It's not as well known as the Norse sagas, but it's actually a good read.
Merit
From a history of Henry II. of England in a Gutenberg project:
[A]s king and chancellor [Beckett] were riding together through the streets of London one bitter winter's day, they saw a poor old man clad in rags. Turning to his friend the king said, "Would it not be a meritorious act to give that poor old man a warm cloak?" The chancellor agreeing that it would indeed, Henry exclaimed, "You shall have the merit of this worthy act!" and seizing Becket's magnificent fur-lined cloak, after a short struggle secured it and flung it to the beggar.In other news, eight Democratic Senators were assisted in performing a worthy act in agreeing to unfreeze SNAP benefits, after a short struggle.It reminds me of a report a few years ago of some Marines assisting an obstreperous fellow to regain his composure.
A packed season for Constitutional issues
This is an excellent list of the dozens of cases stacked up in front of the Supreme Court at present. Not an analysis of the issues and prospects, just a handy summary of the general topic.
Music Inspired by C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters"
So my son was headed to a concert tonight, and it turns out the album he was listening to by the group- The Oh Hellos- was inspired by C.S. Lewis "The Screwtape Letters". This piqued my interest, and turns out the music is pretty good!
A couple tracks from the album "Dear Wormwood"-
Soldier, Poet, King
Thus Always to Tyrants
Enjoy!
A new year
It is my birthday today--I am 69--and my expanding squad of dog helpers are spontaneously uniting in an aimable conspiracy to supply me with cakes of various sorts. My dear husband gifted me with flowers and dog paraphernalia, in addition to which he is preparing Chicken Marengo for dinner, a particular favorite. He also, bless him, continues to acquiesce gracefully in my impulsive undertaking to fund my neighbor's custody lawsuit, which I consider a substitute for anniversary, birthday, and Christmas gifts for the duration. I need to see that child safe and would be in a spot if he objected.
I am taking advantage of my birthday-girl status by lounging all afternoon with one of my dogs and doing a great many Gutenberg pages in the interesting survey of history that I mentioned earlier this week.
The day also marks the first time in a long while that a troublesome foot ailment has appeared well enough healed to allow me to resume long dog walks. The dogs have been well treated by my helper army in the meantime, but it was pleasant to get back to the routine, particularly since the cooler fall weather finally has arrived. It was good to join my husband again in his morning walk.
You Oughta Learn to Cook
I'm personally of the opinion that we shouldn't provide food stamps to anyone at all, nor health care, nor any government aid. People aren't going to starve to death in America; our problem with the poor is obesity. They'd adjust, and be freer for not being dependent.
But hey, you would benefit from learning to cook. Food will be heathier and better-tasting as well if you learn what to do with it.
This is what happens when we take these basic life skills out of schools. Cooking, gardening, food preservation, and basic butchery are, in fact, survival skills. Without this knowledge, is it any wonder people have this reaction to receiving a box of canned and dry goods?
Having seen its products, I'm not really in favor of public education either. I'd be happy to teach people how to cook, though, on a volunteer basis. I like cooking, and it is amazing how much better life gets when you're possessed of the skill to do it well.
More experimentation with AI
(1) It's pretty good at what amounts to a skip-trace on an old friend or relative you've lost contact with.
(2) It does a great job finding a book that might appeal to you for the same reason other books did. The "heat-map" sites that try to do this don't yield good results for me; it usually turns out that what other people liked in an author was nothing like what attracted me. Grok can find an author of a thriller series that's good at "show, don't tell" exposition and has characters (primary and otherwise) with a lot of moral agency and autonomy, with a strong "MacGyver" vibe. No ordinary book review is a good substitute for that service. It found me several books on an obscure point of cellular biology evolution that I not only had not been able to find with traditional searches, but about which I had never found anyone else who had much curiousity, in person or in print.
(3) It does a decent job explaining technology I'm not familiar with. It will offer an explanation that's a mixture of concepts I can grasp and those I'm lacking a foundation for, then tailor the explanation to the areas I'm stronger in, like a flexible and patient tutor.
(4) It's a little like talking to a therapist: the attention is all one way, and its attention span to my personal obsessions is seemingly limitless. Nor is it above flattering me for being interested in something interesting.
(5) But in that vein, someone just commented elsewhere that it's a strong temptation to indulge in conversations that are all about getting attention and information and not at all about reciprocating or bonding. Still, the experience of a conversation on a topic that truly arouses my enthusiasm is a strong draw, when I know from long experience I'm unlikely to find a person to share the interest--or not since my father's death 30 years ago, anyway. It's a bit like talking to myself, but smarter and more broadly informed in ways that are easily reflected in published materials.
(6) I may be too much of an introvert to be much use to other people as a conversational companion, so maybe I just have to find other ways to be useful, like rescuing dogs and helping my neighbor with her custody dispute.
Nicomachean Ethics X.2
We begin with the examination of opinions worth considering, as we have been doing throughout.
Eudoxus thought pleasure was the good because he saw all things, both rational and irrational, aiming at it, and because in all things that which is the object of choice is what is excellent, and that which is most the object of choice the greatest good; thus the fact that all things moved towards the same object indicated that this was for all things the chief good (for each thing, he argued, finds its own good, as it finds its own nourishment); and that which is good for all things and at which all aim was the good. His arguments were credited more because of the excellence of his character than for their own sake; he was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and therefore it was thought that he was not saying what he did say as a friend of pleasure, but that the facts really were so. He believed that the same conclusion followed no less plainly from a study of the contrary of pleasure; pain was in itself an object of aversion to all things, and therefore its contrary must be similarly an object of choice. And again that is most an object of choice which we choose not because or for the sake of something else, and pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks to what end he is pleased, thus implying that pleasure is in itself an object of choice. Further, he argued that pleasure when added to any good, e.g. to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.
Aristotle uses that bolded argument himself in other places to prove that existence is the greatest good, for all things -- not only men but small animals -- pursue it, both by striving to avoid death and by striving to reproduce and extend their existence. The unification of existence and goodness is of great use to later thinkers from monotheistic traditions, who identify perfect existence with God: Avicenna is the greatest of these, but Aquinas also adopts the argument without modification into his Summa Theologiæ.
Here, however, Aristotle is intending to reject the argument as presented. The hedonistic approach to ethics is not satisfying to him.
This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it. Now it is clear that nothing else, any more than pleasure, can be the good if it is made more desirable by the addition of any of the things that are good in themselves.
This is a solid argument, and classically Greek in its structure. They are looking for "the" good, not "a" good. If we're going to identify that thing -- it is an assumption already that there is or ought to be a single good -- we need to find something that won't be improved by adding anything else to it. This is because if anything else could make X better, then X is not by itself the pure good.
When we get to existence, we can show that at least most beings will accept it even if it is stripped of other goods -- many will choose to continue to live in pain, rather than to die. Yet even there we can't show that existence plus the absence of pain (and presence of pleasure) wouldn't be better than existence alone. The later monotheistic thinkers will assume that a perfect existence will include the goods, but for the pagan Greeks that won't do: if we are looking for the good, we need something that is self-sufficient.
What, then, is there that satisfies this criterion, which at the same time we can participate in? It is something of this sort that we are looking for. Those who object that that at which all things aim is not necessarily good are, we may surmise, talking nonsense.
There Aristotle rejects the alternative position to the basic argument, and therefore accepts that "that at which all things aim is necessarily good" as a consequence.
For we say that that which every one thinks really is so; and the man who attacks this belief will hardly have anything more credible to maintain instead. If it is senseless creatures that desire the things in question, there might be something in what they say; but if intelligent creatures do so as well, what sense can there be in this view? But perhaps even in inferior creatures there is some natural good stronger than themselves which aims at their proper good.
Nor does the argument about the contrary of pleasure seem to be correct. They say that if pain is an evil it does not follow that pleasure is a good; for evil is opposed to evil and at the same time both are opposed to the neutral state-which is correct enough but does not apply to the things in question. For if both pleasure and pain belonged to the class of evils they ought both to be objects of aversion, while if they belonged to the class of neutrals neither should be an object of aversion or they should both be equally so; but in fact people evidently avoid the one as evil and choose the other as good; that then must be the nature of the opposition between them.
This should be familiar from the early parts of the EN, when we were talking about virtue as the balancing point between two opposites. Aristotle is showing that pleasure and pain are clearly in opposition, not both middle figures in the neutral sector between oppositions. Yet given the overall structure of the work that implies, of course, that neither pleasure nor pain will be 'the Good,' but some state between them -- perhaps closer to one than the other, but in any case in between.
Keep it Closed
A more than modest proposal.
We may need some government. But some government is far less than we have now when disruptions in the budget process affect one in eight Americans' meal planning and prevent passenger jets from crossing the skies. The government should be doing less, subsidizing fewer people and businesses, and it certainly shouldn't be encouraging a class of clients whose fortunes depend on politicians' largesse.CNN reports that "a small group of fed-up lawmakers in Washington are furiously trying to end the standoff as soon as this week" so the federal government can resume its suspended activities. But that's the wrong approach. We need a real shutdown to make Americans go cold turkey. We need to rediscover our independence, kick the government habit, and learn how to live without Uncle Sugar.We'll eventually learn how much, if any, government we really need. For now, keep it closed.
Every step in that direction seems like a step in the right direction. Maybe we don't need them at all; maybe we do, but not nearly as much as people thought we did.
Sandwich Guy Not Guilty
Jury nullification is a beautiful thing, even if you don't agree with the particular case: it's always good to see the people tell the government that it is the people who hold the final veto on power. It's not a violation of the rule of law but a reminder that part of the rule is that the people decide on when and whether to apply the law.
The community considered that guy a hero -- much like the sandwich he threw -- and as 'political violence' goes, a thrown sandwich isn't really a threat to anyone anyway. The cops may not like having a sandwich thrown at them, but it's better than rocks or Molotov cocktails. Everybody has a chance to learn something important about what the locality and its population will tolerate from the government, and from the populace.
Individuals and Communities
Tom was asking about this topic below; here’s a paper by Linda Zagzebski that came across my desk, which is on the matter.
Is ethics all about rights and duties, or is it about living a happy, flourishing life? For millennia in the West, ethics was about the way to flourish as an individual and a community. The qualities that enable people to live that way are the virtues, and that style of ethics is called Virtue Ethics. In the early modern period, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion and ethics began to focus on right and duties, where rights and duties are demands made against others. In this article I argue that the language of rights and duties has made it almost impossible for people on opposing sides of public policy issues to come to agreement. I defend the return of Virtue Ethics in philosophy, and propose that if it can be adopted by ordinary people, we will have a better chance at overcoming our deep divisions.
Remember, remember
. . . I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.But I did forget the Fifth of November completely, until I happened to be working on some Gutenberg pages this morning from a history of the period. It's an extremely condensed history, jumping from a rapid description of John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Jamestown Colony to a quick note on Guido Fawkes. I'd never before associated the two events with the same decade. The smiling zeal to destroy impure societies rings a bell this week.
International Socialism
AVI makes a good point:
...liberals have become more and more European, and have oriented themselves toward Western European comparisons, just as Europe itself is disintegrating. They have castigated conservatives for being provincial and prided themselves on being internationalists. But international means China, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Singapore now.
The Chinese would tell you that they remain part of the original international socialism, which was supposedly going to spread to all the capitalist world by Marxist revolution. This was supposedly going to bring, inter alia, equality between the sexes. How's that project going?
China's new divorce law changes everything: wives can only keep what they can prove they bought or paid for, eliminating the automatic division of assets..... According to local media, courts in Shanghai and Beijing have already applied the new rule in recent trials, and the first cases resulted in decisions largely favorable to the husbands, consolidating the new legal understanding. The Chinese reform reflects a trend of tightening family laws in several Asian countries, which seek inhibit marriages motivated by economic gain. However, international experts note that the social impact could be profound: in a country where more than 70% of urban properties are registered only in men's names, millions of women may be left without the right to housing in the event of separation.
There are several uses of "international" and "global" in that article.
Meanwhile, as this article co-authored by my friend Jim Hanson points out, there's some real internationalism going on in New York city.
Mamdani’s political mentor, Linda Sarsour, boasted that the Hamas-linked nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was the “largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran PAC.” Public records confirm the connections: CAIR Action funneled money to the “Unity and Justice Fund PAC.” That political action committee dropped $120,000 into the pro-Mamdani Super PAC....
This operation exploited New York’s public financing. Staffers from the Islamic Circle of North America—a group critics identify as a South Asian Islamist branch—made donations totaling $1,300. The city’s matching funds program multiplied that contribution, turning it into $7,700 in public money.
Mamdani’s associations reveal his allegiances. He praised Imam Siraj Wahhaj—an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—as a “pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.”
What's the women's rights situation like in those Muslim countries, again? Must be pretty good! Surely that explains his extraordinary popularity with young women. They're just voting their self-interests.
One of the good things about our remaining Federalism is how little what happens in NYC matters to me in Western NC. I'm glad they don't have much control over my life; I imagine they wouldn't like it if I had more control over theirs. I'm glad to leave them to their own devices in return for getting to be left alone to mine. Still, if they think they're voting themselves Norway and Sweden, they might be in for a surprise. (Or maybe they are; Sweden's got a lot more crime and violence in their "once utopian" city of Malmö these days, now ranked as more dangerous than Baghdad.)
Nicomachean Ethics X.1
We begin the final book with a short chapter. The initial remarks are straightforward and biologically accurate; even in the womb, a fetus will try to move away from a needle. Whether this "avoidance behavior" counts as 'feeling pain' or not is, however, debated still somewhat hotly; but the avoidance response occurs quite early. There is thus something very basic about the avoidance of pain, perhaps even pre- or proto-conscious as a drive; the seeking of pleasure is likewise basic. These must therefore be considered in an account of human ethics as they will be deeply influential.
After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.
So, what should we say about it? Aristotle begins as often by explaining what often is said about it. Some people say that pleasure is the good; others say pleasure is bad. Some who say so believe that, and others just think they ought to say it in order to guide people away from being enslaved by their pleasures.
For some say pleasure is the good, while others, on the contrary, say it is thoroughly bad-some no doubt being persuaded that the facts are so, and others thinking it has a better effect on our life to exhibit pleasure as a bad thing even if it is not; for most people (they think) incline towards it and are the slaves of their pleasures, for which reason they ought to lead them in the opposite direction, since thus they will reach the middle state. But surely this is not correct.
This is not the first time the issue of pleasures and pain has come up; Aristotle discussed it before in II.9 (this is the 'Helen at the Gates of Troy' warning against pleasures, coupled with advice that you should be keen about driving them off) and again in VII.13-14. The latter concluded that there were some noble pleasures that are worthy of pursuing. There are good things that are good all the time, like philosophical reflection, kindness, and friendship; these are not to be avoided because they have no excesses. There are other pleasures that do admit of excesses, such as food and drink, but these should still be pursued because they are in fact goods as long as they are pursued within a rule and not to excess.
Since we've already discussed the matter it's a little surprising to find ourselves returning to the ground in the last book of the EN. Nevertheless, Aristotle has a lot more to say about pleasure, pain, happiness and politics.
In any case, Aristotle is against lying to people about pleasure being bad for them in order to try to guide them away from it. This will not fool people, he says, but it will make them despise you because they can see you are saying something you must know is not true.
For arguments about matters concerned with feelings and actions are less reliable than facts: and so when they clash with the facts of perception they are despised, and discredit the truth as well; if a man who runs down pleasure is once seen to be aiming at it, his inclining towards it is thought to imply that it is all worthy of being aimed at; for most people are not good at drawing distinctions. True arguments seem, then, most useful, not only with a view to knowledge, but with a view to life also; for since they harmonize with the facts they are believed, and so they stimulate those who understand them to live according to them.-Enough of such questions; let us proceed to review the opinions that have been expressed about pleasure.
This at least is good advice about which many remain mistaken; I can't recount how many times in my childhood and youth adults would fiercely preach against things like beer and sex, which they would then go home to enjoy. Nobody is fooled, and the speaker is discredited thereby: the youth who might have listened to him and learned a good lesson from him will instead now set aside anything else he says thereafter.
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