Grim's Hall

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.5

We can do a second chapter today because the next one is very short.

As in regard to the virtues some men are called good in respect of a state of character, others in respect of an activity...

That is to say that some people "are" good, and others sometimes "do" good. Of course the virtues are habits that become one's habitual character; but you don't develop a habit the first time out.

...so too in the case of friendship; for those who live together delight in each other and confer benefits on each other, but those who are asleep or locally separated are not performing, but are disposed to perform, the activities of friendship; distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make men forget their friendship; hence the saying 'out of sight, out of mind'.

I have occasionally noted the similarities between these Ancient Greek notions and the Havamal, which provides us with advice that informs the Germanic/Norse tradition. Here the reference is verse 44: "If you find a friend you fully trust and wish for his good-will, exchange thoughts, exchange gifts, go often to his house." The frequent points of similarity shows how much of this is pragmatic, human ethics proven solid in many times and places.

Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them, and no one can spend his days with one whose company is painful, or not pleasant, since nature seems above all to avoid the painful and to aim at the pleasant. Those, however, who approve of each other but do not live together seem to be well-disposed rather than actual friends. For there is nothing so characteristic of friends as living together (since while it people who are in need that desire benefits, even those who are supremely happy desire to spend their days together; for solitude suits such people least of all); but people cannot live together if they are not pleasant and do not enjoy the same things, as friends who are companions seem to do.

As mentioned in the commentary on VIII.1, what Aristotle means by "living together" is quite broad; he considers politics a sort of friendship, as the will to live together in the same city or community is for him a species of friendship. Then we share not the same roof, but common festivals and feasts, civic organizations to which we may both belong, rules and laws and customs.

The truest friendship, then, is that of the good, as we have frequently said; for that which is without qualification good or pleasant seems to be lovable and desirable, and for each person that which is good or pleasant to him; and the good man is lovable and desirable to the good man for both these reasons.

It might be interesting to try to think of a counterexample. Can you think of two genuinely good men who knew but hated one another? We can think of examples of such men who were not in perfect agreement, as Tolkien and Lewis were at odds about Catholicism for example. We can think of men who are greatly praised but not yet fully good: Churchill had some infamous barbs for those in his social circle, but he also some real vices.

Well, as Aristotle himself said, "such men are rare." Still, feel free to comment with any counterexample that you happen to think of as you reflect on it.

Now it looks as if love were a feeling, friendship a state of character; for love may be felt just as much towards lifeless things, but mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state of character; and men wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a state of character. And in loving a friend men love what is good for themselves; for the good man in becoming a friend becomes a good to his friend. Each, then, both loves what is good for himself, and makes an equal return in goodwill and in pleasantness; for friendship is said to be equality, and both of these are found most in the friendship of the good.

That's going to become important later when Aristotle talks about the friendship of social unequals, especially the case of the friendship of princes. Princes need friends too! But they have no equals, not among the people with whom they share a state or a polity; nor can they treat their unequals as equals without creating political tension due to the favoritism.

It is a problem for the rest of us, too. Perhaps you've had a friend who was much richer than yourself, or much poorer. This requires care, to minimize the appearance of inequalities and to address them practically as much as one can without drawing attention to them. We have friends who are older or more established, or younger and less experienced. Friendship does imply a sort-of equality, but not the same kind of equalities we talked about in Book V when the issue was justice. It's going to be yet another human equality, and one of a very different sort than the others.

Yet when we speak of politics as a sort-of friendship, the proportionate equalities from Book V will become obviously relevant anew.

What Happens in California

...isn't strictly my business, but this logic is striking.

The point of collective bargaining was, you might recall, that it would increase worker salaries. Here we see the governor denying firefighters a raise so that their union can try to get them a raise. He clearly thinks binding them to the union process will keep them on the reservation; if he cared about their salary, which was the whole point of collective bargaining to begin with, he'd just give them the raise that the legislature had already approved.

"Class" in America

AVI linked this essay on class, which is a little difficult to decipher; the markers have become so obfuscated that it's hard to say who is in what class now. They try really hard anyway, but it probably just comes down to how you make your money (much more than how much money you make). All the cultural stuff doesn't really work any more, as they admit at one point:

Anyways, back to taste, the striking thing to me is that these distinctions are all collapsing, as increasingly large numbers of Americans all listen to the same music, watch the same YouTube shorts, and read the same tweets. Fussell was already tuned into this back in his era, and called it “prole drift”: the tendency in the United States for all classes to drift downwards over time. Perhaps we can explain it via the barber-pole theory of fashionability spinning in reverse, with the highest classes emulating prole tastes to shock the middles, who eventually can’t help themselves in aping what they now perceive to be high. I think you see something like that process in many places, here’s a concrete example: underclass thugs like NWA invent gangster rap → very posh kids shouting rap lyrics ironically → midwits embracing rap-inflected cultural products like Hamilton and Beyoncé completely sincerely.

The problem with that example is that it happened across several decades, which is the timeframe in which these sorts of things can fall aside anyway.

In contrast, the new generation are, as Helen Andrews once memorably put it, “pretty dumb”:
I mean that the majority of meritocrats are, on their own chosen scale of intelligence, pretty dumb. Grade inflation first hit the Ivies in the late 1960s for a reason. Yale professor David Gelernter has noticed it in his students: “They are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. It’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, conversable, interested, doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Looking back at the history of the twentieth century, just sees a fog.” Camille Paglia once assigned the spiritual “Go Down, Moses” to an English seminar, only to discover to her horror that “of a class of twenty-five students, only two seemed to recognize the name ‘Moses’.… They did not know who he was.”
“Dumb” is the wrong word here, what she really means is "ignorant." But ignorant of what exactly? Why does it matter that you know who Beethoven is (and that you be able to recognize even his lesser-known works from audio alone)? ...

Jane: The former top culture has certainly failed to perpetuate its specific markers, but that’s nothing new. Once upon a time it used to be really important to be able to dance, bow, and even walk “correctly” — who cares about that stuff now?

It's interesting to me how much attention people pay to this; as they point out, books and movies are made about it all the time. I figured out around 2004 that, while it was nice to have more money, what I really liked was the stuff on the "lowbrow" side of the graphic. Old Army clothes? Beer? Jukeboxes? Pulp fiction like "Conan"? Western movies? Absolutely.

At some point you can just be who you want to be, and stop worrying about what class people think you're in. You still have to make a living; you don't have to tell people what you do to make it. I've had people ask me if I'm retired because I never talk about work. Sadly, no! I still have to work for a living. We just don't have to make conversation about it.

Home with the Armadillo

The newest range report is out.

That puts us in the "established (breeding)" population region. I guess it's officially an armadillo home range these days. Jerry Jeff would have been proud of us.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.4

More on the friendships of good versus bad men. Ugly men are not considered.

This kind of friendship [i.e. the best kind], then, is perfect both in respect of duration and in all other respects, and in it each gets from each in all respects the same as, or something like what, he gives; which is what ought to happen between friends. Friendship for the sake of pleasure bears a resemblance to this [best] kind; for good people too are pleasant to each other. So too does friendship for the sake of utility; for the good are also useful to each other.

This restates the point from VIII.3: the best sort of friendship also captures the goods of the lesser sorts, but not vice-versa.

Among men of these inferior sorts too, friendships are most permanent when the friends get the same thing from each other (e.g. pleasure), and not only that but also from the same source, as happens between ready-witted people, not as happens between lover and beloved. For these [i.e. lovers] do not take pleasure in the same things, but the one in seeing the beloved and the other in receiving attentions from his lover; and when the bloom of youth is passing the friendship sometimes passes too (for the one finds no pleasure in the sight of the other, and the other gets no attentions from the first); but many lovers on the other hand are constant, if familiarity has led them to love each other's characters, these being alike. But those who exchange not pleasure but utility in their amour are both less truly friends and less constant. Those who are friends for the sake of utility part when the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of each other but of profit.

That seems to be true; if you were dating someone because that person could buy you expensive dinners, you'll find your 'friend' less useful in unemployment. If you were dating because you found the person fun to be around, you might still find the fun.

For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation.
The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against slander...

Irwin translates that line as "Moreover, it is only the friendship of the good that is immune to slander." I think that's clearer than this translation.

...for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that trust and the feeling that 'he would never wrong me' and all the other things that are demanded in true friendship are found.

In other words, when two good people are friends, they won't believe bad things about the other even when people say bad things about them. They've tested and known each other, and found one another to be good and reliable people.

In the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to prevent these evils arising. For men apply the name of friends even to those whose motive is utility, in which sense states are said to be friendly (for the alliances of states seem to aim at advantage), and to those who love each other for the sake of pleasure, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore we too ought perhaps to call such people friends, and say that there are several kinds of friendship-firstly and in the proper sense that of good men qua good, and by analogy the other kinds; for it is in virtue of something good and something akin to what is found in true friendship that they are friends, since even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure. But these two kinds of friendship are not often united, nor do the same people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure; for things that are only incidentally connected are not often coupled together.
Friendship being divided into these kinds, bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility, being in this respect like each other, but good men will be friends for their own sake, i.e. in virtue of their goodness. These, then, are friends without qualification; the others are friends incidentally and through a resemblance to these.

That seems clear enough: only the best sort of friendship is true friendship, and the others are called 'friendship' only by analogy.

"The Hardest Government Program to Reform"

It's the VA.

U.S. servicemembers who sustain injuries while putting their lives on the line for our country deserve generous treatment from the government. No veteran with a legitimate service-related injury should ever struggle to get care.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people are gaming the Veterans Affairs system to extract payments for health issues that have nothing to do with their service. Such behavior has created a backlog and made it harder for other veterans to receive compensation they deserve. It’s also fiscally unsustainable...

This is why universal socialized medicine will never work in the United States. The VA is as good a public healthcare system as we can do. It has every advantage, including unfailing political support because almost every American backs the idea that our combat veterans deserve to have their health taken care of after their time of service.

Even so, we still can't do it. Maybe other countries can; we can't. This is as good as it gets, and it's 'the hardest to reform.'

The 2026 NC 11 Race Expands

There are a couple of veterans who have entered the race in my Congressional district. Democrat Moe Davis is back in, a retired USAF colonel who has run before. Nothing against Moe, but no Democrat is going to win NC 11, a heavily gerrymandered district partly designed to keep Asheville from having a Congressman.

Of greater interest, former Special Forces operator Adam Smith is challenging the sitting Republican congressman for that party's nomination.

Adam Smith says it’s time for a change and that he’s ready to stand up for Western North Carolina in ways incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards hasn’t — particularly, in Hurricane Helene recovery.

“I think the only time I saw Chuck during the disaster was when President Trump showed up [in Swannanoa, last October],” Smith said. “Why did it take a visit by the President in order for the congressional representative to show up? While my team, volunteers, myself and a multitude of other nonprofits on the ground were actively working in disaster relief and rescue to provide supplies, I never saw him until the president showed up. Then I saw him for 15 minutes. Then I didn't see him again.”

Trump commended Smith for his relief work at the Oct. 21, 2024, Swannanoa event, less than a month after Helene.

“One of the patriots who stepped forward to help was Adam Smith, a former Green Beret,” Trump said, with Edwards looking on from the background. “Adam transformed the parking lot of a Harley Davidson dealership into a makeshift airbase to help distribute supplies, did an incredible job. Adam, what an amazing act of citizenship and service.”

That story was also covered here at the time, as it was too in Reason magazine's article "The Remarkable Redneck Airforce of Asheville." (It doesn't alliterate as well, but the proper pejorative for Appalachian Highlanders is "hillbilly"; the rednecks are from the lowlands.)

I might have to change party affiliation to vote for Smith. Those of us who came through the hurricane together ought to stick together, and I know he's for real after what all he's done. The story is 100% true; I've been to that Harley dealer and talked with them about it to verify the details. His organization was the one they mentioned by name to me.

The Cost of Not Speaking to Women

The NYT has an article today about an artist I've never heard of before: "She Didn’t Speak to Other Women for 28 Years. What Did It Cost Her? When it came to using her life in her work, the artist Lee Lozano went about as far as a person can go."

The article doesn't answer the question it asks; if it cost her anything at all, it's not evident in the text. In fact the matter is really only discussed in one paragraph of a longer piece.

In August 1971, eight months after the opening of her Whitney show, she undertook another, even more audacious project, “Decide to Boycott Women,” stating her intention to stop speaking to other women. In her notes on the piece, she suggested it would be temporary — an experiment that would go on for about a month and “after that ‘communication will be better than ever.’” But it ended up being a practice she continued throughout the rest of her life, mostly, though not entirely, avoiding women (even allegedly once refusing to be helped by a female clerk at a grocery store). The blunt hostility of this piece struck many of her friends and, later, art critics and historians as an act of self-destruction. The curator Helen Molesworth called it “consummately pathological.” Lozano’s friend the artist David Reed said it was “masochistic.”

Maybe it didn't cost her anything. Perhaps she enjoyed the relative quiet, given that she expanded the project voluntarily from "about a month" to 28 years.

BORTAC to Chicago

Following a dramatic but nonlethal ambush of Homeland Security agents in Chicago, DHS is sending what they describe as "special operations" personnel to Chicago. This seems to be BORTAC, the Border Patrol's tactical unit.

Pace the ACLU, these are not "special-forces style" personnel. They're like a SWAT team; their closest military analog is probably the 75th Rangers, but this is a police rather than a military function. The Border Patrol (which is providing the "BOR-" here) also has a search and rescue unit called BORSTAR in their Special Operations command, which presumably is not being deployed since neither searching nor rescuing is needed in this case.

If you're going to fight the Federal government, you have to expect to face this sort of thing. Eventually you have to expect to face the actual Rangers and Special Forces, in fact; escalation into actual insurrection is only going to loosen the limits on the Federales in terms of what kind of force they can bring to bear. I don't know that Chicago is ready for what they're asking for by encouraging this level of resistance -- the mayor issuing a statement against the Feds, and the Chicago Police Department refusing aid to Federales under attack. Maybe they think the voting public will be turned off by it and hand their party back some power to put the brakes on it, but that's more than a year and a half away in the best case.

Fighting the Feds can be the right thing to do under extreme circumstances; the Declaration of Independence sets permanent terms for when it is right or even morally mandatory to resist any government. No American government, deriving their legitimacy entirely from the revolution successfully fought under those terms, can deny the validity of the Declaration's arguments.

Thus, at least sometimes such resistance is moral and proper; and to some degree it remains a matter of individual judgment when those terms are satisfied. I won't say, therefore, that such resistance is categorically wrong; but you'd better be sure.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3

In this chapter, Aristotle gives his case for an ideal friendship.

Now these reasons differ from each other in kind; so, therefore, do the corresponding forms of love and friendship. There are therefore three kinds of friendship, equal in number to the things that are lovable; for with respect to each there is a mutual and recognized love, and those who love each other wish well to each other in that respect in which they love one another.

This is a good point to mention that Ancient Greek has several words that are all translated as "love," just as we have already seen that Ancient Greek had a number of different words that are translated as "knowledge." Here as there, it is important to know which word is being used and what the deeper sense of that word happens to be.

When Americans say that two people are "lovers," we almost always mean "love" in the sense that the Greeks would call eros, ἔρως, clearly the root of our word "erotic." That is not the word being used in these passages.

The word being used here is philo/philia, φιλία, which is the root of philosophy ("love of wisdom," philo - sophia) or of Tolkien's passion of philology (love of words, philo - logos). It can be a very deep love, as we will be exploring, but not an erotic love: a love appropriate to deep personal passions or affection between friends, especially as we shall see the closest and deepest friendships of all. One might say that good marriages proceed from eros to philia as the couple age and develop these deep connections and mutual feeling for each other as a people; perhaps the very best manage to retain both.

Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. So too with those who love for the sake of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant. Therefore those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to themselves, and not in so far as the other is the person loved but in so far as he is useful or pleasant. And thus these friendships are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure. Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him.

In the last chapter, I mentioned that neither the useful nor the pleasant would turn out to be a real candidate for what was worthy of love. You can see here a new reason for that conclusion: what a person loves, insofar as they have friends who are useful or pleasant to be around, is something of that first person's own. It's not really something about the other, but something the first person hopes to gain from them: either something valuable (useful) or something pleasing (pleasure).

Now the useful is not permanent but is always changing. Thus when the motive of the friendship is done away, the friendship is dissolved, inasmuch as it existed only for the ends in question. This kind of friendship seems to exist chiefly between old people (for at that age people pursue not the pleasant but the useful) and, of those who are in their prime or young, between those who pursue utility. And such people do not live much with each other either; for sometimes they do not even find each other pleasant; therefore they do not need such companionship unless they are useful to each other; for they are pleasant to each other only in so far as they rouse in each other hopes of something good to come. Among such friendships people also class the friendship of a host and guest.

I don't know if it is still true that old people pursue friendships chiefly for utility, as we have social structures that take care of a lot of the needs of the elderly. You can see how it was likely to be true in Aristotle's time that the elderly would seek others who could still do some of the things they could no longer do for themselves, and perhaps in return offer what they could still do that their 'friend' could not. Perhaps one was blind(er), and the other more deafened by age; or one could walk about more easily, and the other still had clearer thoughts.

On the other hand the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly. Young people are amorous too...

Here the word being given as "amorous" is in fact a version of eros, ἐρωτικόςof.

...for the greater part of the friendship of love depends on emotion and aims at pleasure; this is why they fall in love and quickly fall out of love, changing often within a single day. But these people do wish to spend their days and lives together; for it is thus that they attain the purpose of their friendship.

So much for the lesser species of things we call "friendship."

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their [i.e. the friend's own] sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing.

Here we see the connection between at least true friendship and virtue. True friends are "alike in virtue," meaning that they are not necessarily perfectly virtuous, but are fitted together by their similarity in virtue. Yet they are definitely at least somewhat virtuous because they are "men who are good," and that means that they possess virtue.

The best -- i.e. the magnanimous -- will have very deep and meaningful friendships with each other, because they are gracious and good to each other in the most honorable ways. Those who are 'equitable' in Aristotle's sense will have deep friendships because they will go beyond what mere fairness requires to bestow on the other what their friendship really deserves. Those who are merely just will still have good friendships because their virtue will compel them to treat each other fairly, and thus they will not slight one another.

Only those who have no virtue to speak of will be unable to know this sort of friendship, but only the sort that comes from finding someone pleasant or useful. Yet the true friends will not miss out on either pleasure or utility, because we shall see that those things come into the bargain with true friendship:

And each [true friend] is good without qualification and to his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most and in their best form between such men.

Back to philos as the root here, both for love (φιλέω) and friendship (φίλιος).

But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.

Reflecting on this, you can provide your own examples from your lives of the best and truest friends you have had.

Smells Like Calculus

A little silliness as Monday hits ...

Valhalla

It was interesting to note this line from SECWAR Hegseth's speech, given the recent invocation of Valhalla by FBI Director Kash Patel.

If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.

We don't have a military full of Nordic pagans.

Not full of them, no, but it is a recognized religion in the service. The VA offers Thor's Hammer headstones, number 55 on this list, and to my knowledge at least two servicemembers are buried under them.

Naturally I support accommodation for genuine religious traditions in the service, which in the case of beards also means the Sikh. (They also have an approved headstone: number 36). In general the desire to restrict religious expression is baleful, and if it were to be invoked for any reason one might think of another religion -- sometimes but not always associated with beards -- that would be the most obvious candidate. It wouldn't be because of the beards.

The usual reason military (and fire) services discriminate against beards is because of an alleged difficulty getting a proper seal with protective breathing equipment. This is a misconception; I've used the stuff and it works fine. Hair is dead skin like skin, and with adequate pressure protective masks mate down just as well over hair as over flesh. Bearded men also uses equipment like CPAPs without difficulty.

Patel, meanwhile, looked rather foolish invoking what is usually a military phrase -- The Hill cites the Navy and Marine Corps, but I've also heard it used for the same Green Berets Hegseth is willing to grant beards -- as Kash is a Hindu-raised man who was praising a devout Protestant Evangelical Christian. Not, however, as foolish as the idiots who decided to treat "See you in Valhalla" as neo-Nazi code. Those people are desperately trying to wish into existence an opponent they would rather have instead of the ones that they do.

The Great Smoky Mountains is Open

In spite of the Federal Government shutdown, the most popular park is fully funded and wide open.

📣BREAKING NEWS!!! 📣 Beginning tomorrow (Oct 4), the entire Great Smoky Mountains National Park will reopen, despite the Federal government shutdown!!! In anticipation of the shutdown, Sevier County, the cities of Gatlinburg, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Pittman Center, Blount County, Cocke County, the State of Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, Friends of the Smokies, along with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, began working together on a plan to provide financial support to keep the national park fully operational in the event of a shutdown.

AVI recently mentioned wanting to visit Swiss-influenced villages. Helen isn't that, but it does attempt a version of Bavaria.

The town doesn't have any legitimate German roots. Georgia itself does -- even in Colonial days it was taking in Protestant refugees from the ongoing religious wars in what was not yet Germany -- but not Helen. Helen was a timber industry town that was failing by the mid-20th century, so they decided to try to make it into a tourist attraction in the 1960s. At that time there were some WWII vets still around who had fond memories of Germany, so that's how they decided upon the theme -- indeed one of the highlights has long been Hofbrauhaus Restaurant and G.I. Germany Pub. The understanding of Germany is what it is, but the understanding of what a WWII G.I. pub was like was spot on.

Oktoberfest is in full swing. They were singing The Wild Rover translated into German and played on Oompah band instruments at the Festhall. On Main Street they were dancing the Macarena, often in cheap replicas of German traditional dress. It's definitely a spectacle.

A Fine Mountain Town

Last week I rode to Tennessee; this week I rode down into Georgia, and visited the mountain town of Dahlonega. It is the home of Georgia's Military College, North Georgia College which is these days a full fledged state university. It was also the site of the first gold rush in US history.

The gold rush museum is in the center of the town square.

Some fall color is beginning there.

The General Store is not only the same as it was when my son was a boy, it is the same as it was since I was a boy. It has a player piano that plays late 19th and early 20th century tunes, flawlessly for decades.

There was an art festival in Hancock Park off the square. I met an old friend I haven't seen in probably twenty years.

No bear is served at the Outlaw House of Jerky. I did get some shark and elk jerky, though.

The Mellow Mushroom pizza is always excellent.

Songbird

A new album of newly released Waylon Jennings songs is out today. His son Scooter found them in old tapes from the 70s, which is when his band was at its height and recording constantly. These were ones they never got to putting out.

High Ground

It’s open from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee Reservation to Mount Mitchell now. Still some work to do beyond that.

UPDATE: I went up there to check on the autumn color. Those mountains are about two thousand feet higher than the one whose shoulders I live upon. If you’re curious, it’s still getting started up there.

A Colorful Fellow

I’m working from the Blue Ridge Parkway today, and I ran across this fine fellow going about his day.

Civic Organizations versus the State

The Firearms Policy Coalition has won some important legal victories lately. The courts are limiting those victories to actual members of FPC and other plaintiffs, ironically because of another major legal victory.

[T]he Supreme Court’s June 2025 Trump v. CASA decision... held that so-called “universal injunctions” “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” Because of this decision, the government and some courts are limiting the application of relief, sometimes only to named plaintiffs such as FPC and its members.

Two important such victories have occurred lately: Hoffman v. Bonta held that California cannot deny FPC members and other plaintiffs the right to use non-resident carry permits. That means that if you are a resident of another state who has to travel into California, you can as an FPC member compel California to process you for a non-resident carry permit there. Meanwhile the just-decided FPC v. Bondi compels all states and the Federal government not to enforce Post Office carry restrictions against FPC members.

FPC has responded by creating a secure site for members to download an ID card identifying them as such, so they can make use of these legal victories. Membership is cheap, and funds the effort to repeal bad gun control laws through lawsuits like these.

This points to a general principle of resisting government or corporate power through civil organizations that aim at human liberty. Just as some fight for freedom of speech, and others for freedom of the right to keep and bear arms, and others to hold the government to privacy laws or to prevent unconstitutional searches or arrests, these civic organizations have proven to be a major force historically in holding the line. Or even in expanding it: our modern 1st Amendment freedoms did not exist a hundred years ago, until they were won in courts by anarchist organizations and their lawyers, as Michael Willrich demonstrated compellingly in his history American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Whether or not one agrees with their general thrust politically, we would all be much poorer in freedoms if it hadn't been for the work of such organizations a hundred years since.

FPC does good work. We're lucky they're out there.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.2

Today's short chapter treats a small question.

The kinds of friendship may perhaps be cleared up if we first come to know the object of love. For not everything seems to be loved but only the lovable, and this is good, pleasant, or useful; but it would seem to be that by which some good or pleasure is produced that is useful, so that it is the good and the useful that are lovable as ends.

It's really only the good, then, because the useful is always posterior rather than prior for Aristotle. This is because the useful is useful for something else that is wanted for itself. Since we just finished the last book on a meditation proving that pleasure was a good -- and perhaps the highest good, if properly considered -- we know that "good" is the last candidate standing here.

Do men love, then, the good, or what is good for them? These sometimes clash. So too with regard to the pleasant. Now it is thought that each loves what is good for himself, and that the good is without qualification lovable, and what is good for each man is lovable for him; but each man loves not what is good for him but what seems good. This however will make no difference; we shall just have to say that this is 'that which seems lovable'.

The obvious problem here is when one falls in love with someone who is bad for you: perhaps they don't really love you back, or perhaps they have destructive qualities that will be harmful to you if you stick with them. This experience is universal enough that all of us know someone who has been in a love relationship like that, if we haven't been in one ourselves.

Aristotle doesn't mention this aspect explicitly, and indeed he rarely discusses such things except in biological terms. Yet it is clear that we don't love that which is good per se; nor even what is good for us. We often love mistakenly because of what seems so to us.

Now there are three grounds on which people love; of the love of lifeless objects we do not use the word 'friendship'; for it is not mutual love, nor is there a wishing of good to the other (for it would surely be ridiculous to wish wine well; if one wishes anything for it, it is that it may keep, so that one may have it oneself); but to a friend we say we ought to wish what is good for his sake.

This gives us our first premise: true friendship and genuine love generally are reciprocal and mutual.

But to those who thus wish good we ascribe only goodwill, if the wish is not reciprocated; goodwill when it is reciprocal being friendship. Or must we add 'when it is recognized'? For many people have goodwill to those whom they have not seen but judge to be good or useful; and one of these might return this feeling. These people seem to bear goodwill to each other; but how could one call them friends when they do not know their mutual feelings? To be friends, then, the must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other for one of the aforesaid reasons.

One can imagine two people of fair fame who know of each other but haven't met; and each one thinks well of what he has heard of the other, and thus they wish each other well. Yet they clearly aren't friends, because they haven't met.

Aristotle gives us a condition of recognition of the friendship, but that probably isn't quite strong enough. Even if they were informed of each other's good will and recognized it, but still had never met nor communicated directly, it would be strange to call them 'friends.' Allies, perhaps: they might well have common aims in the world, and see each other as usefully advancing those aims. Friendship seems to require more.

Home Engineering

This is the bridge my son and I built this summer. It’s got twin pressure-treated 6x6 beams as the undercarriage, set in stone and concrete pylons of ~200 pounds each. We ripped and sawed the planks ourselves, also out of pressure treated lumber. Everything is attached with decking screws rather than nails for strength. It’s all sealed in Australian timber oil which was applied to each individual piece and cured before assembly; after we put it together I reapplied oil to all the screw holes to make sure no untreated wood was exposed to the weather.

Then just this week we built a French drain. I had to tear apart my fire pit and rebuild part of it afterwards, but it’s back in service. The drain worked very well during this week’s brush with the tropical storm.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.1

We are about seventy percent through the EN at this point. Close to twenty percent of the book is on the inquiry into friendship, which we are now about to begin. The final book draws out more thoughts on pleasure, upbringing, and happiness.

After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view to living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends? Or how can prosperity be guarded and preserved without friends? The greater it is, the more exposed is it to risk. And in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge.

Is friendship a virtue, or does it imply virtue, or is it both? It does not seem like a virtue. A capacity for friendship would seem to be a candidate for a virtue, as virtues are excellences of capacity. An actual friendship is a relation between two individuals, not a quality possessed by either individual independently.

Well, sort of. Aristotle's ontology states that there are, most basically, substances that have attributes; one of those kinds of attributes is relations. Yet a relationship doesn't have independent existence for Aristotle. In other words, as Aristotle conceives the world it's not the case that I exist, and you exist, and the friendship between us also exists. It is the case that I exist, and you exist, as substances -- and substances are the realest things in the world. As a substance, I have as one of my attributes a relation: ("Friend to X.") My friend X, likewise a substance, has a completely separate attribute: ("Friend to Grim"). So our friendship is not an independently existing thing, as he sees it: it's a attribute of mine and, separately, an attribute of yours. Thus, a friendship can belong to you the way a virtue ought to do; and it can be done well or badly, thus admitting of an excellence. For that reason, friendship can be a virtue.

Yet it also makes sense to say that friendship implies virtue. Who seeks vicious friends? Even among members of organized criminal enterprises, i.e. people who might wish to be able to be vicious to outsiders, among friends what is wanted is honor and respect, loyalty and courage, faithfulness and generosity. The ability to win and sustain friends implies that you have virtues that others would seek in a friend.

[Friendship] helps the young, too, to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to their needs and supplementing the activities that are failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it stimulates to noble actions-'two going together'-for with friends men are more able both to think and to act.

The original Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories were collected in a book called "Two Sought Adventure." We see the truth of these remarks clearly in fictional accounts such as this: Frodo is able to go forth because of Sam's friendship, which is enhanced necessarily by Merry and Pippin; yet it is when they befriend Aragorn that their counsel improves and their capacity to reach help. What kind of help? More friends, and more councils, which increase their capacities further yet. That is how they come to understand together, to develop a plan that might work, and to dare it.

Again, parent seems by nature to feel [friendship] for offspring and offspring for parent, not only among men but among birds and among most animals; it is felt mutually by members of the same race, and especially by men, whence we praise lovers of their fellowmen. We may even in our travels how near and dear every man is to every other.

We might even divide animals by this quality: snakes do not have it, but birds do; sharks do not, but whales; the lion loves his children but slays another male's.

Friendship seems too to hold states together, and lawgivers to care more for it than for justice; for unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy; and when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.

Most of us would not consider "political friendship" to be real friendship, but only 'friendship' by analogy. Yet Aristotle -- for whom politics was much smaller, and much more built upon actual personal relationships with other people one really knew -- does consider political friendship to be the foundation of successful politics. In the Politics III.9 he describes the will to live together in a city as a sort of friendship, an extension of how roommates who choose to live together do so because they like each other's company to some degree. They join societies together, hold festivals that all participate in, feasts, celebrations, holidays, and so forth. The community as he sees it is an kind of extended friendship.

But it is not only necessary but also noble; for we praise those who love their friends, and it is thought to be a fine thing to have many friends; and again we think it is the same people that are good men and are friends.

Consider that question for a moment. Whom do you consider to be a good man? Can you think of an example of someone who was not also a good friend to his friends? Even among bad men, we tend to find it a redeeming quality: as in the case of Doc Holliday, the murderous gunfighter who has passed into American folklore as a heroic figure because of his loyal friendship with Wyatt Earp.

Not a few things about friendship are matters of debate. Some define it as a kind of likeness and say like people are friends, whence come the sayings 'like to like', 'birds of a feather flock together', and so on; others on the contrary say 'two of a trade never agree'. On this very question they inquire for deeper and more physical causes, Euripides saying that 'parched earth loves the rain, and stately heaven when filled with rain loves to fall to earth', and Heraclitus that 'it is what opposes that helps' and 'from different tones comes the fairest tune' and 'all things are produced through strife'; while Empedocles, as well as others, expresses the opposite view that like aims at like. The physical problems we may leave alone (for they do not belong to the present inquiry); let us examine those which are human and involve character and feeling, e.g. whether friendship can arise between any two people or people cannot be friends if they are wicked, and whether there is one species of friendship or more than one. Those who think there is only one because it admits of degrees have relied on an inadequate indication; for even things different in species admit of degree. We have discussed this matter previously.

I hope you will find these next two books engaging; many people find them to be the most intriguing part of the work.

Good Reading from a former Commander

CDR Salamander was one of the original Milbloggers. He remains one of the best and clearest thinkers on naval and national policy. Today's piece is illustrative of his insight, and will be clarifying for any of you who read it.

Nicomachean Ethics VII.13-14

These last two chapters close out the long Book VII, one of the more technical books of the EN.

13

But further (E) it is agreed that pain is bad and to be avoided; for some pain is without qualification bad, and other pain is bad because it is in some respect an impediment to us. Now the contrary of that which is to be avoided, qua something to be avoided and bad, is good. Pleasure, then, is necessarily a good. For the answer of Speusippus, that pleasure is contrary both to pain and to good, as the greater is contrary both to the less and to the equal, is not successful; since he would not say that pleasure is essentially just a species of evil.

Speusippus succeeded Plato as the head of the Academy. He was deeply suspicious of Plato's notions about the Good, and of forms in general; Aristotle, though he differs as well, rejects Speusippus' particular critique.

And (F) if certain pleasures are bad, that does not prevent the chief good from being some pleasure, just as the chief good may be some form of knowledge though certain kinds of knowledge are bad. Perhaps it is even necessary, if each disposition has unimpeded activities, that, whether the activity (if unimpeded) of all our dispositions or that of some one of them is happiness, this should be the thing most worthy of our choice; and this activity is pleasure. Thus the chief good would be some pleasure, though most pleasures might perhaps be bad without qualification.

Theologically later Christian Aristotelians will accept that the chief good lies in contemplation of the divine, which is supposed to maximize pleasure, beauty, and knowledge all at once. The idea that 'some pleasure' could be good even though most pleasures are bad -- so bad that we should push pleasures off like the old men at the gates of Troy looking upon Helen -- is nevertheless surprising.

John Stuart Mill, the Utilitarian, defends a version of this idea himself. Utility is supposed to be the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain; against the charge that this is merely hedonism, he said that the fact that people can't think of higher pleasures says more about them than about pleasure. Perhaps the highest pleasures do include things like contemplation of the divine, which might excel the lower pleasures we have been warned against so sternly.

And for this reason all men think that the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into their ideal of happiness-and reasonably too; for no activity is perfect when it is impeded, and happiness is a perfect thing; this is why the happy man needs the goods of the body and external goods, i.e. those of fortune, viz. in order that he may not be impeded in these ways. Those who say that the victim on the rack or the man who falls into great misfortunes is happy if he is good, are, whether they mean to or not, talking nonsense. Now because we need fortune as well as other things, some people think good fortune the same thing as happiness; but it is not that, for even good fortune itself when in excess is an impediment, and perhaps should then be no longer called good fortune; for its limit is fixed by reference to happiness.

And indeed the fact that all things, both brutes and men, pursue pleasure is an indication of its being somehow the chief good:

The above section is one of the times that Aristotle talks about fortune and happiness. Happiness is the goal of ethics, we know from Book I. Yet things that we can't control ourselves -- such as whether or not we receive honors from others -- aren't thought worthy of being the goal of ethics because that goal should be something that lies within our power to do or not do.

Finding that Lady Luck (Agatha Tyche) is so involved with our happiness thus ought to make us wonder about happiness as the proper end of ethics. Yet it turns out that fortune's limits are set by our natural capacity for happiness rather than the other way around: so it does, in a way, depend on us and what is internal to us. We are lucky if we get what we need, but not more, for the 'good luck' of winning more ends up being an impediment to us realizing our happiness after all. We have to perfect what is within ourselves, and to hope only for that which allows such internal perfection.

Not-Bombs at Party HQs

On J6, were pipe bombs placed outside DNC and RNC party HQs?

The documents obtained by Just the News show that both bombs — one planted at the Democratic National Committee and the other at the Republican National Committee — were filled with chemical building blocks of black powder, each was equipped with a 60-minute kitchen timer, and each had destructive potential.

But most notably, the FBI laboratory report never uses the word “viable” to describe either bomb. Both devices never exploded and were discovered about 16 hours after the FBI claimed they were planted outside both major party headquarters.

My friend Jim Hanson* and I looked over the photos of the 'bombs' that the FBI posted and determined we didn't think they were in fact functional bombs. The use of a kitchen timer, which just rings a bell instead of setting off an electrical charge that could trigger an explosion, was one tell: they look like time bombs, having a timer, but they'd then need significant additional mechanics to set off a charge.

If we're talking about 'the chemical building blocks of black powder,' well, that's charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter (as Star Trek fans know). Those aren't explosive unless properly mixed.

The kitchen timers were for just 60 minutes, by the way, and the bombs were discovered 16 hours after being planted.

* It occurs to me that I should mention that Jim Hanson was trained in building such things as a Green Beret, and that he won sanctions in a lawsuit filed against him by Mohamed Mohamed, the father of a boy who built the timing mechanism for a bomb as a school prank. The boy, Ahmed Mohamed, had been invited by Obama to the White House in a big publicity stunt alleging anti-Muslim prejudice. Jim's expertise in the matter has thus been vetted by the courts and found in his favor; the family, he tells me, returned to Qatar rather than pay up.

Can this Divide be Bridged?

Sadly it appears that the SECDEF (SECWAR?) is not planning mass firings at today's in-person meeting of much of the top military leadership; indeed, the President also attended in person, further consolidating American military command in one physical location at one time.

The Washington Post managed to get several military "leaders" to voice concerns about the whole business of this administration being in charge.

Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons top brass to a highly unusual summit in Virginia on Tuesday, according to eight current and former officials.

The critiques from multiple top officers, including Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, come as Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.

President Donald Trump will attend the abrupt gathering of generals and admirals at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where Hegseth is expected to deliver remarks on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” even as uniformed leaders fear mass firings or a drastic reorganization of the combatant command structure and the military hierarchy.

Before the Afghanistan withdrawal, may of us who have worked with the military would have defended it as a structure that is designed to produce leaders with both education in the military science and experience in practical command. After that example, it is hard to credit the idea that the process still identifies the best men and women and promotes them to the highest positions; nor the idea that valid criticisms from those closest to the front are heard or considered by top commanders, even if they must challenge political figures in order to protect the warfighters on the front lines.

One might have hoped that this session would be used less for "morale boosting" and more for cleaning house.

Nicomachean Ethics VII.12

Now that the common claims of the Wise are on the table, we can begin the analysis.

These are pretty much the things that are said. That it does not follow from these grounds that pleasure is not a good, or even the chief good, is plain from the following considerations. (A) (a) First, since that which is good may be so in either of two senses (one thing good simply and another good for a particular person), natural constitutions and states of being, and therefore also the corresponding movements and processes, will be correspondingly divisible. Of those which are thought to be bad some will be bad if taken without qualification but not bad for a particular person, but worthy of his choice, and some will not be worthy of choice even for a particular person, but only at a particular time and for a short period, though not without qualification; while others are not even pleasures, but seem to be so, viz. all those which involve pain and whose end is curative, e.g. the processes that go on in sick persons.

Those processes have changed, but you can still see the point. Generally being cut open with a knife is neither pleasant nor good for you, nor is it good to have a part of yourself cut out; but if you are sick and need surgery to remove a diseased part of yourself, it can be good for you to be cut open with a knife even if it isn't good for everyone. Since it enables a return to health and therefore pleasure, it can even be an activity that is ordered towards pleasure in a way -- though it is unlikely to be pleasant in itself.

(b) Further, one kind of good being activity and another being state, the processes that restore us to our natural state are only incidentally pleasant; for that matter the activity at work in the appetites for them is the activity of so much of our state and nature as has remained unimpaired; for there are actually pleasures that involve no pain or appetite (e.g. those of contemplation), the nature in such a case not being defective at all. That the others are incidental is indicated by the fact that men do not enjoy the same pleasant objects when their nature is in its settled state as they do when it is being replenished, but in the former case they enjoy the things that are pleasant without qualification, in the latter the contraries of these as well; for then they enjoy even sharp and bitter things, none of which is pleasant either by nature or without qualification. The states they produce, therefore, are not pleasures naturally or without qualification; for as pleasant things differ, so do the pleasures arising from them.

Here we can see what Aristotle would make of our affection for hot sauces made out of chilies engineered by American scientists to be much hotter than anything in nature. Just as he says, when you're hungry and are restoring yourself by engaging in appetitive processes, some of the "sharp and bitter" things you might enjoy aren't necessarily pure pleasures in themselves, yet in the moment they can be quite enjoyable.

(c) Again, it is not necessary that there should be something else better than pleasure, as some say the end is better than the process; for pleasures are not processes nor do they all involve process-they are activities and ends; nor do they arise when we are becoming something, but when we are exercising some faculty; and not all pleasures have an end different from themselves, but only the pleasures of persons who are being led to the perfecting of their nature. This is why it is not right to say that pleasure is perceptible process, but it should rather be called activity of the natural state, and instead of 'perceptible' 'unimpeded'. It is thought by some people to be process just because they think it is in the strict sense good; for they think that activity is process, which it is not.

That may be a little opaque because it turns on a logical distinction that isn't obvious if you haven't read more of Aristotle than just this. The difference between an activity and a process here is that a process is a set of things one does in order to obtain something else, whereas an activity is a thing done for itself. Happiness is an activity, i.e., the very eudaimonia we've been seeking in the ethics is something that you do in order to do it. It is, as it were, its own end: we aren't seeking something else by flourishing and being happy, but rather, we are flourishing and being happy just because we want to flourish and be happy.

A process aims at something, and because it does so that something is more important than the process itself. It's worth going through the process, in other words, in order to obtain the end that the process seeks. You might do the work of building a garden in order to do the work of growing tomatoes and peppers in order to do the work of harvesting them in order to do the work of cooking with them in order to do the work of canning the results in order to obtain delicious food that will last through the winter. That's a process with a product. The product is obviously superior to the process because you are willing to go through all the laborious steps in order to obtain it.

(B) The view that pleasures are bad because some pleasant things are unhealthy is like saying that healthy things are bad because some healthy things are bad for money-making; both are bad in the respect mentioned, but they are not bad for that reason-indeed, thinking itself is sometimes injurious to health.

Indeed it is. Havamal 54-6.

This is actually perfectly excusable if, and only if, most of those "leaders" won't be immediately after the meeting. Otherwise....

Nicomachean Ethics VII.11

There is a surprising beginning to this short chapter.

The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher; for he is the architect of the end, with a view to which we call one thing bad and another good without qualification. Further, it is one of our necessary tasks to consider them; for not only did we lay it down that moral virtue and vice are concerned with pains and pleasures, but most people say that happiness involves pleasure; this is why the blessed man is called by a name derived from a word meaning enjoyment.

This is a place where ancient Greek ethics differ sharply from Christian ethics. The later Christian Aristotelians would not accept that the political philosopher was in any sense the "architect" of the ultimate end of human life, in view of which we could call things 'good' or 'bad' without qualification. They would not in fact assign this to any human agent, not even priests or Popes, but to God alone.

The debate over whether men or 'a god' was the right locus of this, however, was not alien to the ancients. Plato has Socrates discuss the matter in some detail in the Euthyphro, coming down on the opinion that only the divine could serve this funciton; while the famous Protagoras the Sophist defended the thesis that 'man is the measure of all things.' There is also a Platonic dialogue called Protagoras, in which the thesis receives a small discussion as part of a larger inquiry into the nature of virtue.

Now (1) some people think that no pleasure is a good, either in itself or incidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the same; (2) others think that some pleasures are good but that most are bad. (3) Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures are good, yet the best thing in the world cannot be pleasure.

These numbers were added by the translator to help you keep the arguments straight. We will now see elaborations of each of these common arguments; you will by now be familiar with Aristotle's habit of laying out what is commonly thought by the Wise, especially when he doesn't really agree with any of them. He likes to lay out and address their views before giving his own.

(1) The reasons given for the view that pleasure is not a good at all are (a) that every pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural state, and that no process is of the same kind as its end, e.g. no process of building of the same kind as a house. (b) A temperate man avoids pleasures. (c) A man of practical wisdom pursues what is free from pain, not what is pleasant. (d) The pleasures are a hindrance to thought, and the more so the more one delights in them, e.g. in sexual pleasure; for no one could think of anything while absorbed in this. (e) There is no art of pleasure; but every good is the product of some art. (f) Children and the brutes pursue pleasures. (2) The reasons for the view that not all pleasures are good are that (a) there are pleasures that are actually base and objects of reproach, and (b) there are harmful pleasures; for some pleasant things are unhealthy. (3) The reason for the view that the best thing in the world is not pleasure is that pleasure is not an end but a process.

The coming chapters will address these arguments.