Nicomachean Ethics VII.5

A rather juicy section today that treats several topics that readers are likely to have strong opinions about. 

(1) Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some are so without qualification...

Existence itself, for example; almost without qualification beings of all sorts will try to continue to exist, either through themselves or through having children or creating great and memorable works that will survive them. 

...and (b) others are so with reference to particular classes either of animals or of men; while (2) others are not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become so by reason of injuries to the system, and (b) others by reason of acquired habits, and (c) others by reason of originally bad natures.

If you've ever tried Jagermeister, "a drink that was once used as a field anesthetic by doctors in World War II," you probably didn't like it the first time.

This being so, it is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discover similar states of character to those recognized with regard to the former; I mean (A) the brutish states, as in the case of the female who, they say, rips open pregnant women and devours the infants, or of the things in which some of the tribes about the Black Sea that have gone savage are said to delight-in raw meat or in human flesh, or in lending their children to one another to feast upon-or of the story told of Phalaris.

The reference is to his cannibalism, not to his innovative torture and execution device, the brazen bull.

These states are brutish, but (B) others arise as a result of disease (or, in some cases, of madness, as with the man who sacrificed and ate his mother, or with the slave who ate the liver of his fellow), and others are morbid states (C) resulting from custom, e.g. the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails, or even coals or earth, and in addition to these paederasty; for these arise in some by nature and in others, as in those who have been the victims of lust from childhood, from habit.

Yes, it's that kind of a day in the study of the Nicomachean Ethics.

Note that this provides Aristotle's assessment of our contemporary 'born this way' controversy, in which he takes both horns of the dilemma: in his opinion, some people are born inclined to pederasty ("by nature") but others because they were victimized from youth and became accustomed to it ("from habit").

The Last Fruits of Summer

Tomorrow is the equinox. Another glorious summer will be gone. 

Here be Sea-Dragons

Fans of Robert E. Howard will recognize that this AI-generated trailer is almost completely unlike the plot of the actual story Queen of the Black Coast. The central heroine is invented, there aren't any dragons in the original, and the plot of that story doesn't turn on any of the elements described in this trailer. It still looks like a fun kind of story.

Nicomachean Ethics VII.4

We continue examining incontinence and related states. Today's discussion includes some questions of when and how to pursue honor, a topic of great importance to the EN.

(2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent without qualification, or all men who are incontinent are so in a particular sense, and if there is, with what sort of objects he is concerned. That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and pains, is evident.

Now of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary, while others are worthy of choice in themselves but admit of excess, the bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I mean both those concerned with food and those concerned with sexual intercourse, i.e. the bodily matters with which we defined self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned), while the others are not necessary but worthy of choice in themselves (e.g. victory, honour, wealth, and good and pleasant things of this sort).

We often say that wealth can be pursued excessively. This is usually put in a Christian context, but the pagan Greeks understood the idea as well. The character of a man for whom wealth is unreasonably important admits of many bad things, even though there's nothing per se wrong with wealth. Simply not valuing the several goods of life in the right order is damaging to one's character.

Yet it is much harder to see how one can go to excess in pursuing victory. Perhaps in unimportant matters, as when it might be praiseworthy to let someone else have a turn rather than having to win all the time; but in the ancient world especially, a great deal hung on victory. Even today it can. Remembering the Charmides' introduction, the failures of Athenian virtues that led to their defeat in the Peloponnesian War led to their loss of power, their subjugation by Sparta, and a period of rule by the Thirty Tyrants over them. For Troy it led to the destruction of their city, the death of almost all of their men and boys, and the enslavement of their women. Victory in that sense surely has to be pursued with a whole heart.

And honor, we have said repeatedly in this commentary, defines how one identifies the best and most worthy of actions and lives. How can one go wrong with that?

Role-Playing Games

That is, pen & paper RPGs / table-top RPGs, to be exact. One free, one Arthurian, one Viking.

Basic Fantasy RPG

If you liked the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons (pre-AD&D or AD&D) or you like free RPGs, let me recommend the free and open Basic Fantasy RPG.

It's based on early D&D and was started when Wizards of the Coast created the Open Game License (OGL). The creator, Chris Gonnerman, keeps it "open source" and free -- you can download PDFs of all of the books, adventures, etc., for free on the website as well as the LibreOffice files if you want to edit them and create your own version of the game. You can also order print versions for cost from Amazon, DriveThru RPG, and Lulu.com. Gonnerman makes almost nothing on these, e.g., the softcover 208-page core rulebook is only $10 on Amazon as of this posting and since it's print-on-demand, that mostly covers printing.

The BFRPG community is great and has created all kinds of supplements for the game. Want more character races or classes? There are free supplements for that. Want more monsters? There is a free 3-volume field guide for that. Want a ton of ready-made adventures? Free supplements. Want to write some free supplements? The community is happy to look at your work and give feedback. If you come up with something you think others would like, you can share it on their website. (Check out the downloads page for most of the free PDFs and LibreOffice files.)

Pendragon

Want to play an Arthurian RPG? Chaosium's Pendragon is the best I've seen.

Pendragon has a relatively simple rules set that heavily encourages role-playing (vs roll-playing) Arthurian-type adventures. It begins in the 5th century, moves through Uther Pendragon's reign, then Arthur's life, the quest for the Holy Grail, and on somewhat further into the "Twilight" years. The PCs play knights (yes, just knights -- no wizards or thieves or rangers). Stafford sets the game in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, but he also included some anachronisms like castles and heraldry.

In addition to the Arthurian setting, there are two features that are particularly interesting. The most interesting to me is that it has rules for virtues and vices which come into play, as well as passions (loves and hatreds). These don't control the character, per se, but encourage the player to play to the character's virtues, vices, and passions. Like such things in the real world, the character's actions can improve or worsen the scores for these. E.g., one's character becomes more courageous by doing courageous things. Although maybe it's not a common use for RPGs, I thought this virtue / vice aspect could be a fun way for a group of youngsters to learn about virtue ethics.

The second feature I found interesting is that the player will play several generations of a family. Rolling up a character begins with rolling up the feats, battles, and deaths of the character's father and grandfather, events that can result in passions if, e.g., one's father was killed by Irish raiders which could result in a hatred of the Irish. This gives the family a history. The player's first character is the heir of a knight with a manor which he will inherit, and marriage and family are part of the game. When the character dies, the player takes up the character's heir as a new PC.

I played the 5th edition and have a couple of small complaints, although these may have been fixed in the 6th edition. First, there is a huge amount of material, which is great, but it's not entirely well-organized and I spent too much time looking at the table of contents and index to see where the rule for one thing or another was. Second, I don't know why, but it seems that every medieval story I have read lately has to have the local priest shacking up with some young woman and Pendragon's starter adventure carried on this sordid tradition. But that can be easily changed by the GM.

I only played it for a few months, but it was engaging and I really hope I get the chance to play more sometime. It would be fun to do the entire campaign from Uther to post-Arthur.

Age of Vikings

Another Chaosium title, Age of Vikings looks pretty good. I haven't played it, but I think I'd enjoy it and since Vikings are a common topic here, I thought I'd mention it.

Here's the product blurb:

Age of Vikings covers the history of mythic Iceland in minute detail. The book outlines the life of a Viking, laws and government, religion, and the wild and wondrous creatures of legend. Take to the frigid seas with extensive rules for ships and seafaring, including naval combat—No other roleplaying game so effortlessly thrusts you into one of the most fabled cultures and time periods in history!

If you play, let us know how you like it.

Relief & Refinement of Terms

After Charlie Kirk's assassination and the resulting sense of outrage on the right and rejoicing on the left, I was concerned that the violence would escalate. The number of leftists celebrating was shocking.  It was possible, I thought, that left extremists might be encouraged to step up attacks and right extremists might retaliate. I am very relieved that hasn't happened and impressed that the right has broadly responded peacefully, both in remembering Kirk and in their recognition that there is an extreme element of the left that hates them. I sense a stiffening of the spine on the right which is nonetheless peaceful.

In the comments here soon after Kirk's assassination I said that, while I didn't think it probable, for the first time I felt there was the chance of a civil war. I used the term "civil war" just because it's been floating around for some years now and that's what came to mind. However, it's a particularly good time to use language clearly. I do not at all fear a civil war like the US war from 1861-1865. What I fear is more of a low-intensity conflict, like "Bleeding Kansas" in the five years leading up to the Civil War or like the Troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998. The 1960s and '70s here in the US had more violence as well with riots and the Weather Underground bombings, etc. Maybe a return to that as Angela Davis and other leftist terrorists are now leading lights on the left. That said, I am much relieved by the right's reaction over the last week. We'll see how it plays out.

Dragons and Trees of Woe

 

Nicomachean Ethics VII.3

This is a longer chapter, most of which will be after the jump. Aristotle begins his investigation into the difficulties described yesterday.

Of some such kind are the difficulties that arise; some of these points must be refuted and the others left in possession of the field; for the solution of the difficulty is the discovery of the truth. (1) We must consider first, then, whether incontinent people act knowingly or not, and in what sense knowingly; then (2) with what sorts of object the incontinent and the continent man may be said to be concerned (i.e. whether with any and every pleasure and pain or with certain determinate kinds), and whether the continent man and the man of endurance are the same or different; and similarly with regard to the other matters germane to this inquiry. The starting-point of our investigation is (a) the question whether the continent man and the incontinent are differentiated by their objects or by their attitude, i.e. whether the incontinent man is incontinent simply by being concerned with such and such objects, or, instead, by his attitude, or, instead of that, by both these things; (b) the second question is whether incontinence and continence are concerned with any and every object or not.

Nicomachean Ethics VII.2

Today we discuss some of the problems around incontinence. 

Now we may ask (1) how a man who judges rightly can behave incontinently. That he should behave so when he has knowledge, some say is impossible; for it would be strange-so Socrates thought-if when knowledge was in a man something else could master it and drag it about like a slave. For Socrates was entirely opposed to the view in question, holding that there is no such thing as incontinence; no one, he said, when he judges acts against what he judges best-people act so only by reason of ignorance.

This sort of ignorance would be a special sort, a thing where you often think you know that something is wrong, but don't really know.  Is that plausible, enough that a man like Socrates could take it seriously? 

It seems like it might be. We all know people who get involved with someone whom they know to be a bad person, suffering the obvious consequences eventually. Or we can think of Charmides, who must have known after a while that hangovers would follow the drunken nights. Or even ourselves: I doubt any of us is without some habit that doesn't have predictable negative consequences, yet we keep doing it.

Signs of decaying society

From Robert Heinlein's 1982 science fiction novel "Friday," a list of symptoms of a society circling the drain.

Citizens identify themselves primarily with a group rather than with the nation.

The population loses faith in the police and the courts. The justice system combines denial of bail with failure to grant a speedy trial.

Taxes are high, the currency is inflated, and the country runs a chronic deficit.

The country passes unenforceable laws regarding private behavior.

The culture treats as civil rights conditions that must be earned by behavior, such as good credit and academic credentials.

Violence is increasingly uncontrolled.

The government relies on arbitrary compulsion, such as slavery and military conscription.

Personal civility collapses, in favor of a conviction that everyone is entitled to tactless expression of his true self at all times.

Heinlein admires characters who gamely try to fight a losing battle against this decay, but identifies more strongly with those willing to emigrate to new worlds and start again. He believed strongly that emigration was a sorting process that would so improve the new population that secular success would at last be achieved. He had no use for religion, but to the end of his days obviously had a core faith in personal honor and virtue.

Uh-oh

A Guardian reporter describes her experience at England’s recent mega-rally. 

Since leaving I’ve been grappling with how best to describe what I saw and heard. It was a far-right rally, yes, but many people attended unperturbed by the fact it had been billed as such by many media outlets, including the Guardian. They did not feel alienated by such an extreme, and previously fringe, label.

The shields are failing, Captain.  

Trump as Next UK Prime Minister?

GB News is running a poll on this. Until this evening I did not know that Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was a Scottish immigrant. That appears to make him eligible for British citizenship, which would then make him eligible to run for office in the UK. Coincidentally, the next major election in the UK is scheduled for 2029.

This adds a point to my "the Democrats' claim that Republicans hate immigrants is absurd" argument. Trump's mother and wife as well as Vance's in-laws and Rubio's parents all immigrated here.

Evil as the Demons that Haunt You

I don't watch TV, but I've never once seen a Jimmy Kimmel bit that was even a little bit funny. All the same, this alignment of corporate and government power to silence opposing view is wicked. He was himself a corporate mouthpiece, of course; it's not like he was a human being. Not when he was speaking on ABC, he wasn't, though I'm sure he is over coffee. 

My very good friend Jim Hanson is happy about the designation -- provisional, but the paperwork will likely catch up given that the Secretaries of State and the Treasury seem to be on board with the President -- of Antifa as a 'terrorist organization.' It was the considered conclusion of his wife and his after a fairly thoughtful discussion. I respect their thoughtfulness. All the same, it's hard to say what the limiting principle might be that would guarantee the rights that is the only legitimate reason for any government to exist. Antifa is barely an organization at all. That lack of structure will open anyone who's been anywhere near one of the protests at which their ilk have been seen to Federal prosecution or worse.

What worse? We're killing people in the Caribbean now without due process, on the strength of the President's word that, you know, we were really sure they were hauling drugs. 

Well, I've participated in killing a lot of people myself. In Iraq, we'd blow them apart if they were out at night near a road with a shovel in their hands even if they had no visible weapons. Probably planting IEDs, obviously; and anyway, why take a chance? In Afghanistan, it was worse still. 

These demons you're haunted by, they turn you. It's not for no reason that I turned to philosophy after the war. Strong feelings about what's good and evil aren't going to help you. Such feelings give you pleasure and pain, and if you've learned anything from the recent study it should have been that you should push off pleasure and pain like the old men looking on Helen at the gates of Troy. Troy, whose failure to do that led to her being so leveled by the Greeks that her very location was lost for two thousand years. Homer carefully conveyed what their helmets looked like, but they were so comprehensively destroyed that for all that time nobody could even find their high and ancient walls. Even the Wise came to believe that they were no more than a myth.

Beware.

Nicomachean Ethics Interlude: The Charmides

Some of you may be flagging from all of the relatively dense philosophy, and would appreciate a more pleasing story. As it happens, this discussion of incontinence and its problems -- philosophical and actual -- is a good occasion to look at one of the relevant dialogues of Plato. The Charmides is Plato's most famous investigation of this set of problems, but it takes the form of a story told by Socrates about a time in his youth when he had just returned from battle and was enjoying a moment of peace and comradeship. 

The story happens right after the Battle of Potidaea. Socrates does not recount any of the battle in the dialogue, he only mentions that there was a long discussion of it and great interest about it. This is because no recounting of it was necessary, for one thing; and for another, Socrates was one of the great heroes of this battle that was otherwise a tremendous disaster for Athens. Plato did not wish to embarrass Socrates by suggesting that he would have been bragging about his role in it, and in any case everyone knew what Socrates did at Potidaea. 

After the talk about the war and the army, some young men join the company, including one named Charmides. It is possibly not quite a coincidence that the word looks like our "charm," but the etymology doesn't follow a clear route to us from the Greek through the Latin to the French to the English like usual. Rather, the linkage if it exists is all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European *kan. In any case Charmides is not a fictional character whose name was invented by the author to sound 'charming'; that was his real name. He was in fact Plato's uncle. Charmides went on to be one of the Thirty Tyrants, which makes his inability to understand these matters of self control and self-discipline a matter of significant importance to the generation Plato was speaking to directly with his dialogues. 

In other words, this dialogue treats a military disaster that led to the great war in which Athens was defeated by Sparta, an even greater disaster; it concerns one of the Tyrants that were placed over Athens after the war, perhaps a greater disaster yet. This is set up as a charming story about a beautiful young man who has hangovers because he drinks too much wine by night, and is seeking a war hero's sympathy and help (as well as, perhaps, his love). Yet it is really an examination of some of the most dire events of the age, and an attempt to understand how they could have happened.

A Backdoor Departmental Closure

Clever idea, in a way. If you can convince the school systems to walk away from the money, in order to secure their academic freedom and independence, the Department of Education would eventually only be funding relatively right-leaning school districts. That would greatly reduce the resistance to closing the DoE entirely, since right-leaning institutions generally support that (although in this case there would be strongly countervailing rice-bowl winds, especially as new funds were freed up to support those districts directly).

Nicomachean Ethics VII.1

Today we begin Book VII.

Let us now make a fresh beginning...

This characteristically Aristotelian move also happens in Physics I.9. There as here, nothing that has been said before is being set aside; yet it is being pushed into the background. You are meant to clear your mind of all those technical details for the moment for a fresh discussion. Keep the furniture in the back of your mind so that you can call on it when appropriate, but we are beginning as if anew. 

...and point out that of moral states to be avoided there are three kinds-vice, incontinence, brutishness. The contraries of two of these are evident,-one we call virtue, the other continence; to brutishness it would be most fitting to oppose superhuman virtue, a heroic and divine kind of virtue, as Homer has represented Priam saying of Hector that he was very good,

For he seemed not, he,
The child of a mortal man, but as one that of God's seed came.

Therefore if, as they say, men become gods by excess of virtue, of this kind must evidently be the state opposed to the brutish state; for as a brute has no vice or virtue, so neither has a god; his state is higher than virtue, and that of a brute is a different kind of state from vice.

So part of our new beginning, you'll notice, is that we are no longer talking about vice as the balancing point between two errors. We are talking about it as a clean opposition to vice. Also, now we aren't just talking about virtue and vice; we're adding in two other states to avoid, and (therefore) two other states to strive for in ourselves.  

Now, since it is rarely that a godlike man is found-to use the epithet of the Spartans, who when they admire any one highly call him a 'godlike man'-so too the brutish type is rarely found among men; it is found chiefly among barbarians...

Hey!

...but some brutish qualities are also produced by disease or deformity; and we also call by this evil name those men who go beyond all ordinary standards by reason of vice.

We often think of those whom drugs have rendered toothless and covered in scabs to have been reduced to more of an animal state; and not a healthy animal, at that. In men health entails rational control of such desires, i.e. virtue, and in fact one of the particular virtues (temperance) already discussed earlier. Yet there the account stops short of brutishness; Aristotle said (in III.12) that self-indulgence doesn't destroy the nature of the man. Here we see a way in which those who 'go beyond all ordinary standards by reason of vice' can have their human nature destroyed, and be reduce to brutish things.

A contemporary philosopher would usually try to avoid a 'fresh start' like this, since getting people to think through and adopt even one new model is hard enough; but it is a mark of Aristotle's sophistication that he can come at the same problem in more than one way, and find important insights on each road.

Of this kind of disposition, however, we must later make some mention, while we have discussed vice before we must now discuss incontinence and softness (or effeminacy*), and continence and endurance; for we must treat each of the two neither as identical with virtue or wickedness, nor as a different genus.

Once again we are making a distinction between things that aren't at least completely different. The vice of self-indulgence wasn't the same thing as the brutality that can result from extremes of vice; but they are not completely separate either.  

We must, as in all other cases, set the observed facts before us and, after first discussing the difficulties, go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions about these affections of the mind, or, failing this, of the greater number and the most authoritative; for if we both refute the objections and leave the common opinions undisturbed, we shall have proved the case sufficiently.

Another I.3 point: we're not after a logical proof that would establish this exactly and forever, because that isn't the right kind of exactness for ethics. It suffices as a proof if we can refute the objections without creating disturbances for the common opinions (common, that is, among those whose opinions are worth considering due to their proven excellence of character or age and experience, not common in the sense of just anyone's opinion at all). 

Now (1) both continence and endurance are thought to be included among things good and praiseworthy, and both incontinence and softness among things bad and blameworthy; and the same man is thought to be continent and ready to abide by the result of his calculations, or incontinent and ready to abandon them. And (2) the incontinent man, knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a result of passion, while the continent man, knowing that his appetites are bad, refuses on account of his rational principle to follow them (3) The temperate man all men call continent and disposed to endurance, while the continent man some maintain to be always temperate but others do not; and some call the self-indulgent man incontinent and the incontinent man self-indulgent indiscriminately, while others distinguish them. (4) The man of practical wisdom, they sometimes say, cannot be incontinent, while sometimes they say that some who are practically wise and clever are incontinent. Again (5) men are said to be incontinent even with respect to anger, honour, and gain.-These, then, are the things that are said.

And indeed, they were said here too in the second part of Book III, when we discussed incontinence the first time. I warned you that you'd be hearing a lot more about it. So you shall.

* In Latin, 'virtue' is derived from 'vir,' which means man. As we've discussed, the Greek word ἀρετή doesn't imply manhood in the way that the Latin word does. This word being translated here is μαλακίας, which Irwin gives as "softness." The word could be used to indicate effeminacy; it was so used by Herodotus and Thucydides according to Liddell. Yet, Liddell points out, it was also used by Caesar in its Latin form to indicate the softness or calmness of the sea ("malacia ac tranquillitas").

The school where Aristotle taught Alexander would have been an exclusively male space, however, which does explain the male-focused discourse. Effeminacy is an exclusively male trait, a defect in achieving their full nature as men; women are never effeminate because they are feminine by nature rather than by defect, according to this Ancient view. 

Alexander Hamilton

As a rule, I favor politicians and bureaucrats fighting duels. It keeps the worst people out of the field for fear of it, and it provides a bracing risk that can temper rhetoric. The last time I can remember one being discussed in explicit terms was in 2004, when Zell Miller expressed regret that dueling was no longer legal after a media nobody who had browbeaten a woman on his show got in his face about something.

There's a lot to be said for the institution, which I used to write about much more often. Once Saddam Hussein challenged George W. Bush to a duel to settle the Iraq War, which is literally Homeric. In retrospect I wish it had happened. It would have been far better than the war, whichever way it had gone. 

UPDATE: On the subject of Presidential duels, I recently read this story.

You would think that Andrew Jackson was giving you his undivided attention, and then you would glance over and notice that he had devoted the last several minutes to making a laborious sketch of an alligator.

“Mr. President!” you would gasp, indignantly.

“I have a bullet lodged inside my body,” he would say. “From killing a man in a duel. A better man than you.” He would resume drawing the alligator.

I don't know if that story is actually true: it's from the Washington Post, after all. But the alligator doodle is real. 

Nicomachean Ethics VI.13

This is the end of Book VI. There are ten books in total.

We must therefore consider virtue also once more; for virtue too is similarly related; as practical wisdom is to cleverness-not the same, but like it-so is natural virtue to virtue in the strict sense.

This is the first time that Aristotle has mentioned "natural virtue." Until now we've talked about virtue as an acquired habit. But, to return to the potentiality/actuality distinction that is so important in Aristotle, you can't make a saw out of wool. Potentiality is first actuality: iron can become a saw, and so it is already potentially a saw in a way that wool is not. Natural virtue is going to play the role of this first actuality of virtue. 

This is going to become important. It is where we get the notion of something being "second nature" to you: you have your first nature -- the potential -- and then your second nature -- what you developed that potential into. Let's continue.

For all men think that each type of character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for from the very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities; but yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense-we seek for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and brutes have the natural dispositions to these qualities, but without reason these are evidently hurtful.

This is a point that will appeal to AVI, I think, for whom nature tends to prevail in the nature/nurture discussion. Here is Aristotle's nod to it: some people, by nature, have more fitness to be brave or self-controlled. These qualities can and should be guided and perfected by reason, but if you don't have them as potentials to start with you never will have the actualities either.

Only we seem to see this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of its lack of sight, still, if a man once acquires reason, that makes a difference in action; and his state, while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense. 

Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom.

So: while you may be born fitted for courage (say), you won't become courageous in the strict sense until you develop phronesis. You have to learn to apply this natural quality wisely. at you

Now we can talk more completely about how this process works (which Thomas was interested in earlier: how to realize it). The steps are these:

1) Birth, with the natural virtues that you happen to have.
2) A good upbringing, which gives you stories about the good and noble, honorable and virtuous from trusted sources.
3) Intuitive reason, which apprehends what is good from the stories and the way in which they are told.
4) Philosophical wisdom, which derives the first principles about what is good, noble, honorable, and virtuous from the findings of your intuitive reason about the stories from that upbringing.
5) Practical wisdom (phronesis), by which you derive in the circumstances in which you find yourself what the virtuous thing to do actually is, and do it using your natural virtue's potential to do such a thing.
6) Virtue, the state of character that arises from this practice becoming a habit and then the state of character itself. 

This is why some say that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates in one respect was on the right track while in another he went astray; in thinking that all the virtues were forms of practical wisdom he was wrong, but in saying they implied practical wisdom he was right.

This is confirmed by the fact that even now all men, when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and its objects add 'that (state) which is in accordance with the right rule'; now the right rule is that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. All men, then, seem somehow to divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz. that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is a right rule about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, all of them, forms of scientific knowledge), while we think they involve a rational principle. It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue. 

Nice concession to Socrates there. I suspect he would have appreciated it; there's a chance he would have bought the argument, since it considered his difficulties directly and addresses them in a way that many subsequent generations found satisfactory.. He and Aristotle never met directly but were connected by Plato, who was the student of one and the teacher of the other.   

Aristotle goes right on to solve another puzzle that daunted Socrates.

But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other; the same man, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the virtues. And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical value, we should have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of us in question; plain too that the choice will not be right without practical wisdom any more than without virtue; for the one deter, mines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead to the end.

That issue of the separation (or not) of the virtues really bothered Socrates; it is ubiquitous in Plato's dialogues. Aristotle has given us the furniture for a straightforward answer to why a man could be virtuous in one way but not another: he lacked the natural virtue for one virtue, but had it for another. As such, when he applied his phronesis, he was able to excel in one virtue (say courage) but not the other (say moderation of sexual appetite). The phronesis is the same; but the underlying potential is not the same in all people. 

Some people become more virtuous than others because they had the potential to actualize. Some people become virtuous in one way and not another because they had potential here but not there. We can look at the cases we know empirically and see how plausible that answer is: he's just like his father; he reminds me of his grandfather; it's no wonder he turned out that way. 

But again [phronesis] is not supreme over philosophic wisdom, i.e. over the superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over health; for it does not use it but provides for its coming into being; it issues orders, then, for its sake, but not to it. Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the affairs of the state.

The art of medicine is not supreme over health because it is practiced for the sake of health. Therefore, it is subordinate because it is in the service of the prior thing. Philosophical wisdom showed us what the great, the noble, and the good were. Phronesis is just helping us achieve what philosophy attained: it is the servant, not the master.  

Nicomachean Ethics VI.12

Almost finished with Book VI; one more after this.

Difficulties might be raised as to the utility of these qualities of mind. For (1) philosophic wisdom will contemplate none of the things that will make a man happy (for it is not concerned with any coming into being), and though practical wisdom has this merit, for what purpose do we need it? Practical wisdom is the quality of mind concerned with things just and noble and good for man, but these are the things which it is the mark of a good man to do, and we are none the more able to act for knowing them if the virtues are states of character, just as we are none the better able to act for knowing the things that are healthy and sound, in the sense not of producing but of issuing from the state of health; for we are none the more able to act for having the art of medicine or of gymnastics. But (2) if we are to say that a man should have practical wisdom not for the sake of knowing moral truths but for the sake of becoming good, practical wisdom will be of no use to those who are good; again it is of no use to those who have not virtue; for it will make no difference whether they have practical wisdom themselves or obey others who have it, and it would be enough for us to do what we do in the case of health; though we wish to become healthy, yet we do not learn the art of medicine. (3) Besides this, it would be thought strange if practical wisdom, being inferior to philosophic wisdom, is to be put in authority over it, as seems to be implied by the fact that the art which produces anything rules and issues commands about that thing.

Only philosophers talk like this, but Tom wanted to read some philosophy and now you know we really are! This is a related problem to those I raised before, but here the issue is that the categories are artificial. The issue in (1) above is that "philosophical wisdom" has been defined as pertaining only to unchanging things, which for Aristotle include the movement of the stars as well as mathematical truths. It is possible to be philosophical about the nature of justice, but not about how to be just in a particular case: that requires practical action in a set of things that come-to-be and have a particular history. For that we are told we need a separate thing, "practical wisdom," which is -- being separate -- somehow unrelated to the philosophical wisdom from which it draws its first principles for which to reach particular conclusions.

Yet obviously these things are unified. We unify them. They are parts of a whole, the whole that is us. The way the cuts are made may be customary, as the French butcher beef differently from Americans. 

The problem with (2) is about 'coming to be,' to whit, how goodness comes to be. If a man is good, what use has he for a faculty for becoming good? (The answer, probably obvious to all of you, is that it was only by having the faculty in the first place that he got to being good.)

(3) is potentially a serious problem, except that it has the same issues as (1). 

These, then, are the questions we must discuss; so far we have only stated the difficulties.

(1) Now first let us say that in themselves these states must be worthy of choice because they are the virtues of the two parts of the soul respectively, even if neither of them produce anything.

(2) Secondly, they do produce something, not as the art of medicine produces health, however, but as health produces health; so does philosophic wisdom produce happiness; for, being a part of virtue entire, by being possessed and by actualizing itself it makes a man happy.

Since you need both philosophical wisdom (to get the first principles) and practical wisdom (to get to the correct actions) to be virtuous, each is part of "virtue entire." Since virtue produces happiness, each of them thus is a necessary condition for producing happiness. The analogy to 'health producing health' seems to me to further complicate the artificial divisions: the analogy suggests they are really a whole. 

(3) Again, the work of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral virtue; for virtue makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means. (Of the fourth part of the soul-the nutritive-there is no such virtue; for there is nothing which it is in its power to do or not to do.)

The nutritive is the part of the soul we share even with plants, for Aristotle: but it doesn't make decisions, it just does what it has to do. A man has to eat; a buzzard, same as worms.  

(4) With regard to our being none the more able to do because of our practical wisdom what is noble and just, let us begin a little further back, starting with the following principle. As we say that some people who do just acts are not necessarily just, i.e. those who do the acts ordained by the laws either unwillingly or owing to ignorance or for some other reason and not for the sake of the acts themselves (though, to be sure, they do what they should and all the things that the good man ought)...

Now, you'll remember that in V.1 justice-as-lawfulness was said to be complete virtue, but not absolutely. Here Aristotle seems to deny that it is properly even justice; just as he had said in III.8 that courage was not really true courage if it was compelled by law, as it is in the citizen-soldier. In both cases he's looking for good-enough solutions for the many, for whom perhaps it is good enough if they can be made to do the right thing even if only under duress. Yet he is truly interested in what the best kind of person will do, not just what will make people behave.  

...so is it, it seems, that in order to be good one must be in a certain state when one does the several acts, i.e. one must do them as a result of choice and for the sake of the acts themselves. Now virtue makes the choice right, but the question of the things which should naturally be done to carry out our choice belongs not to virtue but to another faculty. We must devote our attention to these matters and give a clearer statement about them. There is a faculty which is called cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do the things that tend towards the mark we have set before ourselves, and to hit it. Now if the mark be noble, the cleverness is laudable, but if the mark be bad, the cleverness is mere smartness; hence we call even men of practical wisdom clever or smart.

So, above he pointed out that to really be good, and not just being driven to right actions by the law, you have to be in the right state. That state is the state of setting yourself the right ends for the right reasons. You got the right reasons from what he is calling "philosophical wisdom." But you have to derive from those reasons the right acts; and you have to choose those right acts because of those right reasons. That's the only thing that counts as "being good," properly speaking. It isn't obedience to authority; it's internal choice for proper reason. 

Practical wisdom is not the faculty [of cleverness], but it does not exist without this faculty. And this eye of the soul acquires its formed state not without the aid of virtue, as has been said and is plain; for the syllogisms which deal with acts to be done are things which involve a starting-point, viz. 'since the end, i.e. what is best, is of such and such a nature', whatever it may be (let it for the sake of argument be what we please); and this is not evident except to the good man; for wickedness perverts us and causes us to be deceived about the starting-points of action. Therefore it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good.

That's a fascinating way to conclude this, since the problem he raised in the first (2) was that it might be possible to be good without being practically wise. This inverted proof that B requires A doesn't prove that A requires B.

If we take it with the claim that 'being good' only occurs when you do the things that practical wisdom entails, however, we can see the point: you don't get to 'being good' without practical wisdom. A clever man can choose noble aims, but cleverness can easily devolve into mere smartness, in which one is applying intelligence to bad purposes. It's only when you make the shift into tying your intelligence to this facility of wisdom -- whether or not that wisdom is properly divided into two parts, the up-looking "philosophical wisdom" and the down-looking "practical wisdom" -- that you can be sure of being good.

Joining the good guys

This X post by someone named "Comet" caught my eye last week, because it's so similar to my own experience, and echoes a theme that C.S. Lewis often uses. I think it appeals to people who were raised as atheists, or became determined atheists when they came of age after a perfunctory childhood religious training. It was a huge stumbling block to me to believe in a literal, personal God and an afterlife. It still is difficult, when the chips are down, though it's a faith I strive for all the time. Even now, Comet's gut conviction is the one that keeps me trying:

I’ve never been a religious person because I don’t know if God is real

But I’m becoming more religious every day because I know that Evil is real, and I want to be on the other side of it

A Lemonade Stand

On a country road high in the mountains today, I came across a young lady of seven or so running a lemonade stand. Naturally my wife and I stopped our motorcycles and bought some lemonade from the girl. It was the sort of thing children used to do when I was young, but I haven't seen in ages. 

There were more precautions than we had as kids. Her family was watching from above near the house, and she had a dog that came over to be sure she was ok -- as well as, I noticed, a walkie-talkie on her belt in case she needed to call for help. I think we would have only had a dog, and he was a beagle.

It was obviously being a good experience for her, in spite of the light traffic way up there. She explained that she and her brothers and sisters had been doing it for a while, and they'd only recently expanded into baked goods as they made enough money to buy the lemonade supplies, then more supplies. 

As we were leaving a big dump truck towing a heavy-equipment trailer stopped, and the bearded trucker got out to buy some lemonade too. He looked so happy. I imagine it was a nostalgic moment for him too.

I would have taken a picture before we left, but I didn't wish to take a photo of a minor without her parents' permission (which I would easily understand them not granting to a stranger, although they might remember me either from the hurricane or from the time I drove their horse back up to their house from standing in the road). You'll just have to imagine a lemonade stand from your own youth. It was just like that. 

Go Rest High On That Mountain

An Oklahoma boy who made it good.

Longhaired Redneck

I'm shaved bald myself, it seeming the only honorable response to the thinning hair of early middle age; but I found an actual original copy of that album in a local 'vintage/antique' store today while attending Sylva's Mountain Brewfest. David Allan Coe, who just turned 86 last week, would have been honored to know what they wanted for it. It's vinyl, so it sounds worse than the lossless versions you can get easily and cheaply online. 

I bought it anyway; it has several of my favorite of his songs, and there's just something about the physicality of the original thing. 

Nicomachean Ethics VI.11

Here we have a claim that is psychologically interesting, but which might or might not be true.

What is called judgement, in virtue of which men are said to 'be sympathetic judges' and to 'have judgement', is the right discrimination of the equitable. This is shown by the fact that we say the equitable man is above all others a man of sympathetic judgement, and identify equity with sympathetic judgement about certain facts. And sympathetic judgement is judgement which discriminates what is equitable and does so correctly; and correct judgement is that which judges what is true.

You will remember 'the equitable' from V.10. It is one of the virtues that is superior to ordinary justice. Justice itself was said in V.1 to be 'complete virtue, but not absolutely' so you might ask in what way to be equitable is better than to be just. The just is "what is fair and lawful," but the equitable may be "what is fair but more generous than the law requires." Thus, the equitable person is trying to treat the other not merely as the law requires, but in a manner that really befits their circumstances. This applies both to things like business deals -- perhaps your employee deserves some profit-sharing, to be raised to a partnership of some sort, or at least a raise, given their robust contributions -- and also to criminal courts. The sympathetic judge is understanding of the circumstances, and correctly discerns how to adjust the law's requirements to the situation. In this way, the lawfulness requirement proves insufficient to complete virtue in its absolute form (this may be another reason John Rawls thought he could dispose of the lawfulness requirement and cash out 'justice as fairness' alone).

That's not the psychological point I wanted to emphasize. The claim Aristotle is going to make is that this virtue is not just another species of practical reason (phronesis) but a distinct part of the soul. He opens with some evidence against that idea:

Now all the states we have considered converge, as might be expected, to the same point; for when we speak of judgement and understanding and practical wisdom and intuitive reason we credit the same people with possessing judgement and having reached years of reason and with having practical wisdom and understanding.

That sounds like a good argument that these really are the same quality, perhaps just being expressed differently in different situations. In the 19th and 20th century, Gottlob Frege and those who followed his threads pointed out that sometimes you can mistakenly identify the same thing by two different names (this became known as the "Hesperus is Phosphorus" example, because the 'evening star' and 'the morning star' turned out both to be Venus). Here we are observing a quality of excellence of judgment, sometimes towards decisions about fairness towards others and sometimes towards practical actions of one's own. Perhaps they are just the morning star and the evening star, appearing at different times in different places but actually the same thing. 

There developed also in philosophy a whole collection of arguments about the identity of indiscernibles that is relevant here. The problem was raised as soon as the Stoics, so a bit after Aristotle, but it comes down to questions about things like this. We can't really observe the mind/soul, so we can't discern whether phronesis and sugnome and prohairesis are different objects or parts of the mind/soul. Many philosophers have accepted the idea that in these cases you should think you have reason to believe they are the same thing unless you can find qualities that clearly distinguish them. Aristotle has given us distinguishing characteristics: this one is about judgment and that one is about action. Yet it could be one quality applied to multiple problem sets, and it is only the problems that differ rather than the quality of the soul. This might seem especially true given his next remarks about how all these faculties deal with problems of the same basic kind:

For all these faculties deal with ultimates, i.e. with particulars; and being a man of understanding and of good or sympathetic judgement consists in being able judge about the things with which practical wisdom is concerned; for the equities are common to all good men in relation to other men. Now all things which have to be done are included among particulars or ultimates; for not only must the man of practical wisdom know particular facts, but understanding and judgement are also concerned with things to be done, and these are ultimates. And intuitive reason is concerned with the ultimates in both directions; for both the first terms and the last are objects of intuitive reason and not of argument, and the intuitive reason which is presupposed by demonstrations grasps the unchangeable and first terms, while the intuitive reason involved in practical reasonings grasps the last and variable fact, i.e. the minor premiss. For these variable facts are the starting-points for the apprehension of the end, since the universals are reached from the particulars; of these therefore we must have perception, and this perception is intuitive reason.

Intuitive reason's existence as a separate faculty was given in VI.6 as a deduction that none of the other intellectual virtues could do what we ask it to do. Here, though, it's doing something very similar to what judgment and practical reason are said to do, just 'in the other direction.' What Aristotle means by that is that intuitive reason seeks out the first principles, working backwards from the particulars we have encountered in the world to the universals that should be our starting point. This is what was supposed to happen during 'the good upbringing' -- we would be introduced to many stories by respected elders and, using intuitive reason, derive the necessary first principles about what courage is and what justice is and so forth. Once we have those first principles, we are ready to begin the study of ethics.

What judgment and practical reason are doing is working down the chain from those first principles to the particular facts in front of us: we must render a judgment in this particular case, in which this particular person did this particular thing; or we must decide on a particular action we must take right now in these particular circumstances. Aristotle is suggesting that these are three connected but distinguishable parts of the soul. You could perhaps reduce them to two: intuitive reason is a sort of inductive reasoning from given examples to first principles; the other sort is a deductive reasoning from those first principles down to conclusions about actions to take (judgment, in this sense of the word, being a sort of action you take when you issue a judgment). 

Or perhaps it's just one quality, whatever we call it, which works up and down, and which sometimes considers practical matters pertaining to the self and sometimes considers matters facing justice/equity towards others. Aristotle is going to hold that they are different, partly because they appear at different times of life -- and not to everyone.

This is why these states are thought to be natural endowments-why, while no one is thought to be a philosopher by nature, [yet] people are thought to have by nature judgement, understanding, and intuitive reason. This is shown by the fact that we think our powers correspond to our time of life, and that a particular age brings with it intuitive reason and judgement; this implies that nature is the cause. (Hence intuitive reason is both beginning and end; for demonstrations are from these and about these.) Therefore we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye they see aright.

We have stated, then, what practical and philosophic wisdom are, and with what each of them is concerned, and we have said that each is the virtue of a different part of the soul.

Friday Night Jukebox

Innocent blood

From First Things:

Innocent blood is a powerful reality. It turns the wheel of history. I believe Kirk’s murder will have this effect.

The evil deed of September 10, 2025, will expose the desperation of the old and failed consensus that Kirk opposed. The consensus he hoped to turn us toward, one that restores faith, family, and flag, will triumph.

Nichomachean Ethics VI.10

Fine distinctions continue.

Understanding, also, and goodness of understanding, in virtue of which men are said to be men of understanding or of good understanding, are neither entirely the same as opinion or scientific knowledge (for at that rate all men would have been men of understanding)...

Because all men have opinions, but also because scientific knowledge as Aristotle understands it is about unchangeable things like the truths of mathematics.   

...nor are they one of the particular sciences, such as medicine, the science of things connected with health, or geometry, the science of spatial magnitudes. For understanding is neither about things that are always and are unchangeable, nor about any and every one of the things that come into being, but about things which may become subjects of questioning and deliberation. Hence it is about the same objects as practical wisdom; but understanding and practical wisdom are not the same. For practical wisdom issues commands, since its end is what ought to be done or not to be done; but understanding only judges. (Understanding is identical with goodness of understanding, men of understanding with men of good understanding.)

So the word here given as 'understanding' is sungnome, which Irwin helpfully points out is derived from gnome, 'mind' or 'judgment.' That word is also the root of gnosis, which those of you who are given to Bible Study or the history of thought in the Church will know well enough. 

Irwin translates this as "consideration" or sometimes "pardon," as the best sort of person will often on consideration choose to set aside an inflexible rule. We learned in Book I that the virtuous man is the best judge of virtue and of the virtuous things to do; sometimes you keep the rule, and in some cases you set it aside. (These are, as Aristotle just said, the sort of decisions that require questioning and deliberation.) 

Now understanding is neither the having nor the acquiring of practical wisdom; but as learning is called understanding when it means the exercise of the faculty of knowledge, so 'understanding' is applicable to the exercise of the faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging of what some one else says about matters with which practical wisdom is concerned-and of judging soundly; for 'well' and 'soundly' are the same thing. And from this has come the use of the name 'understanding' in virtue of which men are said to be 'of good understanding', viz. from the application of the word to the grasping of scientific truth; for we often call such grasping understanding.

Thus, the virtuous man is a man of good judgment; he can be trusted to resolve the hard questions that come up in life. 

Random Graffiti

Seen in a bathroom on the wall, not all that long ago and in the Deep South.

Just in case anybody thought they were getting off easy.

You're not the first to face this

Via Instapundit, Sarah Hoyt:

You’re not safe. Life isn’t safe. The world isn’t safe. But you can’t live hiding under the rug. And some things are worth doing. Square your shoulders, decide what you have to do. Then do it. Death will come either from it or from merely living. Death is the price of being alive.

* * *

As for “We can’t reconcile.” and “We can’t share a nation with people like this.” Well, your ancestors did.

After the revolution, after the civil war, wounds were bound, and people learned to live together, even though each had done horrible things to the others.

You will too. And most of them not-media-personalities are mostly dumb, lied to and histrionic. Which is bad enough, but not evil incarnate.

Nicomachean Ethics VI.9

Book VI continues with more fine distinctions. Unhelpfully translations differ, and you really need to know which Greek concept is being put in play. For example, the one we've been using wants to talk about "deliberation."

There is a difference between inquiry and deliberation; for deliberation is inquiry into a particular kind of thing. We must grasp the nature of excellence in deliberation as well whether it is a form of scientific knowledge, or opinion, or skill in conjecture, or some other kind of thing.

You will recall that we already discussed deliberation separately in III.2-3. The translation's use of the term here is ambiguous; the concept Aristotle was discussing in Book III was prohairesis but here it is phronesis, the latter of which began to discuss the other day. If any of you are reading the Irwin translation, he tries to keep the English words he uses linked carefully to the Greek words, but even then you'll see him talk of "inquiry" versus "deliberation" versus "intelligence" versus "wisdom." 

Following this section exactly may not be possible on the first pass. These are intricate distinctions about invisible mental faculties, originally in ancient Greek and now in several English translations. If you really want to map this down, it will take a little time. 

Scientific knowledge it is not; for men do not inquire about the things they know about, but good deliberation is a kind of deliberation, and he who deliberates inquires and calculates. Nor is it skill in conjecture; for this both involves no reasoning and is something that is quick in its operation, while men deliberate a long time, and they say that one should carry out quickly the conclusions of one's deliberation, but should deliberate slowly.

Irwin translates what they are giving as "it is not skill in conjecture" instead as that intelligence "is not good guessing." The problem with even very good guessing is that you could go wrong; what Aristotle is looking for from phronesis is a little more security that you'll choose your actions correctly.

Again, readiness of mind is different from excellence in deliberation; it is a sort of skill in conjecture. Nor again is excellence in deliberation opinion of any sort. But since the man who deliberates badly makes a mistake, while he who deliberates well does so correctly, excellence in deliberation is clearly a kind of correctness, but neither of knowledge nor of opinion; for there is no such thing as correctness of knowledge (since there is no such thing as error of knowledge)...

"There is no such thing as correctness of knowledge" and "there is no such thing as error of knowledge" both sound very suspicious to contemporary readers.  You have to know that Aristotle's definition of knowledge assumes truth: knowledge, per the Posterior Analytics, is "Justified true belief." Thus, your knowledge can't be in error because it would then not be true, and if it's a false belief it wasn't knowledge to begin with. 

So, just as he wants phronesis to be more secure than 'good guessing,' he defines knowledge to be safely true. 

Socrates was aware of this theory of knowledge and had rejected it (at least in Plato's telling), but Aristotle found it satisfactory. This account of knowledge held up a very long time. It was not until the late 20th century that a serious problem was found with it (though the Wikipedia article does give some earlier examples of people asking questions about it). In 1963 kind of a fun challenge was raised by Edmund Gettier, which nobody has yet figured out how to solve. Actually, epistemology is a lot of fun all the way around. Nothing very serious hangs on it (except for little things like knowledge and truth), and it's a great deal of fun to think about.

Underappreciation

Oh, it's far more dangerous than that, Poppy. (That is her name.)

If men like Charlie Kirk can’t even speak to American students without fearing a gunman in the crowd, America is in a far more dangerous place than anyone has so far been willing to concede.

The gunman wasn't in the crowd. He was 200 yards away with a rifle he knew how to use very competently. 

America is a much more dangerous place that you Brits can even imagine. That's the precipice we are on right now. 

Nicomachean Ethics VI.8

This is an important chapter. Today is an inauspicious day for it because of the political murder of the early afternoon, but the wisdom it speaks of is eternal.

Political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same state of mind, but their essence is not the same. Of the wisdom concerned with the city, the practical wisdom which plays a controlling part is legislative wisdom, while that which is related to this as particulars to their universal is known by the general name 'political wisdom'; this has to do with action and deliberation, for a decree is a thing to be carried out in the form of an individual act. This is why the exponents of this art are alone said to 'take part in politics'; for these alone 'do things' as manual labourers 'do things'.

So too we don't assign to legislators but to the bureaucrats who execute and define policy the idea of action. In our system, legislators are mostly fundraisers who delegate authority to bureaucrats. It's the bureaucrats who decide; and the police who execute the decisions not of the legislature, but of the bureaucracy.

Practical wisdom also is identified especially with that form of it which is concerned with a man himself-with the individual; and this is known by the general name 'practical wisdom'; of the other kinds one is called household management, another legislation, the third politics, and of the latter one part is called deliberative and the other judicial.

This is Aristotle carefully avoiding the fallacy of composition. It is commonly and wrongly assumed that knowing how to order one level of human activity -- being a good businessman, for example -- ought to transfer to governance, family leadership, etc. It does not. Many a good businessman is a terrible husband; many a politician couldn't run a business to save their lives.

Now knowing what is good for oneself will be one kind of knowledge, but it is very different from the other kinds; and the man who knows and concerns himself with his own interests is thought to have practical wisdom, while politicians are thought to be busybodies; hence the word of Euripides, [Grim: Shocklingly to English speakers, that is pronounced euro-PEE-dees, as Socrates is soh-KRAT-ees.]

But how could I be wise, who might at ease,

Numbered among the army's multitude,

Have had an equal share?

This Movie Has a Sad Ending

It was a good shot. I didn't know Charlie Kirk from Adam before somebody took that shot and made him famous. The only reason I ever heard his name is that somebody decided to kill him; now I know he was a prophet, apparently.

I guess we've been here before; America has a very bloody political history. The whole world does. Maybe it's only violence that ever solves anything. What a shame.

UPDATE:

Havamal 38. 

Cyberpunk Revolution

The saying he is trying to think of is: "The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it." The internet was designed to keep information available by routing around damage to the network, expected to be caused by nuclear weapons on key nodes, so that we would know enough to keep fighting. Turns out that's what it does, thanks be to God.

Marines & Mules

 

The Glories of Nepal

Every day is a great day for burning down Communist governments, but they picked a beautiful one.

More Luke Bell

Since the first one got such a heartfelt reaction, here's some more.

Nicomachean Ethics VI.7

Book VI continues with an exploration of wisdom.

Wisdom (1) in the arts we ascribe to their most finished exponents, e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a maker of portrait-statues, and here we mean nothing by wisdom except excellence in art; but (2) we think that some people are wise in general, not in some particular field or in any other limited respect, as Homer says in the Margites,

Him did the gods make neither a digger nor yet a ploughman

Nor wise in anything else. Therefore wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of knowledge. It follows that the wise man must not only know what follows from the first principles, but must also possess truth about the first principles. Therefore wisdom must be intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge-scientific knowledge of the highest objects which has received as it were its proper completion.

The "highest objects" as Aristotle discusses them are immaterial things of great importance: the soul, the unmoved movers (of which there are several, not one only as with Avicenna and later theological Aristotelians), the Forms as they exist in themselves instead of in things. In fact Aristotle isn't convinced that forms do exist except as immaterial additions to material things; the form of the table is in the table, because the parts have been put into the order of a table. If they were in a heap on the floor, they wouldn't be a table even though they'd still have all and only the same material parts. 

So there is at least an idea of what the form of a table might be, separate from actual tables. It exists, perhaps, in our minds. Perhaps -- Plato wanted to say -- it exists as a feature of reality, that such things as tables are possible and this is what they are like. Aristotle is not convinced of that.

Of the highest objects, we say; for it would be strange to think that the art of politics, or practical wisdom, is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world.

True, but remarkable given that Aristotle has already praised political science as the highest human good.  

Now if what is healthy or good is different for men and for fishes, but what is white or straight is always the same, any one would say that what is wise is the same but what is practically wise is different; for it is to that which observes well the various matters concerning itself that one ascribes practical wisdom, and it is to this that one will entrust such matters.

It's difficult to know if 'white' or 'straight' is indeed the same for fishes, or bats.  

He's Right, Boys

"When you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions."

That's one of those truths I really hate. That doesn't make it less true.

Sometimes you just have to ride it out. That line at the end finishes, “The best thing you can do with death is ride off from it.”

Georgia 2020

It was stolen, obviously. That's around ten times the margin of victory.

Technology Continues to Outstrip Our Philosophy and Ethics

 "Brain in a Box"?  Yes, available for purchase (aimed at researchers).  What are the implications?  We'll figure that out as we go, I guess- onward into the void.

Let's hope that doesn't turn out poorly, but I guess as a species, we are not a patient lot.

Focus & Attention

It can be overdone. 

I’m trying to make weight for a Strongman competition in October, so I got this calorie-counter app.  It helps me make sure that I’m cutting weight in a reasonable manner, so that I’ll hit the target weight without losing muscle. 

For some reason, it is insanely concerned with sodium. If I eat a tortilla, it warns that this is a high sodium choice. If I eat a can of beans, it warns about the sodium. 

But tequila on a Saturday night? Good job, buddy! What a responsible decision!

El tequila blanco.

Happy Birthday, DAC

The most Outlaw of the Outlaws is 86 today. 

Nicomachean Ethics VI.5-6

I'm moving faster through Book VI than I did through the previous book, but what is being said is quite important. We are talking about how it is possible for a human being to know the truth, and what the practical limits of this are. 

Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering who are the persons we credit with it.

That, for example, is an interesting choice. How would we know who is practically wise? (The word in Greek is phronesis; there's a lot of Greek today so I'm going to skip the accent marks) We might look at something empirical, like how well their decisions work out. We can't observe their reasoning process unless they describe it to us, since the mind is not visible; and they could be wrong about it anyway. Many people, asked to justify their decisions, will rationalize what they did. They may not really know why they did what they did, not understand it, or know but be embarrassed by it. We want to know about wisdom, but we have to try to infer what it is like. (This is another place where a good upbringing helps, which meant as you will recall having been raised with good examples and stories. Who was practically wise? Odysseus, for Aristotle; Gandalf was, perhaps for us.) 

Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general.

Practical wisdom is about successfully achieving the good life.  

This is shown by the fact that we credit men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those that are not the object of any art.

Art is concerned with making, we learned yesterday, so what this means is that we aren't talking about things like breadmaking, or house-building. This kind of knowledge, again, is techne in the Greek; it was Socrates' favorite candidate for real knowledge because it could be reliably explained, taught, and practiced. For Aristotle it is one of the intellectual virtues, but not phronesis. Techne is concerned with making things; phronesis is concerned with making a good life. Phronesis is the intellectual virtue of applying the moral virtues to craft a complete and honorable life. It is about taking specific actions in individual contexts, but also about placing them in the larger context of a vision of what such a complete life looks like.

The Bullfighter

Sadly that young man is already dead, at 32, reportedly from fentanyl. It’s a deadly poison that makes all illegal drugs unsafe these days. I was never inclined to them, but many musicians have been including many good ones. It’s a tragedy to lose a good one. 

The Second is for all Citizens

However clever it may be politically, I'm not going along with this push to strip American citizens of their Second Amendment rights just because some government bureaucrat rules that they have debatable 'mental health' issues. 

There are people who do have mental health issues, certainly. Yet some of you are old enough to remember when homosexuality was considered a mental illness; the trend has not been to make the 'science' more conservative. There is nothing at all stopping the revision of the categories of psychology to fit present fashion -- usually the fashion of the elites, psychology being the most popular major in the United States and a special predilection of Blue America. That road is going to end up paved with "your prejudices, which I have diagnosed in you whether or not they can be practically demonstrated, make you dangerous to others and in need of being disarmed."

We saw how readily psychology and psychiatry could be weaponized in the Soviet Union, where it was a standard practice to determine that opponents of the state were mentally ill (and thus in need of protective imprisonment, lobotomies, and/or drugging). It can do good in the right hands, on a voluntary basis. I have grave concerns about using it anywhere in the law, especially criminal law, and most especially as an excuse for the restriction of basic rights. 

So no, absolutely not.