Nicomachean Ethics III.1

In Book III we will get our first fully described virtue, courage. Courage is not the most important virtue for Aristotle -- indeed, it is not even one of his major virtues -- but it is the easiest to conceptualize. It therefore serves as a useful model for the more theoretical ones.

First, however, he wants to say a few more words about the importance of choice on what is or isn't virtue. He has already said once that virtue is only about things where we make a choice; here he expands on that by considering some things that can make our actions compelled or involuntary.

Since virtue is concerned with passions and actions, and on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity, to distinguish the voluntary and the involuntary is presumably necessary for those who are studying the nature of virtue, and useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments. Those things, then, are thought-involuntary, which take place under compulsion or owing to ignorance; and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle in which nothing is contributed by the person who is acting or is feeling the passion, e.g. if he were to be carried somewhere by a wind, or by men who had him in their power.

Emphasis added. This notion of the principle of action being outside is exactly parallel to his model in Physics II.1: "Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes." These 'things' include motions, so if a motion of yours (e.g. an action) exists, either it was caused by your own nature, or it was caused by something else. If it was caused by your nature -- your quest for food, or love, or honor -- then it was an action of yours that must be judged (although it could still have been done in ignorance). If it was caused by something else, like men forcing you as their prisoner, then it was not your action at all: it was involuntary. 

But with regard to the things that are done from fear of greater evils or for some noble object (e.g. if a tyrant were to order one to do something base, having one's parents and children in his power, and if one did the action they were to be saved, but otherwise would be put to death), it may be debated whether such actions are involuntary or voluntary.

As already mentioned, Aristotle will endorse a notion of justice that requires laws that compel virtue; but we will also see that he doesn't value such actions as real examples of the virtue. Hector's courage, for example, he will compare to a soldier whose action on the battlefield is driven by the law rather than by an inner drive; being at least partly externally compelled, it doesn't count for as much in the final judgment. 

Something of the sort happens also with regard to the throwing of goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himself and his crew any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions; for they are worthy of choice at the time when they are done, and the end of an action is relative to the occasion. Both the terms, then, 'voluntary' and 'involuntary', must be used with reference to the moment of action. Now the man acts voluntarily; for the principle that moves the instrumental parts of the body in such actions is in him, and the things of which the moving principle is in a man himself are in his power to do or not to do. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself.

Emphasis added. As in I.3, where we were talking about things that are true "probably" or "for the most part," here too we end up having to make some pragmatic distinctions. It's not a binary: some things are sort-of voluntary, or closer-to voluntary, but there are elements of the involuntary present, unchosen considerations like the storm. 

For such actions men are sometimes even praised, when they endure something base or painful in return for great and noble objects gained; in the opposite case they are blamed, since to endure the greatest indignities for no noble end or for a trifling end is the mark of an inferior person. On some actions praise indeed is not bestowed, but pardon is, when one does what he ought not under pressure which overstrains human nature and which no one could withstand. But some acts, perhaps, we cannot be forced to do, but ought rather to face death after the most fearful sufferings; for the things that 'forced' Euripides Alcmaeon to slay his mother seem absurd. It is difficult sometimes to determine what should be chosen at what cost, and what should be endured in return for what gain, and yet more difficult to abide by our decisions; for as a rule what is expected is painful, and what we are forced to do is base, whence praise and blame are bestowed on those who have been compelled or have not.

After the jump, more on how to decide what is compulsory, is not, and how to balance the judgments. I won't break this chapter up into multiple parts; it's fairly straightforward.

Si Vis Pacem

The videos today are of a sobbing female police officer in the UK crying that nobody from the crowd came to help her. Colonel Kurt points out that the UK has taught its subjects that they aren't entitled to self-defense; how then to expect them to know how, or be willing, to jump in to defend the police? Commenters note that it's even worse that the assailants were Muslims, because in the UK anyone jumping in would also have to fear hate crime prosecutions. The police have to take care of themselves, without necessarily having nearby backup, but it's no longer a hiring consideration whether or not they are physically capable.

Now one place that female police work pretty well is in Japan. Japanese society is intensely rule-following and group-harmony-directed. The odds of violence being turned against the police are very low there, so polite requests from the police and security personnel are usually sufficient. There too, however, they're finding themselves at a loss to deal with the assault situation from Islamic tourists. Fortunately in that case the assault was merely spittle. 

In both of these countries the police are generally not armed, so their congruent lack of physical strength and size is doubly risky. Disarming yourselves and trusting to the kindness of others is only fit for the hoped-for world to come; in our world, a government strong enough to make that viable has proven tyrannical.

For fear of his yasa and punishment his followers were so well 

disciplined that during his reign no traveller, so long as he was 

near his army, had need of guard or patrol on any stretch of road ; 

and, as is said by way of hyperbole, a woman with a golden 

vessel on her head might walk alone without fear or dread. 

And he enacted minute yasas that were an intolerable imposition 

upon such as the Taziks, e.g. that none might slaughter meat in 

the Moslem fashion nor sit by day in running water, and so on. 

The yasa forbidding the slaughter of sheep in the lawful manner 

he sent to every land ; and for a time no man slaughtered sheep 

openly in Khorasan, and Moslems were forced to eat carrion. 

-Juvayni, Ala-ad-Din 'Ata-Malik, trans. John Andrew Boyle, The History of the World Conqueror (Harvard: 1958), 272.

Safe enough for the submissive, but intolerable all the same. 

250 Years of USMC Service "Rifles"

The earliest ones are not technically rifles but muskets. This is an official Marines.mil site, so you can enjoy the history with confidence in spite of that little conflation on their part.

The Horrors of Syria

The Assad regime carried out mass bureaucratic murder. That story is quite horrifying; you may not wish to read it. I will not quote the more harrowing details here.

Inside the prison, a pair of concrete buildings ringed by razor wire on a mountainside near Damascus, Assad’s regime carried out industrial-scale torture and death that likely killed tens of thousands of people over more than a decade. The regime orchestrated the killing in a bureaucratic manner rarely seen in recent history. Assad’s security apparatus kept meticulous records of the detainees’ transfer to the prison and other facilities, court documents and death certificates of those executed. 

“It’s the worst atrocity of the 21st century in terms of the number killed and the way a government was directly involved,” said Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes. “I do draw a line to the Nazis and to Soviet Russia in terms of the organized nature of state terror.”

...

In addition to the many thousands killed in organized executions, former detainees and war crimes experts say perhaps an equal number of people died in Saydnaya from torture and extreme conditions, including beatings with pipes and rods, along with starvation, thirst and disease.... 

The hundreds who walked free in December represented a tiny minority among the many thousands of Syrians who went missing during the war. Some 160,123 Syrians were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime throughout the war according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a respected watchdog group.

The war also displaced more than thirteen million people, millions of them still refugees in Europe and elsewhere. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.9

This is the last chapter of Book II.  

That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence also it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get angry- that is easy- or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.

This is the point I was making in the update to the Bladesman's post. Because this is a pragmatic ethics, it is about adapting yourself to the world. It's not a purely internal exercise, where you determine how much courage or temperance or justice is right for your soul. You have to be right not just for yourself, but for the external situation. Sometimes more or less will be needed because the challenge you are facing is greater or lesser.

Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart from what is the more contrary to it, as Calypso advises-

Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.

Obviously that is the only way to push off in a ship, so the Homeric reference may seem superfluous. Unlike Plato, who was constantly at war with the poets, Aristotle has the greatest respect for Homer especially. It conveyed to his students, especially Alexander: "Aristotle taught Alexander and his companions about medicine, philosophy, morals, religion, logic, and art. Under Aristotle's tutelage, Alexander developed a passion for the works of Homer, and in particular the Iliad; Aristotle gave him an annotated copy, which Alexander later carried on his campaigns."  

For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils; and this will be done best in the way we describe. But we must consider the things towards which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent.

This is a restatement of yesterday's point about love of pleasure being much more dangerous than insensibility to pleasure, for example. He continues on the subject: 

Now in everything the pleasant or pleasure is most to be guarded against; for we do not judge it impartially. We ought, then, to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the people felt towards Helen, and in all circumstances repeat their saying; for if we dismiss pleasure thus we are less likely to go astray. It is by doing this, then, (to sum the matter up) that we shall best be able to hit the mean.

The reference is to Iliad 3: "The two sages, Ucalegon and Antenor, elders of the people, were seated by the Scaean gates, with Priam, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like cicales that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, 'Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvellously and divinely lovely. Still, fair though she be, let them take her and go, or she will breed sorrow for us and for our children after us.'"

But this is no doubt difficult, and especially in individual cases; for or is not easy to determine both how and with whom and on what provocation and how long one should be angry; for we too sometimes praise those who fall short and call them good-tempered, but sometimes we praise those who get angry and call them manly. The man, however, who deviates little from goodness is not blamed, whether he do so in the direction of the more or of the less, but only the man who deviates more widely; for he does not fail to be noticed. But up to what point and to what extent a man must deviate before he becomes blameworthy it is not easy to determine by reasoning, any more than anything else that is perceived by the senses; such things depend on particular facts, and the decision rests with perception. So much, then, is plain, that the intermediate state is in all things to be praised, but that we must incline sometimes towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for so shall we most easily hit the mean and what is right.

That's fair enough. This is hard work, and our reason can only get us so far sometimes given the depths of emotional entanglement and the difficulty of the problems. Sometimes we'll go astray, but if we err in the wisest direction we'll be closer to what was best.  

Managerialism vs. Democracy

It's really just an updated version of what Weber said a long time ago -- see the sidebar for that commentary -- but it is where we are.

[Democracy] risks extinction because the authorities that run our societies seem to find the practice, values, and very spirit of democracy to be increasingly intolerable.

In France, where the ruling government maintains power despite being the most widely hated in decades, the most popular candidate of the most popular political party has been barred from challenging that government in upcoming elections, on legal grounds that are openly political.

In Romania, when the “wrong” outsider candidate appeared poised to win an election, authorities canceled the election outright and then had him arrested, the unelected national security state inventing entirely unsupported excuses about foreign meddling to justify their coup d’état against the democratic process.

In Germany, the state has now begun the process of banning the country’s most popular party, supported by more than a quarter of the voting population, in order to avoid facing any real political opposition. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary,” is how a former European Commissioner confidently foreshadowed events on live television a few months ago....In Brazil, a single Supreme Court judge, in alliance with the country’s leftist president, has effectively established a judicial dictatorship, locking up political rivals by decree, silencing the speech of opposition figures, and utilizing state leverage over the financial system to punish political enemies by banishing them from public economic life. 

But of course Brazil’s authorities learned these tactics by observation. Observation of Canada, to be precise, where Justin Trudeau’s government first employed debanking — along with a little brute force — as a tool to crush peaceful protest of his draconian and disastrous pandemic lockdown policies. 

As we've just seen in the Epstein case, even when a rejected candidate gets elected they often go along with the managers. The managers are the real danger; they are the real problem. Getting rid of them will not be accomplished by elections. What else?

An Actually-Helpful Suggestion

The boys at Free Beacon are misunderstanding this Russian offer, I think. 

"Russia has technological solutions for uranium depletion and is ready to work with Iran in this field," Lavrov said in remarks published by Iran’s state-controlled media. "We have technological capacities and we are ready to offer them, taking the excess of overly enriched uranium and returning the power-generation-grade uranium to the Islamic Republic and its nuclear facilities."

I understand that to be offering to take the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) remaining in Iran off their hands, and trading it for uranium that is a better fit for the power generation the Iranians claim to want.* That would be unsuitable for weapons production, and put Iran on a more plausible path towards having nuclear power but not a weapons program. 

Getting Iran's remaining stockpiles of HEU out of Iran's hands is helpful. Russia is already a nuclear power, so this wouldn't be a risk for proliferation. As long as Iran didn't set up its enrichment centrifuges again, everyone could relax if they gave up their HEU for reactor-grade material. 

* The distinction has to do with the isotopes found in the Uranium, 238 versus 235. An unnaturally high purity of U-235 is necessary to build nuclear weapons. You only need about 20% for power generation, 95% for weapons. Thus, the comment about 'overly enriched uranium' strikes me as one about getting rid of the stuff they've been working on for the weapons program. 

Complex Attack

A reasonably decent analysis of the Alvarado attack. The author is using the language of military intelligence, including specifying MLECOA and MDECOA (you’ll see it spelled out at the link). His alternative is that one I think is actually the most likely. 

A “complex attack” is one in which more than one element is involved, e.g. instead of just opening fire with a rifle, first setting off explosions and then opening fire. In Iraq, a common version was to use an IED to disable an American convoy, and then hit it with a team using small arms fire once the American soldiers dismounted. Here, an attention-drawing fireworks attack drew out law enforcement, who were then ambushed by shooters. 

Nicomachean Ethics Interlude: A Bladesman's Insight

In the comments to the post below, I mentioned that the 'balancing point' I keep talking about in my commentary is my own insight and not something I'm getting out of Aristotle's text. He uses words that are translated as "mean" or "intermediary," and students sometimes go wrong by missing that he doesn't mean the exact average or middle point. He is quite explicit about that repeatedly, as I've pointed out, but it remains a common misconception.

By the way, when I talk about the 'balancing point,' that's my own way of describing what Aristotle is after. He doesn't use that phrase or anything like it, but I think it's helpful in thinking about how a 'mean' or 'intermediate' can be 'closer to one end than the other.'

I'm thinking of that thing we do to test the balance of a blade, where you put it longways across one finger and find where it balances. The blade may be longer than the hilt, but the hilt is more densely constructed; if so, the blade's tip may be much further out from your finger than the tip of the hilt, but it balances there. That's just another analogy, of course, and it's one I'm creating and importing to the text. It's not there in the original; I just find it helpful in conceptualizing the model.

Here is what I mean by that.

Balancing point on a Type XII arming sword, common c. 13th century.

Balancing point on a typical American Bowie knife.

As you can see, the balancing point is sometimes much closer to the middle, and sometimes much closer to one end than the other. The blade is balanced perhaps well forward of the guard, perhaps nearly upon it. Sometimes it's the exact middle of the blade, which we sometimes refer to as 'perfectly balanced,' but sometimes the tip of the blade extends well beyond the balancing point.

Again, it's just another analogy, and it's mine instead of Aristotle's. If you find it helpful in conceptualizing the point he's making about finding the exactly right place between two extremes, however, that's good. Use the analogy as far as it is useful. 

It does amuse me to wonder if Aristotle's most famous student had this insight, and if he brought it to his master's attention. That student was well-familiar with such tools! If so, however, it didn't survive to us in the text.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that I ought to point out that blades are balanced the way they are for a reason: even if we speak of a 'perfectly balanced' blade as being in the exact middle, that doesn't mean another way is wrong. A perfectly balanced knife is good for throwing, though you can throw any of them if you can figure out their rotation properly. I enjoy axe throwing, and usually the axes aren't balanced with that consideration at all. You just have to figure out how far away you have to stand to have them strike at the correct point in their rotation.

A rapier (and similarly, thrusting weapons) is often balanced 'towards the hilt' as this allows the point to be moved rapidly and precisely to a desired position. Having most of the weight closer to the hand, or in the hand, means that smaller and gentler movements can be used to direct the point to exactly where you want it to go.

A slashing weapon is often balanced 'towards the blade.' This is because a sword is essentially a lever, and the lever's effect is greatest at the opposite end of the lever rather than in the middle. Since F=ma, putting more of the mass towards the place where the lever will exert more force on it increases the acceleration the lever produces, and thus the force of impact. 

All of these considerations also have analogs to ethics. Ethics is about getting things inside us right to deal with the world outside of us. Thus, we too may find that the correct balancing point is sometimes here, and sometimes over there. It's not an operation of looking inside of ourselves and determining how much bravery, or anger, or temperance is best for us: we also have to consider how much the external situation requires.

Departments of Analysis

Noting a 'professor of American studies' who wants to dismantle America, this Substack asks: 

Ironically, she’ll be teaching this anti-American rhetoric for Macalester’s American Studies Department. More like Anti-American Studies?

Well, no; the business of analyzing anything is the business of breaking it apart. That is what the word "analysis" means.

1580s, "resolution of anything complex into simple elements" (opposite of synthesis), from Medieval Latin analysis (15c.), from Greek analysis "solution of a problem by analysis," literally "a breaking up, a loosening, releasing," noun of action from analyein "unloose, release, set free; to loose a ship from its moorings," in Aristotle, "to analyze," from ana "up, back, throughout" (see ana-) + lysis "a loosening," from lyein "to unfasten" (from PIE root *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart").

There's a Chinese critique of the Western way of learning that we study a flower by cutting it into its component parts, then studying each in turn to understand the whole. We generate a deeper understanding, but we also thereby destroy the flower and its beauty.

When I was studying at the University of Georgia, one of their lawyers told me that they got by far the most civil rights complaints from the Department of Religion, because students would take courses on their own religion and be deeply offended at the analysis of its core claims. Naturally a department of 'American Studies' is going to do the same thing for America. 

You might say, "Well, Grim, what about the department of Women's Studies? Isn't that for promotion of women's interests?" "What about African-American studies?" Perhaps those departments are intended in that way; but look at the effect it has on the people who study them. The ones I know who've gone on to happiness have done so by walking away from the department's core claims and embracing a more traditional life at least in those core elements. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.8

This chapter is a fairly technical spelling-out of how Aristotle conceives of his model. It's an analog to mathematics, but it isn't meant to be a mathematical model, just like one. His model for motion in the Physics in which there are two contraries and a substrate is the real model, as I have already mentioned. We are, in this case, the substrate that unifies the contraries and allows for motion between them: we have the capacity to be cowardly or brave, and can shift our position between those extremes in search of the right balancing point.

There are three kinds of disposition, then, two of them vices, involving excess and deficiency respectively, and one a virtue, viz. the mean, and all are in a sense opposed to all; for the extreme states are contrary both to the intermediate state and to each other, and the intermediate to the extremes; as the equal is greater relatively to the less, less relatively to the greater, so the middle states are excessive relatively to the deficiencies, deficient relatively to the excesses, both in passions and in actions. For the brave man appears rash relatively to the coward, and cowardly relatively to the rash man; and similarly the temperate man appears self-indulgent relatively to the insensible man, insensible relatively to the self-indulgent, and the liberal man prodigal relatively to the mean man, mean relatively to the prodigal. Hence also the people at the extremes push the intermediate man each over to the other, and the brave man is called rash by the coward, cowardly by the rash man, and correspondingly in the other cases.

That's a good point about how we perceive each other, as well as the effect we tend to have on each other in deliberating together. The rash man thinks of the brave man as cowardly; and by associating with the rash, the brave man may move away from the correct balancing point as they draw him towards their position. It's important to choose your friends carefully if you are to live the best life. 

These states being thus opposed to one another, the greatest contrariety is that of the extremes to each other, rather than to the intermediate; for these are further from each other than from the intermediate, as the great is further from the small and the small from the great than both are from the equal. Again, to the intermediate some extremes show a certain likeness, as that of rashness to courage and that of prodigality to liberality; but the extremes show the greatest unlikeness to each other; now contraries are defined as the things that are furthest from each other, so that things that are further apart are more contrary.

To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not rashness, which is an excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to courage, and not insensibility, which is a deficiency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that is more opposed to temperance.

Another demonstration that the 'mean' he keeps talking about is not the middle point: sometimes one of the extremes is more opposed to the 'mean' than the other, i.e., the right balancing point may not be in the exact middle. 

This happens from two reasons, one being drawn from the thing itself; for because one extreme is nearer and liker to the intermediate, we oppose not this but rather its contrary to the intermediate. E.g. since rashness is thought liker and nearer to courage, and cowardice more unlike, we oppose rather the latter to courage; for things that are further from the intermediate are thought more contrary to it.

Again, "one extreme is nearer," i.e., we aren't talking about the 'mean' in a strictly mathematical sense even though that term is preferred by translators. The mathematical similarity is analogical, rather than logical.

This, then, is one cause, drawn from the thing itself; another is drawn from ourselves; for the things to which we ourselves more naturally tend seem more contrary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves tend more naturally to pleasures, and hence are more easily carried away towards self-indulgence than towards propriety. We describe as contrary to the mean, then, rather the directions in which we more often go to great lengths; and therefore self-indulgence, which is an excess, is the more contrary to temperance.

Another good point about human psychology by Aristotle: relatively few of us are inclined to being insensible to pleasure, so it's really self-indulgence we're guarding against on that particular scale. The other contrary doesn't hold much interest for most of us.  

Classical Schooling

I'm amused with this post on education at the Orthosphere, and approve greatly of the author's unapologetic use of sed contra (and without explanation, assuming a familiarity with Aquinas' work among his readers).

There is a much simpler reason to prefer the Greeks, and to some degree the Romans, as a starting point for a young person's education. Their works are where the foundations of all human forms of enquiry are laid, as written by many of the finest minds in human history who happened to be in dialogue with each other -- sometimes directly, otherwise by only a few years' distance through many common companions. A good education in the Classics prepares you for any other subject because it provides you a grounded position from which to understand the changes in your particular field. 

What we tend to do instead is skip the classics, give a bad version of Newtonian physics to a subset of high school students (how many recent high school graduates do you know who could explain the Ideal Gas Law?), and still have to tell them when they get to college that we only gave (some of) them an antiquated system that needs multiple updates. A few weeks or months with Aristotle at the beginning will better prepare them for the revolution that was Newton, which will mentally prepare them for the further revolutions that were Relativity and Quantum Theory. They will understand the whole thing better for having started at the beginning, and seen the stones on which the initial groundworks were laid.

It's also very beneficial to learn different ways of thinking about the same problems. Just having an alternative mental position that you can adopt for the sake of perspective often sheds new light on any problem that has you stuck.

In any case, I wanted to quote a section because it touches on our ongoing discussion of empathy. He is not using the term in the specific sense that I do, and indeed seems to switch back and forth between 'empathy' and 'sympathy' as is common, but he is making the same point:

Fiction teaches empathy.  Where’s the evidence?  The literary don’t seem to me to cast the net of their sympathy particularly widely.  Fiction doesn’t teach intellectual empathy (being able to think inside other peoples’ belief systems).  Nor does it teach one better to empathize with others from an epistemic distance–I already know how to sympathize with someone when I’m in his head (i.e. no different from sympathizing with myself)

What it teaches you to do is to imagine yourself in the position described, and assume that what you would feel is what the character would feel. That is empathy in the original sense, the art-project sense of creating a character or an image in art that causes the audience to respond to it as if they were in the thing. It is illusory, however: just as he says, it doesn't do anything to help you actually understand someone who is intellectually or epistemically different from you; also as he says, the artists are often very selective in what they want you to imagine yourself being. Not Homer, though: he freely offers you the chance to empathize with Hector and his wife and children, the same as Odysseus and his.

Mimetic Justice

This is one of those cases where everyone knows they're lying, and they know we know, but they persist. At least it's opening a few eyes to how much one cannot trust the government. 

UPDATE: Team Trump is catching semi-friendly fire over the US Steel deal too. 

Nicomachean Ethics II.7

By the standards of modern books, these are very dense sections: they aren't very long, strictly speaking, but there's a lot to understand in every sentence.

We must, however, not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual facts. For among statements about conduct those which are general apply more widely, but those which are particular are more genuine, since conduct has to do with individual cases, and our statements must harmonize with the facts in these cases.

This is usefully conferred with Rhetoric I.1, where Aristotle makes a similar point about well-constructed laws: "it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges." His considerations about the difficulty of finding good judges, and the danger of partisanship and faction, are also valid here.

We may take these cases from our table. With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who exceeds in confidence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confidence is a coward.

As I have often said here, courage is the exemplary virtue. It is the model by which all the others are understood. There will be more on it later. 

With regard to pleasures and pains- not all of them, and not so much with regard to the pains- the mean is temperance, the excess self-indulgence. Persons deficient with regard to the pleasures are not often found; hence such persons also have received no name. But let us call them 'insensible'.

One occasionally hears of people who are not sexually attracted to other human beings, for example. 

With regard to giving and taking of money the mean is liberality, the excess and the defect prodigality and meanness. In these actions people exceed and fall short in contrary ways; the prodigal exceeds in spending and falls short in taking, while the mean man exceeds in taking and falls short in spending. (At present we are giving a mere outline or summary, and are satisfied with this; later these states will be more exactly determined.) With regard to money there are also other dispositions- a mean, magnificence (for the magnificent man differs from the liberal man; the former deals with large sums, the latter with small ones), an excess, tastelessness and vulgarity, and a deficiency, niggardliness; these differ from the states opposed to liberality, and the mode of their difference will be stated later.

As he says, these states will be examined in greater detail later; this is just an initial outline to make the plan of the work clear. 

With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of 'empty vanity', and the deficiency is undue humility; and as we said liberality was related to magnificence, differing from it by dealing with small sums, so there is a state similarly related to proper pride, being concerned with small honours while that is concerned with great. For it is possible to desire honour as one ought, and more than one ought, and less, and the man who exceeds in his desires is called ambitious, the man who falls short unambitious, while the intermediate person has no name. The dispositions also are nameless, except that that of the ambitious man is called ambition. Hence the people who are at the extremes lay claim to the middle place; and we ourselves sometimes call the intermediate person ambitious and sometimes unambitious, and sometimes praise the ambitious man and sometimes the unambitious. The reason of our doing this will be stated in what follows; but now let us speak of the remaining states according to the method which has been indicated.

Immanuel Kant also makes the point that excess humility is a kind of servility that is unworthy. (If anyone wishes to compare, Ak. 6:434-7; he treats 'proper pride' and arrogance at 6:465-6. In Kant's system these things that are connected in Aristotle are separated: Kant conceives of ethics not principally as virtues, though he talks about all these virtues, but as duties. The duty not to be servile is a duty to one's self; the duty not to be arrogant and to restrain your pride appropriately is a duty to others. Thus, they appear in different places in his work.)

With regard to anger also there is an excess, a deficiency, and a mean. Although they can scarcely be said to have names, yet since we call the intermediate person good-tempered let us call the mean good temper; of the persons at the extremes let the one who exceeds be called irascible, and his vice irascibility, and the man who falls short an inirascible sort of person, and the deficiency inirascibility.

There are also three other means, which have a certain likeness to one another, but differ from one another: for they are all concerned with intercourse in words and actions, but differ in that one is concerned with truth in this sphere, the other two with pleasantness; and of this one kind is exhibited in giving amusement, the other in all the circumstances of life. We must therefore speak of these too, that we may the better see that in all things the mean is praise-worthy, and the extremes neither praiseworthy nor right, but worthy of blame. Now most of these states also have no names, but we must try, as in the other cases, to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow.

The above seems to move us to art again, rather than to virtue; he's talking about the 'virtue' of being a good rather than a poor entertainer. But the ethical issues remain, as becomes apparent:  

With regard to truth, then, the intermediate is a truthful sort of person and the mean may be called truthfulness, while the pretence which exaggerates is boastfulness and the person characterized by it a boaster, and that which understates is mock modesty and the person characterized by it mock-modest. With regard to pleasantness in the giving of amusement the intermediate person is ready-witted and the disposition ready wit, the excess is buffoonery and the person characterized by it a buffoon, while the man who falls short is a sort of boor and his state is boorishness. With regard to the remaining kind of pleasantness, that which is exhibited in life in general, the man who is pleasant in the right way is friendly and the mean is friendliness, while the man who exceeds is an obsequious person if he has no end in view, a flatterer if he is aiming at his own advantage, and the man who falls short and is unpleasant in all circumstances is a quarrelsome and surly sort of person.

Friendship will prove to be quite important in the later books of the EN; truth-telling is obviously a moral concern. Being witty remains a surprising addition, but since it is tied to being able to make and keep friends, you can at least see the connection.  

There are also means in the passions and concerned with the passions; since shame is not a virtue, and yet praise is extended to the modest man. For even in these matters one man is said to be intermediate, and another to exceed, as for instance the bashful man who is ashamed of everything; while he who falls short or is not ashamed of anything at all is shameless, and the intermediate person is modest. Righteous indignation is a mean between envy and spite, and these states are concerned with the pain and pleasure that are felt at the fortunes of our neighbours; the man who is characterized by righteous indignation is pained at undeserved good fortune, the envious man, going beyond him, is pained at all good fortune, and the spiteful man falls so far short of being pained that he even rejoices. But these states there will be an opportunity of describing elsewhere; with regard to justice, since it has not one simple meaning, we shall, after describing the other states, distinguish its two kinds and say how each of them is a mean; and similarly we shall treat also of the rational virtues. 

That is the plan for the next few parts. 

Migration Problems

Mexicans are unhappy about American aliens invading their neighborhoods.

In handwritten signs and graffiti, the protesters made their anger at the influx of foreigners who have recently settled in Mexico City clear:

“Gringo, go home!” “Speak Spanish or Die!” “Gentrification is colonization!”...

 Foreign remote workers began relocating in large numbers to Mexico City during the coronavirus pandemic, settling largely in central, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods such as Condesa and Roma.

Jarring many longtime residents, these areas have developed into bastions where more English than Spanish is spoken in some sidewalk cafes, and in which co-working spaces, Pilates studios, specialty food stores and clothing boutiques have sprouted, catering to the recent arrivals.

I've already written the post about this, but the disruption of communities is an unrecognized human universal that our society has no good way of talking about. It doesn't really matter if the migration is legal or illegal in terms of the destruction of existing communities and ways of life. 

It doesn't matter if it's internal to a nation, even, as I observed watching Northern American citizen migrants to Atlanta overrun and destroy the way of life where I grew up. It was the same problem: 

Ms. Sheinbaum also acknowledged the demonstrators’ concerns, and how tempers are flaring in Mexico City, North America’s largest metropolis, around the arrival of thousands of relatively well-off foreigners, especially from the United States. Many longtime residents are fuming over rising rents and food prices in parts of the city.

“The playing field is not level,” said Daniela Grave, a resident attending the protest. “If they make a living in dollars, and don’t pay taxes here, we are just in unequal circumstances, Mexicans and foreigners, where those who have salaries in dollars have all the power to exert in this city and that is what should be regulated.”

What happened between the 1970s and the 1990s was that a whole lot of corporations moved South, where everything was cheaper. Their workers could also then move South, selling a home in New York City that was worth enough to buy a big home in Atlanta or to build a McMansion in one of the small towns nearby. Those small towns quickly became suburbs instead of small towns; the farmland was bought up and turned into subdivisions.

Everyone who had lived there was priced out and had to leave the place where their parents and grandparents had lived. Property values went up, so taxes went up to the point that you couldn't keep the family home. All the extra money brought inflation, too. As your neighbors sold out and left, churches shrank or closed, the old family-run shops were sold and replaced with cheaply built chains, and all your friends drifted away until there was nobody left.

We really need a better way to address this human universal of meaning and community, and to address how it gets lost in mass migration -- whether of poor workers to rich countries, or rich workers to poorer, cheaper ones.

Nicomachean Ethics II.6b

If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well- by looking to the intermediate and judging its works by this standard (so that we often say of good works of art that it is not possible either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the goodness of works of art, while the mean preserves it; and good artists, as we say, look to this in their work), and if, further, virtue is more exact and better than any art, as nature also is, then virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate.

That's a long deduction with two questionable assumptions.  (A) IF every art does its work well by creating works that can't be improved either by adding or taking away; (B) AND IF virtue is more exact and better than any art (as nature is); (C) THEN virtue must have the quality of aiming at this intermediate point of balance.

So (A∧B)⊃C, for those of you who want to study philosophy formally. Or, you can put it this way: 

(Assumption) A
(Assumption) B
∴ C

The deduction follows if the assumptions are true. Are they true? 

It isn't clear to me that the first assumption is true. In The Singer of Tales, Albert Lord demonstrates that much of the heroic poetry of the Homeric tradition was oral by nature, and part of a performance was to edit it to fit the audience's interest level and available time. For that audience, such a shortening or stretching improved the work; but arguably no such work was an actual improvement over Homer's version. These are of course two different works, and one could argue that each performance has to hit the right balancing point ("intermediate" or "mean") for its audience. However, one can also admit that there is nothing wrong with Homer's work -- that's why it has endured for millennia -- even though it could be improved for a particular audience by editing it (or even stretching it, although it's already quite long). 

The second assumption turns on an important ambiguity in what it means to be 'better than.' Aristotle says here that nature is better than any art; and in Physics II and elsewhere, he says that 'art imitates nature.' However, as we have already discussed, art has a crucial role in perfecting the flaws found in nature, as by improving eyesight when the natural eye is weak. If art can perfect nature, it can't be 'less good' because you perfect something by bringing it to a greater good than it had by itself. 

I suspect this means that 'good' is being used in two senses here. Nature is the source of everything to which we might apply an art, and creates the basic things that our arts can only improve upon but not make from nothing. In that sense, nature is higher and better than art. Yet art must have a 'good' to offer insofar as it is being applied; and that good is based upon the ability of us to understand the reasoning behind the created thing (telos) so that we can intuit how to improve it. 

Given the structure of the deduction, if either of the assumptions are false, the deduction fails. That doesn't mean the conclusion is false; it just means that the logic itself cannot guarantee the truth of the conclusion. 

I mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Similarly with regard to actions also there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. Now virtue is concerned with passions and actions, in which excess is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate is praised and is a form of success; and being praised and being successful are both characteristics of virtue. Therefore virtue is a kind of mean, since, as we have seen, it aims at what is intermediate.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult- to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue;

For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

Aristotle's understanding of what he sometimes calls "the so-called Pythagoreans" is helpfully explained here.

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices,* that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.

* Or three, or more; when we get to courage you will see that he has two different defects on the excess side of the ledger. 

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft, murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to do any of them is to go wrong.

There is no virtuous way to commit adultery, then; and he mentions murder as well. It's worth thinking about all those 'would you go back to kill Hitler' thought experiments, then. The only reason to consider such a thing (were it possible) is that it might be virtuous; here we are told there can be no right way to do it.  

It would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly, and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess, and a deficiency; for at that rate there would be a mean of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, and a deficiency of deficiency.

This is a very Aristotelian point.  

But as there is no excess and deficiency of temperance and courage because what is intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and deficiency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean.

All of that will become clearer once we get to the examples of specific virtues.  

Riding Report: I-40 at the Pigeon

Yesterday I took I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge for the first time since Hurricane Helene. The interstate was closed again by recent flooding, but is now partly re-opened. I do not recommend it at this time. 

The road is beautiful, running through impressive sections of the Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests and near the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, it is still greatly congested due to the fact that only one lane is open each way in places. Semis and other heavy traffic need that road to get over the border without having to make long detours. 

On the other hand, US 25/70 was much clearer than it was when I went through a couple weeks ago. It's now resumed its normal role as a scenic highway by the beautiful French Broad River. If you're planning a ride, or are in a passenger car, you might want to take the scenic route and leave the interstate to the big rigs. You'll probably get there faster anyway.

One of my fellows on yesterday's ride had a battery cell failure, which first caused him to need to seek a jump box from fellow travelers at the rest stop, and then caused the bike to fail entirely outside of Newport, Tennessee. I gave him a lift into town. Fortunately there was an auto parts store close to the interstate that sold the right kind of battery for his bike. Of course he dropped one of the bolts into the middle drive, so we had to fish for it with a magnet for a long time in the very hot July sun. Eventually, however, we got back underway.

It's a whole lot hotter down in the valley. Here on the mountain today it is 82, which is about as hot as it gets up here. I've seen it as high as 84. If you ride up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is as much as 2,500 feet higher than I am here, it's pleasant camping weather. If any of you are considering that, the Grandfather Mountain Scottish Highland Games is next weekend. It is one of my old favorites, part of our honeymoon trip 26 years ago and an event we have returned to many times. Pack rain gear, though: it's pleasant, but this time of year you can bet on a good hard rain for at least a half-hour of every afternoon. 

The Spirit of Rebellion

 

UPDATE: 

Happy Independence Day.