Nicomachean Ethics IX.4

On neighbors, and loving them -- at least in the friendly way (philia, in the Greek, not eros or one of the several other 'love' words as we discussed in VIII.3). This is usually thought to be one of the most important chapters of the work.

Friendly relations with one's neighbours, and the marks by which friendships are defined, seem to have proceeded from a man's relations to himself.

This is the second hint of the definition of 'a friend' as 'another self,' which will become central to the concept. The first was in VIII.12. 

For (1) we define a friend as one who wishes and does what is good, or seems so, for the sake of his friend, or (2) as one who wishes his friend to exist and live, for his [i.e. the friend's own] sake; which mothers do to their children, and friends do who have come into conflict. And (3) others define him as one who lives with and (4) has the same tastes as another, or (5) one who grieves and rejoices with his friend; and this too is found in mothers most of all. It is by some one of these characteristics that friendship too is defined.

Now each of these is true of the good man's relation to himself (and of all other men in so far as they think themselves good; virtue and the good man seem, as has been said, to be the measure of every class of things).

This was also established in the pivotal I.3. I usually cite that to remind us 'to seek precision in different disciplines at the appropriate levels, but also, "Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge[.]" Thus, the man who knows virtue and proves it by being virtuous is a good judge of virtue, or at least the particular virtue that he has (e.g. courage).   

For [the good man's] opinions are harmonious, and he desires the same things with all his soul; and therefore he wishes for himself what is good and what seems so, and does it (for it is characteristic of the good man to work out the good), and does so for his own sake (for he does it for the sake of the intellectual element in him, which is thought to be the man himself); and he wishes himself to live and be preserved, and especially the element by virtue of which he thinks. For existence is good to the virtuous man, and each man wishes himself what is good, while no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become some one else (for that matter, even now God possesses the good); he wishes for this only on condition of being whatever he is; and the element that thinks would seem to be the individual man, or to be so more than any other element in him. And such a man wishes to live with himself; for he does so with pleasure, since the memories of his past acts are delightful and his hopes for the future are good, and therefore pleasant. His mind is well stored too with subjects of contemplation. And he grieves and rejoices, more than any other, with himself; for the same thing is always painful, and the same thing always pleasant, and not one thing at one time and another at another; he has, so to speak, nothing to repent of.

The argument above, simplified, is just that the goods one wishes for one's friend are the same as one pursues for one's self.  

Therefore, since each of these characteristics belongs to the good man in relation to himself, and he is related to his friend as to himself (for his friend is another self), friendship too is thought to be one of these attributes, and those who have these attributes to be friends. Whether there is or is not friendship between a man and himself is a question we may dismiss for the present; there would seem to be friendship in so far as he is two or more, to judge from the afore-mentioned attributes of friendship, and from the fact that the extreme of friendship is likened to one's love for oneself.

Very often the above in bold is cited as the conclusion of Aristotle's enquiry into friendship: that the friend is another self (as was just demonstrated by the argument about wanting the same things for one's self that one does for one's friend). 

In this way, Aristotle has independently arrived at the conclusion that one ought to 'love one's friend as one's self'; and, since he began this chapter with the example of the friendship between neighbors, 'to love one's neighbor as one's self.' 

But the attributes named seem to belong even to the majority of men, poor creatures though they may be. Are we to say then that in so far as they are satisfied with themselves and think they are good, they share in these attributes? Certainly no one who is thoroughly bad and impious has these attributes, or even seems to do so. They hardly belong even to inferior people; for they are at variance with themselves, and have appetites for some things and rational desires for others. This is true, for instance, of incontinent people; for they choose, instead of the things they themselves think good, things that are pleasant but hurtful; while others again, through cowardice and laziness, shrink from doing what they think best for themselves.

So bad people aren't entirely capable of friendship, precisely because they don't even love themselves in the right way. How can you expect to wish the best for your 'other self' if you can't and don't do it for your own self? 

And those who have done many terrible deeds and are hated for their wickedness even shrink from life and destroy themselves. And wicked men seek for people with whom to spend their days, and shun themselves; for they remember many a grevious deed, and anticipate others like them, when they are by themselves, but when they are with others they forget. And having nothing lovable in them they have no feeling of love to themselves. Therefore also such men do not rejoice or grieve with themselves; for their soul is rent by faction, and one element in it by reason of its wickedness grieves when it abstains from certain acts, while the other part is pleased, and one draws them this way and the other that, as if they were pulling them in pieces. If a man cannot at the same time be pained and pleased, at all events after a short time he is pained because he was pleased, and he could have wished that these things had not been pleasant to him; for bad men are laden with repentance.

Is it true that bad men are laden with repentance, or that wicked men are? If one is thinking of drunkards as 'wicked men,' surely; they have hangovers, which feel like regret and sadness as well as pain. But it's not true of men like Blackbeard, who died defiantly rather than remorsefully; nor as far as we can tell of Aristotle's student Alexander, who put many men to the sword and thought it pleasant. Indeed, it isn't even true that Alexander would have thought himself wicked, although another pirate -- Blackbeard's ancient ancestor, perhaps -- once pointed Alexander's wickedness out to him.  Or so we are told on the authority of St. Augustine's City of God, in a chapter devoted to how alike kingdoms are to robbery!

Therefore the bad man does not seem to be amicably disposed even to himself, because there is nothing in him to love; so that if to be thus is the height of wretchedness, we should strain every nerve to avoid wickedness and should endeavour to be good; for so and only so can one be either friendly to oneself or a friend to another.

Leaving aside the question of whether all sorts of wickedness (or only some) produce repentance, the chapter closes with the proof that one ought to be good ourselves if only so we can be true friends to others -- or even ourselves. The proof is a reasonable one. If one ought to wish what is best for one's self, one ought to wish for virtue (since it is excellence in any category of human action, as established in Book I); and then, knowing how to properly wish it for one's self, one can properly wish it for one's friends. Thus one can be a true friend, as well as a good person.  

A Rare Political Post

Introduction

This is not an advocacy post for anything; it's purely an attempt to understand the current moment. I don't have any positive suggestions on policy, and only one on managing our own place in the context; otherwise just thoughts on the conflict that other people seem very upset about. Several other posts provoked these thoughts, which I will link below.

In his post on Sunday links, AVI posted an article by Rob Henderson called "The Rage of the Failing Elite." I think the piece captures the youth-ish part of the opposition: in other words, the part that isn't captured by the "Whiteness and Oldness" narrative that AVI was interrogating the other day. It's not really a new idea; I've seen versions of it for years. The notion is that we're overproducing 'elites' of various sorts among the young, who are striving for positions that really don't exist; and they are aggrieved about finding that all that effort and expense was based on an illusion.

Part I: The Oldness and Whiteness

However, I think the real rage is on the side of the white and old part of the opposition. Not because, curiously, they are either white or old (except incidentally in the latter part because it is related to the contexts of their lives). It's because they spent their whole lives as devotees of the Liberal concept that dominated politics from FDR's time (and thus was well-settled when they were growing up) through LBJ's time (when they were young and formulating their political identites). They aren't progressives or socialists or Marixsts, they're liberals who are watching this titanic order destroyed in front of their eyes. 

Heather Cox Richardson, on that side, frames the issue this way during a long discussion of how much she thinks that the collapse of that state will hurt poor and weak people: 

"Trump is trying to make the impasse between the parties about the shutdown, but that obscures the actual fight at hand. What is at stake is the theory behind the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act: the destruction of the modern American government that was put in place in the 1930s by Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and expanded from then until 1981 under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Today’s fight is about the cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk as head of the 'Department of Government Efficiency,' and cuts made after Musk left the administration by Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought. 

"Republicans have embraced the destruction of the modern government, slashing SNAP benefits, Medicaid, cancer research, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and so on. The Democrats are defending the government that has been in place since the 1930s, focused on leveling the playing field between the very wealthy and ordinary Americans.  Trump is determined to resurrect the pre–New Deal system in the United States and refuses to entertain any notion that his vision will not work."

There is some structural truth to that criticism, but such a change -- though titanic -- merely parallels the changes of Woodrow Wilson or FDR or LBJ. They're just in the other direction. Yet it's legally just as permissible to change the one way as the other; and it's not unreasonable to prefer a solution that is closer to what the Constitution actually says. These systems in many ways affront the Constitution's language, passing vast power and control out of the elected government and into the unelected bureaucracy. That's not obviously more legitimate than trying to restore a more strictly constitutional order.

Part II: Kindness, Unkindness, and the Stopping of Thought

In addition to watching the institutions destroyed that they believed in, and considered part of upholding a more just and better social order, they had a general ethic of being "nice" and, even more importantly, of being "kind." All this blatant destruction is being done by people who are willing to not be nice and not be kind. Trump's mockery of them isn't nice and it isn't kind, and it enrages them as much because of that as because they're the targets of it: indeed, they seem angrier when they aren't the targets of it. They were much madder about the Mariachi videos targeting Hispanic politicians than about anything pointed at old and white liberals.

Nor are they entirely wrong about that. I tend to find Trump's antics amusing and buffoonish, meant to mock rather than to harm; and since all of these politicians very much deserve to be mocked, I often even find the mockery healthy. Most of Trump's supporters, especially the red-hat wearing, dancing on truck MAGA crowd, seem to be having a lot of fun rather than being motivated by anger or hatred. Yet some of the most repellent people of the present moment really are those -- coincidentally also usually old and white -- on Trump's side who feel a deep hate for their political opponents. They are in their way just as repellent as the young Marxists who muse about how nice it would be if more Republicans and conservatives were killed. 

None of these genuinely repellent types have any real power, though. They're both of them raging away and making life less pleasant for the rest of us, but they don't actually control any levers for either side. The Democratic Party is motivated by the public sector unions and their big corporate and tech donors, to include Bezos' ex-wife who is flooding the zone with donations. They care about the donations, not really about any of the apparent things they are fighting over rhetorically.

The repellent ones on the Republican side are just angry old men whose bitterness instantly causes them to be rejected as serious by anyone at all. The Republicans will take their votes, and may performatively listen to them with social media posts, but won't actually be motivated to follow their ideas -- insofar as they have ideas, which is rare since they're too busy being angry to think. When they say something that sounds like an idea, it usually turns out to be just them applying an old heuristic from their youth to a current problem without further examination; but heuristics are shortcuts to thought, not actual thought; they're 'this usually works' ready-made solutions that can be applied without further thinking about it.

And, in fairness, those old and white liberals are also doing exactly the same thing from their side: they just have different heuristics. When you hear someone on that side saying that something is "apartheid," that's them stopping themselves from having to think further about the problem and applying a ready-made solution. There's no further examination of whether that language is appropriate, or actually a good analogy, or if there's a better analogy, or if there's even a more-generous way of considering the other side's view. Everything stops once the problem is labeled "apartheid" -- we don't need to think any further than that, we just need to oppose it resolutely and consider that side to be moral monsters. They deploy language like that all the time: genocide, apartheid, 'a kind of segregation,' 'MAGA is just like the KKK.'

Chesterton wrote a whole chapter called "The Suicide of Thought" which warns about 'thoughts that stop thoughts.' It only imperfectly applies here, but the general warning about allowing your thinking to be stopped cold with labels and heuristics carries over.

Part III: A Very Limited Sort of Solution

I feel weirdly disconnected from this fight. All of those factions believe in much larger and more powerful government and government programs than I do. Trump might be trying to overturn some of the New Deal constitutional order -- which could be rephrased, 'to restore the actual constitutional function to the Federal government' -- but he wants to replace it with a presidency as powerful as Woodrow Wilson's was, with the support of a Supreme Court and a legislative branch that would pass genuinely unconstitutional laws against freedom of speech and of criticizing the government. Meanwhile, pace Heather Cox Richardson, I still feel like the poor and the weak would be better off without government assistance, which always comes along with government control of the intimate spaces of our lives that they are offering to 'assist' us with; the lives of the poor and weak might not immediately improve by the loss of transfer payments, but eventually they would figure out how to feed and house themselves and be freer for it.

They have a lot more they agree about than any of them agree with me. It's just unpleasant to watch them being so upset all the time, driving these cycles of rhetorical conflict that occasionally -- at the fringes -- result in real but pointless violence. Even the violence isn't really going to change anything because it doesn't touch the actual levers of power. 

So I've largely disconnected from politics, but I still have to deal with the older of my relatives (who are, of course, also white) who are very upset and given to explosions of rage about politics for the first time in their lives. I don't want them to win or to get their way, so I won't support their protests or striving; I'll just try to get them to talk about something besides politics while we're together.

Increasingly that's hard. The Big Show is occupying everyone's thoughts; even I'm writing about it this morning, when Aristotle would be a better use of my time. It's hard to let go of the drama thrust constantly before us, but I think it is the wisest course.

AI rules

I continue to be amazed at what Grok can do. I think I posted some months back about the neighbor's child custody case that I've been drawn into. I'm trying to keep costs down by helping the family lawyer with whatever parts I'm competent to do, not knowing any family law to speak of and having no experience at all in state court.

To my amazement, you can ask Grok what to do when the opposing party fails to respond timely to a motion to transfer the San Antonion case to the my county, where the child lives, then belatedly asks the San Antonion court to reconsider the uncontested order transferring the case after the transfer is complete, even if there really was something wrong with the original motion (filed after a statutory deadline by now-former counsel; I hired my neighbor a new one). That's not a easy issue to research from scratch on-line without any experience in family court, but it didn't bother Grok at all. It spit out a very serviceable motion to dismiss and brief after only a bit of back and forth. When the family court in San Antonio granted the motion to reconsider despite its clear loss of jurisdiction even to hear it, Grok can convert the brief to a petition for a writ of mandamus in a heartbeat. Now, I read all the statutes and cases and ran the whole thing by the family lawyer to be sure Grok wasn't taking me for a ride, but honestly, it was good work. I'd have been happy to get it from a talented young associate after a week of work.

Last night I asked what to do when I needed a business-record affidavit from a doctor, but his office didn't want to bother with notarizing the affidavit. Grok instantly laid out 3-4 things that get past the obstacle, including using an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury instead of one signed on oath and witnessed by a notary. (I'm terrible with business records, since in my practice we stipulated admissibility of documents 100% of the time, or the bankruptcy courts would have had our heads on spikes for wasting time and money.) Alternatively, there are subpoenas duces tecum or depositions on written questions that get around the roadblock and yield admissible documentary evidence without the need to bring a custodian of records into the courthouse for live testimony, but also without thoroughly irritating potentially helpful medical staff by making them show up for a deposition.

Then I asked, OK, how about the body-cam video that the county doesn't want to produce under the Public Information Act (a/k/a state version of FOIA), citing a privilege because the video relates to an ongoing criminal DUI case, and another privilege because the video might affect the privacy of a minor? Instantly Grok said, skip arguing with the county and the state AG's office, just go to the family judge and ask him to compel production, because he can override a privilege in the best interests of the child, and he's used to it as a routine matter.

It's like having a mentor who can set you off the right direction, and he doesn't even make you go look up the statutes, he has the citations right there, and will draft cover letters and motions to compel and whatever you need. Could I ever have made good use of this tool way back when! It beats Westlaw research by a mile. And it's scot-free. I'm probably helping bring the grid down, but hey. I just want this 13-year-old to live with her sane grandma.

Nicomachean Ethics IX.3

When should you end a friendship?

Another question that arises is whether friendships should or should not be broken off when the other party does not remain the same. Perhaps we may say that there is nothing strange in breaking off a friendship based on utility or pleasure, when our friends no longer have these attributes. For it was of these attributes that we were the friends; and when these have failed it is reasonable to love no longer. But one might complain of another if, when he loved us for our usefulness or pleasantness, he pretended to love us for our character. For, as we said at the outset, most differences arise between friends when they are not friends in the spirit in which they think they are.

Fair enough, is it not? If you chose a friend because he amused you, you'd quit spending time with him if he didn't keep doing that; if you chose a friend because he was rich and bought you nice dinners, his poverty might end your friendship. Yet if you had convinced him that you really admired and respected him, and that's why you came to his dinners, he might reasonably be annoyed.

So when a man has deceived himself and has thought he was being loved for his character, when the other person was doing nothing of the kind, he must blame himself; when he has been deceived by the pretenses of the other person, it is just that he should complain against his deceiver; he will complain with more justice than one does against people who counterfeit the currency, inasmuch as the wrongdoing is concerned with something more valuable.

But if one accepts another man as good, and he turns out badly and is seen to do so, must one still love him? Surely it is impossible, since not everything can be loved, but only what is good. What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not one's duty to be a lover of evil, nor to become like what is bad; and we have said that like is dear like. Must the friendship, then, be forthwith broken off? Or is this not so in all cases, but only when one's friends are incurable in their wickedness?

This advice is a problem for Christians, who are advised to forgive everything and love their enemies. I don't have an answer to that problem. I'm just acknowledging it.

If they are capable of being reformed one should rather come to the assistance of their character or their property, inasmuch as this is better and more characteristic of friendship. But a man who breaks off such a friendship would seem to be doing nothing strange; for it was not to a man of this sort that he was a friend; when his friend has changed, therefore, and he is unable to save him, he gives him up.

In a way I find that comment to be a strange thing for Aristotle to say, even though it's a perfectly ordinary sentiment that I don't think is controversial. The point of the Ethics is that virtue is a habitual character that is formed by repetition of good habits into firm characters. Here we see an acknowledgement that characters can deform, too, presumably in the same way: by bad habits that are allowed to continue unchallenged for a long time.

But if one friend remained the same while the other became better and far outstripped him in virtue, should the latter treat the former as a friend? Surely he cannot. When the interval is great this becomes most plain, e.g. in the case of childish friendships; if one friend remained a child in intellect while the other became a fully developed man, how could they be friends when they neither approved of the same things nor delighted in and were pained by the same things? For not even with regard to each other will their tastes agree, and without this (as we saw) they cannot be friends; for they cannot live together. But we have discussed these matters.

Also a little surprising, this time because the emphasis is not on helping your friend -- here the friend doesn't even need to be 'saved,' as just a moment ago was the case in the paragraph before. It's about abandoning him for not becoming as virtuous as you did. And how virtuous is that, if you abandon your old friends because they stayed the same as they were when you were coming up together?

Also, how can you not be friends because they have childish intellects compared with your own? Children are often the most sincere of friends; except for their grandparents, perhaps, who befriend the children with a deep love and intensity. Aristotle has treated the family relationship as different from friendship, but in my experience it is of great value to pursue friendships with those much older, or much younger, than you are. Our habit of tending to keep to our own cohort is greatly limiting in terms of the experience we are exposed to (when younger) or that we convey (when older); and it is limiting in our perspectives as well. I already know what the world looked like to someone who grew up in the American South of the 1970s and early 80s; I can still learn what it looks like to someone who is coming up today.

I do get the point, of course. The young sometimes seem to not know anything at all, and teaching them the context they need to understand the problems can be tiresome. Yet it is worthy to do so, and far less laborious than trying to 'save' a fallen friend. As for the ones who never changed, well, managing consistency in an ever-changing world is not always to be despised.

Should he, then, behave no otherwise towards [the unchanged friend] than he would if he had never been his friend? Surely he should keep a remembrance of their former intimacy, and as we think we ought to oblige friends rather than strangers, so to those who have been our friends we ought to make some allowance for our former friendship, when the breach has not been due to excess of wickedness.

I met an old friend the other day that I hadn't seen in more than twenty years. It turned out we had nothing to say to each other. She seemed to be doing well, and to have a perfectly satisfactory life without me imposing upon it; and while I remember her very gladly, I didn't feel that it was necessary or appropriate to press a renewal of our friendship. Probably something like that is what he means here; we remain friendly, but allow each other to pass by. If she had needed something of me, it would have been different; but she clearly didn't, and had learned to make her way without me. It's ok that we change, and move on, and lose touch even with treasured companions; that's the way the world works. We were together for a time, and mattered to each other once; once, but long ago. 

Counting Costs

"What Happened in Gaza Might Even Be Worse than We Think," says the NY Times, perhaps not understanding how I would ordinarily use the word "worse." Whatever happened, I would regard it as a sad end to a lingering problem that was definitely going to end one way or the other. Hamas asked God to bring them into a reckoning with Israel through a titanic act of blood magic via human sacrifice; whatever happened to them was devoutly prayed for by them. I trust God's justice and mercy in such matters.

Indeed, even death in such circumstances can be a release from worse situations; if you do trust in divine mercy, as one might given that our entire heritage points at it as a thing we should believe in, thousands of years of men and women living and dying believing in it, you might hope for that.

But anyway, this piece is nonsense.

For many Americans, there might be a temptation to disbelieve the enormity of what has happened in Gaza. After all, it is a catastrophe funded by our money, made possible by our weapons, condoned by our government and carried out by one of our closest allies. It’s little wonder that some want to downplay the damage.

Their defense is to cast doubt on the numbers. It goes something like this: The death toll, counted by the Hamas-run health ministry, must be an exaggeration to court international outrage. If it isn’t, then most of those killed were Hamas fighters, surely, not civilians. Either way, it can’t be worse than other horrors elsewhere, in South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which we Americans are blameless. Taken together, it’s a potent repertoire of deflation and denial.

That's definitely not what I said; what I said was that Israel wasn't being any worse than we usually are at conducting intense urban warfare in the Middle East. And definitely not, indeed, than other Muslims do in wars that don't get called "genocide."

I don't think the current war in Israel is an example of genocide because the Israelis don't really seem to be trying to exterminate Palestinians as such, nor so far even to expel them from Gaza (as I frankly expected they would) in order to create a larger buffer zone given the October 7th demonstration that they were currently very vulnerable. The 50,000 figure killed is a tiny percentage of the total population of Palestinians, and 2.5% even of the population within Gaza -- a pretty restrained bit of killing given the intensity of the fighting and Israel's clear superiority in weapons.

Likewise, it doesn't extend to conflicts within a group: in the Syrian civil war, for example, fourteen million people were forced out of their homes and many killed or harmed, but nobody thought it was a genocide. There was even a religious difference here and there, Alawites and Muslims, Shi'ites and Sunnis, and even ethnic differences between Arabs and Kurds (who sometimes appeal to ancestral faiths as well). It wasn't thought a genocide all the same.

That was in May. So her account of the "unusually rigorous" count by the Hamas-run health ministry and her proposed supplements to it amounts to this: "If de Waal is anywhere close to right, this conflict will have killed 7.5 percent of the prewar population of Gaza in just two years."

So that's three times the estimate from May, which I agree was shockingly low. As someone who has participated at length in wars in the Middle East involving large urban populations in tight spaces, though, that 7.5% guess remains remarkable for its discriminate limits. I don't know how you'd fight for two years in such a densely populated urban area without depopulation of half the population. Assad definitely didn't do that. The current population of Syria is ~25 million; 14 million people were displaced in the war. 

Seven and a half percent, at the top of the estimate, giving them every inch of the wiggle room they're asking? 

If the Jews had done no better than us fighting in Mosul or than Assad did in and around Damascus, we'd still have nothing to say. But in fact the Israelis did better, and fought cleaner, even with people who hated them more than Iraqis ever hated us. I had lovely chicken dinners with Iraqis who'd been trying to kill us not that long before, including officers of the Special Republican Guard. We got along great; I really liked that one former general I met while doing that. (We called him a Sheikh, but he wasn't really; he was urban, not tribal. He had been really a general.) It was nothing like the hatred that the Israelis and the Palestinians have going on. Yet the Israelis took much better care of their enemies than we ever did.

Nicomachean Ethics IX.2

Today we turn to the problem of experts. It's a real problem: if you aren't an expert in a given field, you can't identify those who are. How would you? But we need experts.

Mostly Aristotle lays out the problem today, so I will just let him do that without comment.

A further problem is set by such questions as, whether one should in all things give the preference to one's father and obey him, or whether when one is ill one should trust a doctor, and when one has to elect a general should elect a man of military skill; and similarly whether one should render a service by preference to a friend or to a good man, and should show gratitude to a benefactor or oblige a friend, if one cannot do both.

All such questions are hard, are they not, to decide with precision? For they admit of many variations of all sorts in respect both of the magnitude of the service and of its nobility necessity. But that we should not give the preference in all things to the same person is plain enough; and we must for the most part return benefits rather than oblige friends, as we must pay back a loan to a creditor rather than make one to a friend. But perhaps even this is not always true; e.g. should a man who has been ransomed out of the hands of brigands ransom his ransomer in return, whoever he may be (or pay him if he has not been captured but demands payment) or should he ransom his father? It would seem that he should ransom his father in preference even to himself. As we have said, then, generally the debt should be paid, but if the gift is exceedingly noble or exceedingly necessary, one should defer to these considerations. For sometimes it is not even fair to return the equivalent of what one has received, when the one man has done a service to one whom he knows to be good, while the other makes a return to one whom he believes to be bad. For that matter, one should sometimes not lend in return to one who has lent to oneself; for the one person lent to a good man, expecting to recover his loan, while the other has no hope of recovering from one who is believed to be bad. Therefore if the facts really are so, the demand is not fair; and if they are not, but people think they are, they would be held to be doing nothing strange in refusing. As we have often pointed out, then, discussions about feelings and actions have just as much definiteness as their subject-matter.

That we should not make the same return to every one, nor give a father the preference in everything, as one does not sacrifice everything to Zeus, is plain enough; but since we ought to render different things to parents, brothers, comrades, and benefactors, we ought to render to each class what is appropriate and becoming. And this is what people seem in fact to do; to marriages they invite their kinsfolk; for these have a part in the family and therefore in the doings that affect the family; and at funerals also they think that kinsfolk, before all others, should meet, for the same reason. And it would be thought that in the matter of food we should help our parents before all others, since we owe our own nourishment to them, and it is more honourable to help in this respect the authors of our being even before ourselves; and honour too one should give to one's parents as one does to the gods, but not any and every honour; for that matter one should not give the same honour to one's father and one's mother, nor again should one give them the honour due to a philosopher or to a general, but the honour due to a father, or again to a mother. To all older persons, too, one should give honour appropriate to their age, by rising to receive them and finding seats for them and so on; while to comrades and brothers one should allow freedom of speech and common use of all things. To kinsmen, too, and fellow-tribesmen and fellow-citizens and to every other class one should always try to assign what is appropriate, and to compare the claims of each class with respect to nearness of relation and to virtue or usefulness. The comparison is easier when the persons belong to the same class, and more laborious when they are different. Yet we must not on that account shrink from the task, but decide the question as best we can.

Nicomachean Ethics IX.1

Aristotle begins the ninth book with a curious decision: he compares friendship to contractual relations in business. 

In all friendships between dissimilars it is, as we have said, proportion that equalizes the parties and preserves the friendship; e.g. in the political form of friendship the shoemaker gets a return for his shoes in proportion to his worth, and the weaver and all other craftsmen do the same. Now here a common measure has been provided in the form of money, and therefore everything is referred to this and measured by this...

Yes, that's what makes it a curious decision: we normally consider friendship to be entirely unlike the relationships we pay for, or take pay to have. 

...but in the friendship of lovers sometimes the lover complains that his excess of love is not met by love in return though perhaps there is nothing lovable about him), while often the beloved complains that the lover who formerly promised everything now performs nothing. Such incidents happen when the lover loves the beloved for the sake of pleasure while the beloved loves the lover for the sake of utility, and they do not both possess the qualities expected of them. If these be the objects of the friendship it is dissolved when they do not get the things that formed the motives of their love; for each did not love the other person himself but the qualities he had, and these were not enduring; that is why the friendships also are transient.

That paragraph again refers to the Greek homoerotic structures, which don't exist in our culture. There might be some general lessons for those who use love relationships as a way of getting practical goods ('utility,' Aristotle is calling that). 

But the love of characters, as has been said, endures because it is self-dependent. Differences arise when what they get is something different and not what they desire; for it is like getting nothing at all when we do not get what we aim at; compare the story of the person who made promises to a lyre-player, promising him the more, the better he sang, but in the morning, when the other demanded the fulfilment of his promises, said that he had given pleasure for pleasure. Now if this had been what each wanted, all would have been well; but if the one wanted enjoyment but the other gain, and the one has what he wants while the other has not, the terms of the association will not have been properly fulfilled; for what each in fact wants is what he attends to, and it is for the sake of that that that he will give what he has.

I'm guessing 'lyre players' were the guitar players of his day. But now we reach an important question:

But who is to fix the worth of the service; he who makes the sacrifice or he who has got the advantage? At any rate the other seems to leave it to him. This is what they say Protagoras used to do; whenever he taught anything whatsoever, he bade the learner assess the value of the knowledge, and accepted the amount so fixed. But in such matters some men approve of the saying 'let a man have his fixed reward'. Those who get the money first and then do none of the things they said they would, owing to the extravagance of their promises, naturally find themselves the objects of complaint; for they do not fulfil what they agreed to. The sophists are perhaps compelled to do this because no one would give money for the things they do know. These people then, if they do not do what they have been paid for, are naturally made the objects of complaint.

Protagoras gave his name to a Platonic dialogue, which turns on the question of whether virtue can be taught (if it is, as Socrates believed, a form of knowledge then it ought to be able to be taught, as Protagoras claimed to do). If you could teach virtue successfully you might well let your students set your rate of pay; after all, being now virtuous men, they would doubtless treat you equitably. 

Unfortunately, perhaps, we already know that Aristotle disproved Socrates' claim that virtue is a sort of knowledge. Can it be taught, then? Yes, because it is a sort of practice. It turns out not to be something that you can understand, but it is something that you can do. You can do it over and over until it becomes habitual for you, until it shapes your character.

But where there is no contract of service, those who give up something for the sake of the other party cannot (as we have said) be complained of (for that is the nature of the friendship of virtue), and the return to them must be made on the basis of their purpose (for it is purpose that is the characteristic thing in a friend and in virtue).

Yes, this is another reason why this is a curious comparison. We write contracts to govern relationships where friendship is absent, because the trust that you will be treated well is also consequently absent. We use the enforceable law as a substitute, as it were, for friendship.  

And so too, it seems, should one make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot be measured against money, and they can get no honour which will balance their services, but still it is perhaps enough, as it is with the gods and with one's parents, to give them what one can.

I trust you will all reflect on the wisdom of that paragraph. 

If the gift was not of this sort, but was made with a view to a return, it is no doubt preferable that the return made should be one that seems fair to both parties, but if this cannot be achieved, it would seem not only necessary that the person who gets the first service should fix the reward, but also just; for if the other gets in return the equivalent of the advantage the beneficiary has received, or the price lie would have paid for the pleasure, he will have got what is fair as from the other.

I'm not sure how well that principle works. It seems to hang on an unstated assumption that the services will be of roughly equal value, which may not be the case. 

We see this happening too with things put up for sale, and in some places there are laws providing that no actions shall arise out of voluntary contracts, on the assumption that one should settle with a person to whom one has given credit, in the spirit in which one bargained with him. The law holds that it is more just that the person to whom credit was given should fix the terms than that the person who gave credit should do so. For most things are not assessed at the same value by those who have them and those who want them; each class values highly what is its own and what it is offering; yet the return is made on the terms fixed by the receiver. But no doubt the receiver should assess a thing not at what it seems worth when he has it, but at what he assessed it at before he had it.

That is definitely not how we operate today; but in spite of the fact that our cultural heritage contains strict limits on usury, in fact usury has become the norm.  

Strongman Day

One last time. 

UPDATE:

Easy day. Those things only weigh 175 pounds, it turns out.