Aristotle’s Ethics: Politics and the Nature of Man

To quickly review the first post on the Hillsdale course Aristotle’s Ethics, there were three main points.

1. We are looking for an appropriate level of precision and evidence. The precision and evidence expected of mathematics is different from that expected for biology, history, etc.
2. There is a hierarchy of “good” in things, pursuits, methods, etc. Some things, pursuits, methods, etc., are more valuable than others. I think it is easier to think of it as a hierarchy of value, maybe, but the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) consistently calls it good, the good, goods, etc.
3. This hierarchy is established first by the theory that if something exists for the sake of something else, that something else is a higher good, or more valuable.

The example was the work of the bridle maker, which, in ancient Athens, was for the sake of having cavalry, and cavalry was for the sake of military victory, and that was for the sake of preserving the city-state. So, the work of the bridle maker is good, but that of the cavalryman is a higher good, that of the general even higher, and the existence of the city-state yet higher. I surmised that this would make the work of citizenship, political engagement, the highest form of work.

The very highest goods exist for their own sake, like happiness.

Aristotle's Ethics: The Good

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Hillsdale College's free online course on Aristotle's Ethics, taught by Larry P. Arnn. Since our host seems to know a bit about Aristotle (ahem), I thought I would bring discussion questions here. The focus of the course is appropriately the Nicomachean Ethics, but there are readings in other works as well.

I don't plan to just rehash the lessons. Instead, I will take thoughts and questions the lesson sparked in me, develop them a bit, and bring them here for discussion. I am going through one lesson each week. If time allows, I will then post one discussion topic here each week. I will also include a link to the lesson at Hillsdale’s website.

There is a key point in the first lesson that I think will bear on all of the lessons. In the third chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle plainly states that we can't be equally precise in all things (e.g., physics vs. history vs. justice). He acknowledges that topics such as the beautiful, justice, and goodness involve great disagreement and depend on convention, and in fact can include inconsistencies, as some things considered good can result in harm. Therefore, "one ought to be content ... to point out the truth roughly and in outline," and in general when speaking and reasoning about things that are true for the most part, to reach conclusions that are also true for the most part. This seems quite reasonable to me.

One last point before we get started is that my goal in these 10 lessons is to understand Aristotle’s ideas. As such, I don’t plan to spend much time trying to pick them apart. I learn by trying to apply, so my discussion topics will focus more on trying to apply or extend Aristotle's ideas than on whether or not I agree with Aristotle. Once I feel like I have a reasonable understanding, I might then try to pick some of his ideas apart, but I want to understand first. You, on the other hand, should feel free to attack his ideas right away. That's your business.

I'll get to the first lesson, "The Good," under the fold.

Introduction to Aristotle's Ethics at Hillsdale College

Hillsdale College is offering a free course on Aristotle's Ethics, "Introduction to Aristotle's Ethics: How to Lead a Good Life," taught by college president Larry P. Arnn. Here are the topics:

1. The Good
2. Aristotle's Politics and the Nature of Man
3. Happiness
4. Character
5. Deliberation and Choice
6. Courage
7. Justice
8. Practical Judgment 
9. Friendship
10. Contemplation and Action

The course is open to start whenever you want. There is a forum if you want to post back and forth with others taking the course.

There is a short reading from Aristotle, 2-4 pages or so, for each lecture, and the video lectures take about 30 minutes or so. It seems designed to take about an hour or so per topic.

I'm slowly working my way through it, and it's interesting so far. I would recommend it if, like me, you haven't had much time for studying Aristotle but wish you had.

The Tea Party and Aristotle's Rhetoric, Part 2: The Three Means of Persuasion

This series is both an exploration of the Tea Party and of Aristotle's rhetoric, so feel free to comment on either. Please don't feel that you need to discuss the topic through Aristotle.

In Part 1, I explained why I thought the Tea Party had been weakened by a failure to understand and use rhetoric skillfully. As a way of exploring this, and how to correct it, I used Christof Rapp's SEP article, Aristotle's Rhetoric. The main points from that post and the resulting discussion are that Aristotle believed the best use of rhetoric was to persuade people with the truth, that a form of syllogistic reasoning called the enthymeme was an excellent way to do that, and that the Tea Party needs to find common ground with the public and other movements from which to begin pursuing their goals. In Part 2, I will begin exploring the technical aspects of rhetoric and how the Tea Party could improve.

Aristotle's Rhetoric claims that there are three technical means of persuasion. That is, these means depend on a method, and the method depends on knowing what is and isn't persuasive. In addition, 'technical' implies that these are things provided by the speaker, not pre-existing conditions.

These technical means are "(a) in the character of the speaker, or (b) the emotional state of the hearer, or c) in the argument (logos) itself." The speaker wants to seem credible by displaying practical intelligence, a virtuous character, and good will, all in his speech. Emotions can change our judgments, so the speaker must arouse the hearers' emotions, and to do that he must have a good understanding of human emotion. Finally, the speaker should demonstrate to the audience what the situation is, persuading by argument.

Of the three, Aristotle emphasizes the argument, and he gives two methods for it. Induction works from particulars to a universal, using examples. Deduction works from things already believed to something different being necessarily true because of those presuppositions. In rhetoric, deduction uses the enthymeme, a form of syllogism, but one in which, because we lack complete knowledge, is of necessity somewhat less formal than the logical syllogism. Typically, they take the form of 'if - then' or causal 'since' or 'for' clauses.

E.g., 'If X is the case, we should do Y,' or 'since X is the case, ...' or 'X is the case, for Y results in X and we know Y is true.'

From this discussion, it seems to me that the Tea Party could do better in all three technical areas. One problem with coming to grips with the problem, however, is that everything the Tea Party says or does is distorted by the lefty media (i.e., most mainstream media). For example, the media and the Tea Party's political opponents (but I repeat myself) have done a good job of character assassination, so has the Tea Party failed to do what it could to establish its good character, or has its massive opposition simply outshouted it? It's hard to say, but I certainly think the Tea Party could do a better job with all three techniques.

Probably the Tea Party's single biggest rhetorical failure is in understanding the emotional state of the audience. Actually, I believe the Tea Party has seriously erred in understanding who the audience is. The proper audience is that great middle of the electorate who are not already politically opposed and who could be persuaded. Too often, Tea Partiers publicly speak as if they are talking to other Tea Partiers or to their acknowledged political opponents. This is why, I think, their rhetoric is too often extreme: they are stoking the fires of the base, or they are attacking their enemies. There's a time and place for both of those, but mostly the Tea Party needs to understand those who are unaligned and persuadable and adjust their rhetoric to persuade them. Those are the emotions it is important to understand and work with.

The Tea Party and Aristotle's Rhetoric

Ace accuses the Tea Party of being hostile to considering popular opinion in their positions. For this reason, he considers them "a movement not of politics but of political philosophy." His criticism is not for their beliefs, but rather that their insistence on ignoring popular opinion naturally limits their power, and he wants them to be politically powerful, to maybe even replace the Republican Party.

I have seen first-hand what Ace is talking about. I was one of the organizers for a local Tea Party group, but after the rest of the leadership insisted on ideological purity rather than getting results, I left the movement. To be fair, they thought ideological purity would get the results they wanted. However, while I am sympathetic to the idea that one man and the truth are a majority, elections don't work that way. I could (and still can) see some ways in which Tea Party concerns are shared by the base of the left, and if we could frame things the right way, and cut some deals, we could achieve some important objectives.

Compromise, especially with the left, was not interesting to the rest of the leadership. They wanted all or nothing, believing they could get it all if only they were pure enough. They saw the left as very real enemies who could not be dealt with. Although it was never said, I got the impression that compromising with leftist groups, even if it got results we wanted, would sully the movement and should be disdained. We had to win by outright defeating them; that was the only acceptable answer. Completely outnumbered and believing that to be a destructive, unreasonable attitude, I decided to leave.

In two ways I see this as a failure of rhetoric. First, I was not able to convince them of my position. I knew what I believed, and I still believe the organization I was in would have gotten better results from my methods, but I wasn't able to reach the rest of the leadership. Second, the Tea Party itself has done a very poor job of persuading America of its positions, and its poor use of rhetoric has made it easy for the statist media to label it extremist, and even conservatives who should be sympathetic to attack it.

Since then, I have begun to appreciate the value of rhetoric, as Aristotle conceived of it. Aristotle sees the skilled rhetorician as someone who, in any given situation, knows what would be persuasive. Like the exercise of military power, the exercise of political power depends on momentum. The important thing is to get a mass of people, all at roughly the same time, who support your goals enough to give you power (money, work, votes, etc.), not the purity of that mass's beliefs. In order to build momentum, you need to persuade disparate groups of people that they would rather support your movement over any other that they might have sympathies with. Skill in rhetoric is essential for that.

Aristotle believed that the best use of rhetoric was to persuade people with the truth. A number of other ancient Greeks had written about rhetoric, but Aristotle linked it to logic and dialectic by proposing the enthymeme, a form of syllogistic reasoning, as the basis of rhetoric. A popular audience could not be expected to follow a long train of logical or dialectical reasoning, so the enthymeme was a simpler, looser form of logic. For that reason, some look down on the enthymeme -- it accepts conclusions that a stricter logic would not. But the questions of society are often not amenable to strict logic: there are too many unknowns, or there simply are no accepted truths about a topic from which to form a first premise. It is in these gray areas where the strictest logic cannot get very far that rhetoric can be quite useful.

The main objection to adjusting the Tea Party's rhetoric as well as to compromising with leftist groups is lack of trust. The reason the Tea Party became a necessity in the first place is a long series of betrayals by allegedly conservative politicians. This is a valid point, but I believe the answer is in honesty, not a demand for ideological purity. A rhetorically sophisticated Tea Party could have been, and could still be, much more influential than it is without compromising its ideals. I think the key to that is to be completely honest with everyone all the time about what the movement and its leadership are doing.

Instead of having a hidden agenda, like the left, the Tea Party should declare its goals openly, and then work toward achieving them in stages. Sometimes that might mean allying with political opponents in order to achieve a small step forward. The way to do that and not be a sell-out or look like one is to be honest about what is going on, put it all up on the net, and be willing to walk away from alliances that do not advance the goals. When the rank and file ask, 'why are we working with those dirtbags in the Occupy movement?', the leadership can honestly reply with the specific, previously stated goal they are working together to achieve, why the temporary alliance is valuable, and of course by pointing out that the alliance is temporary: as soon as we achieve X, we'll go back to fighting them. There are times in war when two mortal enemies agree to a cease-fire, a prisoner exchange, or another form of cooperation that benefits both sides. If the Tea Party insists that such a thing is treason, then it has chosen to be of very limited effect, and very possibly part of the problem.

Being part of the solution doesn't mean picking your hill to die on, not for an American. Our way is to let the other side die for their beliefs, whether literally or figuratively. Our way is to win, and winning requires effectiveness. In politics, that means getting good at rhetoric and compromise. Right now the Tea Party is telling the truth in angry, ugly ways that isolate it and strip it of effectiveness. It is essential for them to learn to tell the truth persuasively in a way that invites outsiders join in, a way that builds momentum, a way that actually has a chance of saving this republic.

Aristotle on Causality

I'm moving into Aristotle's Physics and it depends heavily on his theories of causality, so I thought I'd start with Andrea Falcon's SEP article on that.

According to Falcon, Aristotle proposes that we have knowledge of a thing only when we understand its causes, and he proposes four possible causes: material, formal, efficient, and final.

The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue. 

The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue. 

The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child. 

The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.

The final cause for a statue is the statue itself.

With the final cause, Aristotle's theory is teleological; the purpose of a thing is a kind of cause of it. Because of this, he has been accused of anthropomorphizing nature, attributing to it psychological reasons for the way things are. However, while the theory can take desire, intention, etc., into account, the final causes of natural things don't require psychological causes. For example, Aristotle explains that the 'final cause' for why frontal teeth are sharp and back teeth are flat is because that is the best arrangement for the survival of the animal.

A couple of other key points are that, in studying nature, we should look for generalities. We aren't concerned about exceptions; we are trying to discover the rules. He also doesn't require that we use all four causes. In some cases,  like the bronze statue, the formal and final causes are the same. In some cases the efficient cause is enough. For example, Aristotle explains a lunar eclipse with an efficient cause: the earth comes between the moon and sun.

The idea of a final cause was controversial in Aristotle's day. (I think it became controversial again in the 18th or 19th century.) Many philosophers* proposed that material and efficient causes were good enough. Aristotle claimed that material and efficient causes alone failed to account for regularity. If we ask, why are front teeth sharp and back teeth flat, material and efficient causes alone leave us with coincidence; animals produce offspring like themselves, and that's it. There is no reference to this arrangement making survival easier. Final causes, on the other hand, allow us to say that teeth are arranged that way to make survival easier; they explain the regularity in ways that material and efficient causes do not.

Leaving Falcon behind for a moment, why did final causes become controversial in the 18th or 19th century? Because teleological explanations seem to imply Nature has a personality. Before this time, Christian philosophers who adopted Aristotle would often point to God to provide final causes: Why were front teeth sharp and back teeth flat? God designed the animal that way to improve its chances of surviving. But God had to be killed in the Enlightenment (Hegel proclaimed it long before Nietzsche) and all that sort of thing removed. Biology today still uses teleological terms, but they intend them in reverse: the animal survives better because the teeth are arranged that way, and survival means a better chance of reproducing, which produces offspring with teeth arranged that way.

Next up, a dive into the Physics.

---

* Science as the organized / methodical study of nature was a branch of philosophy up through the Scientific Revolution, and some branches of science (such as physics) were still called 'natural philosophy' up into the 19th century.

My New Favorite Syllogism

The moon is made of green cheese. Therefore, either it is raining in Ecuador now or it is not.

In our earlier discussions of logic, the failure of modern logic to take relevance into account seemed to me a great failure. Specifically, I maintain that the forms of natural language cannot be entirely separated from the content, no matter how many logicians deeply pine for such a situation.

Now, to the extent that modern logic is a branch of mathematics, I have no problem with it. It has found uses in computer programming and probably other fields, and it's an interesting intellectual exercise in itself. It is to the extent that modern logic attempts to use natural language to create or understand meaning that it fails.

Relevance / Relevant logicians have tried to develop formal expressions of relevance and have come closer to making premises and conclusions relevant to each other, but they haven't solved the problem entirely.

As for me, while I fully understand there are practical uses for modern logic, it seems that Aristotelean logic is superior for analyzing arguments in natural language. Else, it is either raining in Ecuador, or it is not, because the moon is made of green cheese.

Another Historian Discovers Aristotle

One reason I decided I had to study Aristotle was that he kept popping up in my research in early US history. Hence, it was a happy surprise to see that the author of a couple of excellent books on US history made a similar discovery.

I'm slowly reading my way through Walter A. McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1828-1877 and, in an endnote on American political rhetoric, ran across the acknowledgement: "I am indebted to David Eisenhower for steering me, at this late date in life, to Aristotle" (p. 620, note 19).

Although McDougall doesn't say much more about it, the history of ancient Greece and Rome were familiar to many in the early American colonies and early republic, and a lot of social and political rhetoric not only followed Aristotle's Rhetoric, but used allusions to those two cultures to make their points.

Gathering up Some Threads

I had to go searching for these today for the next Aristotle post, so I thought I'd put the links all in one convenient spot.

Formal Logic, Part I

Formal Logic, Part II

Formal Logic, Part III

Aristotle's Categories

Negative Capability

More on Negative Capability

Although at this point it may not seem related: Rick Santorum on Art

Because it looks like an interesting tool: Quora.com

Anything else I should add on Aristotle or The Knowledge Problem?

Aristotle’s Categories

My first reading was Paul Studtmann’s article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), “Aristotle’s Categories.” The Categories basically lays out Aristotle's ontology — what exists and what you can say about what exists. Studtmann falls prey to a very common malady in academics, an inability to write for true beginners. I supplemented my reading with a much more amenable SEP article by Robin Smith, “Aristotle’s Logic,” which, along with Grim's explanations in email, helped me understand some unexplained terms and concepts in Studtmann.

There were a couple of interesting things to me about the Categories. The lesser interesting thing is Aristotle’s ontology itself. In essence, he claims there are substances and accidents. Substances exist independently while accidents only exist in substances. For example, a human being is a substance while skin color and height are accidents. You can’t have color by itself; color only exists as a property of a substance.

Substances and accidents are further categorized into universal and particular. Sadly, I discovered that universal accidents are not what happens when God goes on vacation and forgets to turn the gravity off. Instead, universal accidents are the concepts of accidents, such as redness. Universal substances are similarly concepts of particular substances. Humanity would be a universal substance, while Steve Earle would be a particular substance.

Aristotle prioritizes particular substances, calling them first substances; all the rest depend on them for existence: humanity doesn’t exist without individual humans, redness doesn’t exist without apples and other particular things that have that color. Here, he firmly disagrees with Plato, and I agree with him.

Although they use different and somewhat less precise terms, the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is easily explained with this set of categories. The bread and wine maintain their accidents, but their substances are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

But that’s old news. More interestingly on this occasion, Aristotle uses the term ‘said of’ for something that only exists in something else, an interesting use of grammar to describe reality. Studtmann informs us that some philosophers have tried to argue that Aristotle was really laying out a theory of language, but too much of the Philosopher’s work treats words as referring to actual things and most philosophers take the Categories as an ontological work, not a linguistic one. Even so, the Categories basically come down to substances and things you can say about substances. The Latin for the title is even the Predicamenta, The Predicates.

Language is a fascinating and important part of philosophy, and I’ll come back to it again.

Beginning Aristotle: A Disclaimer, a Request, a Plan

I am not a trained philosopher, nor do I play one on TV. The length of time from my first post until this post can be explained by two things: I don’t know how to write interestingly about Aristotle’s philosophy in a blog post, and I’m just exploring that philosophy, so I can’t be terribly informative except in the most mundane, “This is what I learned today” way.

For now, I’ve decided my posts on Aristotle will be a student’s thoughts rather than a synopsis or attempt to be profound (although the humor value of an attempt to be profound cannot be discounted, the prepositions would be all wrong (laughing at, vs. with)). Naturally, I welcome any discussion in the comments, but my request is that you would let me know either here or as we go what you might find interesting in a study of Aristotle. Maybe then I can tailor my writing to my audience a bit better.

Grim’s suggested plan of study:

Roughly, the medieval approach for students is:

1) Start by understanding his logical system. Getting a grasp on just what he means by "substance" and "attribute," and just what his categories are and how they work together, is very helpful.

2) Then read the Physics; the relevant article is here. This is a quite difficult work, and almost no one reads it today, but it's fundamental -- and, in fact, asks some very good questions about the nature of reality that our modern physics often elide past rather than engage.

3) Then read De Anima (see here (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/) and here (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/)). Once you've understood how he thinks the world has to work, from the earlier pieces, this work will help you understand how he thinks human beings relate to the world and understand it.

4) Then read the Metaphysics ... This will explain what Aristotle thinks about the ultimate ends behind reality. If the Physics explains how things are, this work explains why things are as they are.

5) Finally, engage the Ethics and Politics. These should be read together, because the purpose of politics is to provide a state that supports an ethical life -- a life, in Aristotle's terms, in which the pursuit of happiness is most possible.

That's the plan.