involved to ensure the proper return of her dowry and other matters. Thus, the Greeks had clear ideas about political justice as it applied to the dissolution, at least, of marriages; and a notion of what it would mean for her to receive (proportionately) equal and fair treatment. 

The Cornerstone of Any Nutritious Breakfast

AVI and David Foster were discussing inflation and McDonald's menus at AVI's place. I got to thinking about it. I remember eating those hamburgers as a kid, but I didn't know if they were even still on offer. I don't eat at the place except rarely on a road trip if it's the only option when I stop for gas; but what I remember seeing on offer was Quarter-Pounders and Double Quarter-Pounders with Cheese, Big Macs and specialty burgers of one type or another. Those tiny little hamburgers that used to be the cornerstone of their offerings I don't remember even seeing on the menu.

I looked it up, and they do still offer them if you want one. Depending on the market they're $2.85-$3.99, and 250 calories, 12 grams of protein. The bigger offerings tend to cost more like $7.15-$10.59, but they also offer 580-750 calories. The Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 48 grams of protein; the Big Mac 25 grams.

The prices have still gone up more than inflation as calculated by the CPI. The 15 cent burger should cost $1.65, not $3.99. 

If you're like me, the main nutritional concern is adequate protein per meal. Your dollar is buying you 3 grams of protein with the little burger. It'll get you 4.5 per buck with the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or 3.5 grams with the Big Mac. I wouldn't make a habit of eating Double Quarter Pounders, but it's not a terrible bargain: 48 grams of protein is pretty good for a quick meal on the road. 

Grim Nods

Apparently I was wrong; at the direct command of the administration, the National Guard deployed in DC are armed in general, not just MPs. 

That unit insignia is 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, “Old Hickory,” most of which is here in North Carolina. Now our Democratic governor has not sent any troops to support this deployment; that means these are the West Virginia NG contingent. That means they are the 1st Squadron, 150th Cavalry Regiment. I spent some time with their predecessors 16 years ago in Iraq. Their predecessors were good men, West Virginia hillbillies of course but citizen-soldiers of good character. Hopefully these men are too, because suddenly a lot depends upon that. 

They are armed with M4 carbines in condition Amber — I assume, since it’s cosmetically indistinguishable from Red but Red would be reckless beyond what I can imagine a military commander supporting. 

This is all remarkably reckless in any case. Trump and Hegseth, of course, but it’s already well beyond the risk tolerance of the regular military. 

Now the 1-150th are mostly cavalry scouts and armor personnel. They’re at least not trained infantry whose practiced responses are extremely lethal. Still, this is a perilous decision. The risk they are running here is very high.

On the Current Controversy

A Free Education

If you go for the more expensive sort, you'll read a lot less Aristotle. 

Using Open Syllabus Analytics, Campus Reform tracked the 11-year shift and found that authors like Aristotle and Plato fell considerably in the overall rankings. In 2008, Plato ranked 19th and Aristotle 46th. By 2019, their ranks dropped to 53th and 85th, respectively.

Meanwhile, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler consistently ranked high across U.S. college syllabi.

At least here it doesn't cost you anything. There are also no stressful examinations that you have to pass, although those do have their purpose.  

DEI

I call this photo “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” (Harley, two Yamahas, and a Kawasaki Ninja.)

Nicomachean Ethics V.5

After today's reading we will be halfway through Book V. Today's reading is on a Greek version of 'An Eye for an Eye.'

Some think that reciprocity is without qualification just, as the Pythagoreans said; for they defined justice without qualification as reciprocity. Now 'reciprocity' fits neither distributive nor rectificatory justice-yet people want even the justice of Rhadamanthus to mean this:

Should a man suffer what he did, right justice would be done -for in many cases reciprocity and rectificatory justice are not in accord; e.g. (1) if an official has inflicted a wound, he should not be wounded in return, and if some one has wounded an official, he ought not to be wounded only but punished in addition. Further (2) there is a great difference between a voluntary and an involuntary act.

It does matter to justice, as Aristotle says here, whether you put out the eye on purpose or involuntarily, as perhaps by accident. Even by accident, we might distinguish between an act from negligence when you should have taken more care, over against a pure accident that no one could have seen coming. Even if it were right to put out the eye of the man who intentionally put out another's in a fight, it might not be right to put out the eye of one who did so in a car accident; and especially not if the car accident was caused not by negligence but by circumstance.

But in associations for exchange this sort of justice does hold men together-reciprocity in accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of precisely equal return. For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together. Men seek to return either evil for evil-and if they cannot do so, think their position mere slavery-or good for good-and if they cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they hold together. This is why they give a prominent place to the temple of the Graces-to promote the requital of services; for this is characteristic of grace-we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it.

Confer with the Christian position on this matter of forgiveness and showing each other grace, as the basis for a just society.

This is a longer chapter, and we've had several long readings lately, so I am going to put the rest beyond a jump break. However, many of you will find this chapter very interesting because it is about proto-capitalism and justice in market exchange.

Retributive Justice and the Blood Feud

Today's post on the EN is not the first time I've discussed the blood feud aspect of retributive justice, which is the alternative Aristotle wants to avoid with what he calls "rectificatory justice." It does play up this notion of equality and the seeking to re-balance affairs in matters of vengeance or justice for crimes.

* An aside on the subject of the feud, for Mr. Walker. You write:

My cousin's actions are, by extension, mine. If your cousin killed my cousin, I might just kill you, because one kinsman is pretty much as good (or bad) as another. To us, this seems ridiculous. 

I don't think this is right. I've observed the blood feud at work not only in reading the sagas, and Anglo-Saxon history, but also as it is still lived today among tribal groups in Iraq. The idea isn't that one cousin is as good as another, but rather that the feud is an attempt to balance an account of honor.

Let's say that I kill someone very important in your family (perhaps your father). If I am not also very important, you may not be satisfied with killing me. Killing me won't balance the scales. So, you may go and kill my uncle -- who is a better man than me -- in order to create balance.

The problem is that different families value members of their kinship at different rates than do outsiders. I may think that your father wasn't worth half what my uncle was, even though to you it seemed to even the scale. Thus, I think I now have a blood debt to repay: and so I go and kill your cousin. But to you, this upsets the scale again, so now you feel you have a debt.

This is why the reconciliation system in all of these tribal/honor cultures follows the pattern of getting the elders together to sort out a blood price. A group of people who are respected (or sometimes, if he is respected enough, a single judge) decides where the remaining debt lies, and sets a price that both sides accept. This settles the remaining debt so that peace becomes possible.  The hard part is finding a payment -- weregild or diyya -- that both sides agree makes it even.

In other words, the system actually does make sense once you understand the mechanism at work. My killing your cousin isn't irrational, but rather a measured response based on my sense of how important the various people are within the community of honor.

I think I might have drawn that example of killing the uncle from a passage in a scholarly work, but I have not been able to remember which or to locate in my library or the internet. Even the Scholarly version of the AI doesn't know what I'm talking about, so perhaps my memory is wrong -- more and more often it is not reliable -- but I would happily credit the original source if any of you remember it. I don't know if DanielUSMC happens to be around, but I think I remember discussing it with him long ago; or perhaps Joel Leggett remembers it. Or, as may be more likely, perhaps those old memories are in error. 

Nicomachean Ethics V.4

Book V is quite long; we are perhaps a third of the way through the exploration of aspects of justice.

(B) The remaining one is the rectificatory, which arises in connexion with transactions both voluntary and involuntary. This form of the just has a different specific character from the former. For the justice which distributes common possessions is always in accordance with the kind of proportion mentioned above (for in the case also in which the distribution is made from the common funds of a partnership it will be according to the same ratio which the funds put into the business by the partners bear to one another); and the injustice opposed to this kind of justice is that which violates the proportion.

Here is yet another sort of 'proportionate equality,' and indeed another one that we use regularly today: if two people invest in a partnership, one providing 40% of the investment and the other 60%, they will likely receive dividends in exactly that ratio of 4/6 or 2/3. That's appropriate for business: but today Aristotle will be talking about restitution for harms done.

But the justice in transactions between man and man is a sort of equality indeed, and the injustice a sort of inequality; not according to that kind of proportion, however, but according to arithmetical proportion. For it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad man a good one, nor whether it is a good or a bad man that has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted injury and the other has received it. Therefore, this kind of injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it; for in the case also in which one has received and the other has inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other been slain, the suffering and the action have been unequally distributed; but the judge tries to equalize by means of the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant.

It definitely strikes contemporary readers as strange to say that it doesn't make a difference if a bad man or a good one defrauded the other; after all, what is fraud if not inherently bad? 

Nicomachean Ethics V.3

We continue the exploration of the virtue of justice. This is not intended as a political discussion by Aristotle; he's looking for a human universal that could apply in many different political systems. His political discussion was in the Politics, where he develops a typology of systems and explores each of their advantages, disadvantages, instabilities, and how they can go wrong. Here he is looking at what any sort of society needs its citizens to be like. 

(A) We have shown that both the unjust man and the unjust act are unfair or unequal; now it is clear that there is also an intermediate between the two unequals involved in either case.

Tom was suggesting that this might come up in the earlier discussion. There are two ways to go wrong with justice, unfairness and lawlessness. Here we are talking about fairness. Being unfair involved inequality. Thus, fairness involved equality. 

And this [intermediate] is the equal; for in any kind of action in which there's a more and a less there is also what is equal. If, then, the unjust is unequal, just is equal, as all men suppose it to be, even apart from argument. And since the equal is intermediate, the just will be an intermediate.

Equality poses a number of problems, but here is the first. The principle that equality exists when there is a more and a less is only conceptually true. Assuming you have five things that can't be internally subdivided, there is a more (3) and a less (2) but not an equal. We have ways around this most of the time; for example if there were five rubies, we might sell them and divide the money equally; or we might let the person who got only two rubies choose the two from the five, and the other person got then the three less choice-worthy ones. It is a problem, but not usually an insoluble one. 

Now equality implies at least two things. The just, then, must be both intermediate and equal and relative (i.e. for certain persons).

Here is the second, and practically the much bigger problem:  all men are said to think that equality is fair, but only relative to who they are. Worse than that, men definitely do not agree about what it is that makes them more or less worthy of a larger share of whatever we are dividing: 

Euclid to Einstein

Come for the math, stay for the dueling.

Nicomachean Ethics V.2

 We continue the discussion of justice today, and indeed through the whole of Book V.

But at all events what we are investigating is the justice which is a part of virtue; for there is a justice of this kind, as we maintain. Similarly it is with injustice in the particular sense that we are concerned.

That there is such a thing is indicated by the fact that while the man who exhibits in action the other forms of wickedness acts wrongly indeed, but not graspingly (e.g. the man who throws away his shield through cowardice or speaks harshly through bad temper or fails to help a friend with money through meanness), when a man acts graspingly he often exhibits none of these vices,-no, nor all together, but certainly wickedness of some kind (for we blame him) and injustice. There is, then, another kind of injustice which is a part of injustice in the wide sense, and a use of the word 'unjust' which answers to a part of what is unjust in the wide sense of 'contrary to the law'. Again if one man commits adultery for the sake of gain and makes money by it, while another does so at the bidding of appetite though he loses money and is penalized for it, the latter would be held to be self-indulgent rather than grasping, but the former is unjust, but not self-indulgent; evidently, therefore, he is unjust by reason of his making gain by his act.

This is a strange example. I suppose we are meant to imagine someone committing adultery with a rich married person who bestows presents upon the adulterous lover; or perhaps the adultery is meant to break up a marriage so that the lover can then marry the rich person, thereby increasing their access to wealth. If the adultery is done only out of a desire for the presents and wealth, it is a sort of injustice because it is greedy.

Again, all other unjust acts are ascribed invariably to some particular kind of wickedness, e.g. adultery to self-indulgence, the desertion of a comrade in battle to cowardice, physical violence to anger; but if a man makes gain, his action is ascribed to no form of wickedness but injustice. Evidently, therefore, there is apart from injustice in the wide sense another, 'particular', injustice which shares the name and nature of the first, because its definition falls within the same genus; for the significance of both consists in a relation to one's neighbour, but the one is concerned with honour or money or safety-or that which includes all these, if we had a single name for it-and its motive is the pleasure that arises from gain; while the other is concerned with all the objects with which the good man is concerned.

It is clear, then, that there is more than one kind of justice, and that there is one which is distinct from virtue entire; we must try to grasp its genus and differentia.

This is a challenge that Socrates raises regularly in the Platonic dialogues. Socrates usually presents it as a problem: can you say what a virtue is that is not just 'virtue entire,' but that closely defines what that virtue is that is separate from others? Usually in the Platonic dialogues the discussion proves incapable of doing so; for example, in the Laches they prove incapable of defining courage even though the discussion is among men who have demonstrated courage in battle (including Socrates, who fought heroically at times).