Aristotle’s Ethics Book I

More people are comfortable discussing, hell expounding on, the works of philosophers than have actually read them. That said, readers, and I am guilty of this, will take away, twist away, tear out of context anything they want from a book.

Writers know this, and have developed techniques for convincing, or in the case of Socrates, just getting across a desired idea, knowing full well there is no convincing your audience.

Perhaps someone might say, “Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?” Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you.

Aristotle late in book ten, shows an awareness of the difficulty in convincing an audience of anything (how do those conspiracy theorists do it?). But knowing the difficulty of communication is to understand a need for clarity. Aristotle (I need to reread from Plato to Prozac) is also fairly clear about the nature of happiness. Happiness is the good we are pursuing. Of this good Aristotle says:

For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of the community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime.

Such, then is the aim of our investigation; and it is a kind of political science. (p.64)

You could pull a quote like this:

it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual

to maintain your philosophy of individualism, but to then call your individualism Aristotelian would be a complete misappropriation of authority. For Aristotle, the aim of “our investigation” is clearly the good of the community.

I put “our investigation” in quotes to emphasize the communal quality of Aristotle’s thinking.

When the outline has been satisfactorily drawn, it may be supposed that anybody can carry on the work and fill in the detail; and that in such a case time is a good source of invention and cooperation. (p.76)

There is a communal quality, but to read this correctly, it must be understood that for Aristotle only a master can satisfactorily draw an outline. Aristotle is not a democrat. He argued for a government by the best, but this best, which might be difficult for moderns to understand, also had a communal quality, they were the best for everyone. This is not an isolated class of the best, but a best in communication with everyone. They provide the outlines that we fill in, and in this filling in, we develop. By living with and learning from the best we become the best we can be. We are all in pursuit of happiness, “the best, the finest, most pleasurable thing of all.” (p.79)

That the most important and finest thing of all should be left to chance would be a gross disharmony. (p.81)

I pulled this quote for the obvious reason. Aristotle sees happiness as something not left to chance.

Also on this view [that happiness is acquired by moral goodness and by some kind of study or training] happiness will be something widely shared; for it can attach, through some form of study or application, to anyone who is not handicapped by some incapacity for goodness. (p.80)

“Moral goodness” has nothing to do with Christian morality. The notion of personal salvation may have been understood by Aristotle, but he did dismiss the idea of an individual pursuit of happiness.

People do in fact seek their own good, and think they are right to act in this way. It is from this belief that the notion has arisen that such people are prudent. Presumably, however, it is impossible to secure one’s own good independently of domestic and political science. (p.214)

For Aristotle happiness was the end of a communal effort. Domestic and political science are essentially inquiries toward living well together. Aristotle also very clearly removes the sphere of divinity from our area of inquiry.

The goodness that we have to consider is a human goodness, obviously; for it was the good for man or happiness for man that we set out to discover. (p.87)

Unserious shallow systems blending opinion and cycnicism

Common Friend: Pommer’s Law “A person’s mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

The same could be said for newspapers, radio, television, magazines, hell, billboards…..

Common Friend: Yup.

Common Opinion: By definition there’s no such thing as a “wrong” opinion. Perhaps this Pommer fella means an “ill-informed” opinion.

Wrong. An opinion is the result of deliberation, or at least it should be. The calculative faculty of mind is the space where opinion (doxa) is generated. Sure it deals with what is variable, and as such can not be proven false, that is until one acts on an opinion.

The issue here is “unit of thought” if one deliberates on the facts taken off a t-shirt, say “I’m with stupid. –>” that one is not aware of all or enough of the facts to make a correct opinion. A book length unit of thought say, “The autobiography of stupid” might give us more facts for deliberation.

Aristotle tells us that “Judgment and opinion can be quite mistaken” But he also suggests a lifetime of study be put into the deliberation of the facts on which an opinion is formed.

Common Opinion: We live in an era when most people don’t have the attention span to write “for you” in full rather than “4U” so I think Aristotle’s “lifetime of study” suggestion might be setting the bar a bit high.
I was merely pointing out that phrases like “wrong opinion” and “correct opinion” (yours) are unpleasantly redolent of Stalinism, at least to me.
In any case, I was actually thinking more of existential imponderables when I said there’s no such thing as a wrong opinion – I meant eternal questions like Is there a God? Does life have any meaning? Should Common W. Friend be nicknamed “Dubya” in honour of his middle initial? Stuff like that…

I found this quote:

“Philosophy as a “discipline” has no real thesis about “theoretical fascism” because it basically considers the latter to be beneath all critique.

But herein lies the weak point — of critique. It remains fixated on “serious opponents,” and with this attitude it neglects the task of comprehending the ideological template of “unserious,” shallow “systems.” To this day critique has thus not been a match for this modern blend of opinion and cynicism.” — Peter Sloterdijk in The Critique of Cynical Reason

And then this came to my inbox:

YES, I’M A BAD CANADIAN

I Am the Liberal-Progressives Worst Nightmare.
I am a Canadian.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family,
not some liberal governmental functionary be it
NDP, Liberal or Conservative!

I’m in touch with my feelings and I like it that way!

I think owning a gun doesn’t make you a killer,
it makes you a Canadian with a Gun ,that’s it .

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized,
and does not entitle you to anything handed to you.

I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, it should be in English or French. And when I take money out of the ATM/ABM I should have only those two options.

I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her Godwhen and where they want to.

My heroes are John Wayne, Joe Carter, Wayne Gretsky, Roy Rogers, and Don Cherry.

I know wrestling is fake and I don’t waste my time
watching or arguing about it.

I’ve never owned a slave, or was a slave, I haven’t burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks orPersecuted any Native Indians myself and neither have you!
So, shut up already.

I believe if you don’t like the way things are here,
go back to where you came from and change your own country!

This is CANADA .

If you were born here and don’t like it you are free
to move to any Socialist country that will have you.

I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass
if you’re running from them..

I also think they have the right to pull you over if you’re breaking
the law, regardless of what colour you are.

And, no, I don’t mind having my face shown on my drivers license.
It’s the law, I think it’s good……and I think we should.

I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works,
I don’t want you deciding who should be running our nation
for the next four years.

I hate those people standing in the intersections
trying to sell me stuff or trying to guilt me into making ‘donations’
to their cause them.
Get Lost.

I believe that it doesn’t take a village to raise a child,
it takes two parents.

I believe ‘illegal’ is illegal no matter what the lawyers think.

I believe the Canadian flag should be the only one allowed in CANADA !

If this makes me a BAD Canadian,
then yes, I’m a BAD Canadian
and tough shit.

If you are a BAD Canadian too,
please forward this to everyone you know.

We want our country back!
This Bull-shit has gone far enough.

Remember What?

Here it comes again. The poppy to remind us of an institutionalized sacrosanct history.

Notes:

Our war vets fought for our rights and freedoms.

Someone needs to say: Poppy sales are sacrosanct. They’re a right as surely as religion, free speech and allegiance to the Leafs.

Try handing out leaflets (for free) in a privatized (public) space… Seriously why do we repeat yearly that our rights were secured by the military, when it’s clear, even in this story, that those rights (and our freedom) are anything but won. If veterans can’t rest on their laurels, what are we undecorated citizens to do when it comes to exercising our rights?

(Hint: You don’t fight for democracy in a uniform.)

Oh, and Media Democracy Day is Nov.7 Here in Vancouver. (and Chicago as well: http://media.causes.com/607614 )

I think that the point is that those vets fought for and did secure our rights, but they are now being victimized by the erosion of those rights, typically in the name of ‘political correctness’.

Furthermore, I find it perversely ironic that ‘Democracy Day’ organizers are pre-selecting participants:“progressive (i.e. leftist) media professionals and media activists”. What kind of a ‘democracy’ does that?

That’s a great question. “What kind of ‘democracy’ does that?” How’s this for an answer? — an emerging democracy? Two propositions: 1) We do not live in a democracy. 2) There are people who don’t want democracy.

The basis for democracy is equality in participatory decision making. Do you deny that you are excluded from the process of making decisions that directly affect your life? And thinking it’s ok that other more qualified people are making decisions for us is thinking that not having a democracy is ok. People who think it’s ok to live under an oligarchical (pastoral) government and people who think business decision are beyond the scope of a democratic process can’t be seen as friends of democracy. Sure there is “an irony” that a movement seeking total inclusion in the decision making process, would exclude (see proposition 2), but the conditions for total inclusion do not yet exist (see proposition 1).

If you want to participate in business decisions either start your own business or buy stocks. Any claim to a ‘democratic’ right to make decisions with other peoples’ private money is the antithesis of democracy; it’s either Obama’s new fascism (government buying/bullying businesses & smearing/terrorizing opponents) or old fashioned Communism.
Furthermore, we live in a constitutional, representative democracy. We elect and pay people to make decisions for us; that’s how it works – and it works better (particularly in Canada) than any other system. To suggest that every citizen should get his hands on every decision is self indulgent.
By the way, you seem to be arguing for less gov’t (more direct participation in decisions) and more (putting ‘business decisions’ in the hands of somebody other than the owner/s, i.e. the government).

Democracy is not politically neutral.

“Any claim to a ‘democratic’ right to make decisions with other peoples’ private money is the antithesis of democracy”

Do you have any idea what democracy means?

When money creates a power imbalance in social decision making, you’ve got an oligarchy. That means a government (deciders) of the few rich. Democrats recognize money as a social good/creation. They recognize the unfair distribution of that social good as exploitation. There are no other people in a democracy, only “We, the people.” There’s nothing self-indulgent about that idea.

By the way, where did this idea that capitalism should be ‘democratic’ come from? Capitalism is competitive, not collaborative. In fact, collaboration in capitalism is often considered criminal (e.g.collusion). Free-minded citizens should certainly consider government seizure of private assets criminal.
We all participate freely in the market, but not with rights beyond fair treatment (which you can easily find if you look for it). There is no right to a good outcome… unless you’re a child playing some kind of beginner sport. By the time you’re an adult you should be able to compete and succeed, at least to some degree, more or less on your own. That’s the beauty and power of capitalism that has propelled Western civilization to previously unimaginable heights.

“By the way, where did this idea that capitalism should be ‘democratic’ come from?”

More irony. Didn’t it come from the capitalists themselves? Democracy was revived as an idea (the Greeks tossed the idea around a while back) by the capitalists, to take power from the monarchy. (Imagine an apologist for monarchy writing “If you want to participate the rule of my dominion, why not become king or something….anyway) Democracy is taking on capital itself (too much democracy!?!?). Democracy is a challenge to hierarchy.

As for your history of capitalism, I think that some folks would champion the role of Christianity, specifically the Church, which advocated for free will as (in their words) granted us by God. In fact, there was an undeniable co-evolution of Christianity, capitalism (fruit of the Protestant Work Ethic) and democracy. I know, it’s difficult for the Left to respect the role of the Church in Western history, but it’s there! 😉

John 10:34 (This is an important passage in on the power of understanding) The connection between Christianity (soul/self/individualism) and capitalism and the destruction of community, thinking as a part of a community needs to be considered. Christianity and democracy can be linked, but capitalism is anti-democratic.

Quite simply, democracy means that you get a vote; it does NOT mean that you get your way. Sadly, the left has somehow forgotten their Gr. 9 Civics classes. They have chosen to disavow election results that they don’t like – oddly enough, basically disenfranchising themselves. Thus, they can claim that ‘democracy is broken’. It’s a very self-indulgent argument. (Yes, I do see that as a recurring theme in leftism.)
As I have said before, the core problem with collectivism/socialism is that it ultimately depends upon coercion: free citizens will ultimately do what they feel is best for themselves and their families, at some point contradicting the collective. (Really, who’s to say that the ‘collective’ knows what’s best for every individual or family?) Of course, all such folks need is the right education, right? A little nudge in the right direction? If need be, just send them off to camp, right?
That democracy does not yield the results you desire is not proof that democracy is broken, or that we don’t live in a real democracy. In fact, I take it as proof that democracy is working just fine!

Check out Beyond Elections. It’s a documentary about the community councils that are forming in different Latin American countries. This is the idea of democracy I’m talking about. Good ol’ fashioned communism/socialism and Good ol’ fashioned Canadian values are both centered in the state. You’ll see what they’re working for in the Latin American countries that are trying to take democracy seriously is a more dispersed/localized decision making practice. One of the more interesting lines says that we can start anywhere to live more democratically. Our families can be made more democratic.

You’ll also see why I never mention right or left, or parties when I talk about democracy. It’s not about centralizing power, taking or winning, but sharing, participating, communicating.

And I don’t think there’s a contradiction between living in community and living how you think/feel best. Coercion happens as a result of a difference in power. Military and police forces are coercive. I wrote about these ideas three years ago.

Remember veterans are not friends of Labour. They are friends of an order that exploits labour. There is another history.

an introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics

How close to a self-help book is Aristotle’s Ethics? Imagine Aristotle as the Oprah of his day… Yesterday I picked up a book from the Thrift Shop on Main to pass the time in a coffee shop while my son was at a nearby birthday party. Bradshaw On: The Family, a 1988 self help book, a follow-up of a PBS television series, a preface by Carol Burnett, starts with the thesis that the family is dysfunctional, and well, here are the ways to get it functional. Hitler came from a family. I’m not just making this up. This is just one of the pieces of evidence Bradshaw holds up against the family. I read the first chapter, and a difference between the common self help book and Aristotle’s Ethics, is that Aristotle waits until the last chapter/book before he lets his contemporary society have it. The Ethics was apparently written because pretty much everyone living in A.s time was an asshole. Bradshaw goes on about how shit everything is upfront.

In the introduction to the Penguin edition Barnes gives the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach as A.’s purpose. “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Today still, issues surround the family. Just today I watched Where the wild things are. That Eggers, who came to fame with his autobiography, and collective fantasy, (that’s cold, but consider Atwood’s Handmaid silently inseminated by the husband of her female master while held tight to her masters body, we live in a messed up world of rape fantasies and idealized family relations after death – recall the funeral scene from Heathers when the father cries, “I love my dead gay son.”) of our parents dying in quick succession, has this time, put out the saddest fantasy of collective loneliness I’ve seen since Mister Lonely.

Aristotle’s ethics proposes friendship as the way to a happy life. Friend, is sometimes used as a quality, as in: “He has no friend.” where friend is used in the same sense as say pride, as in: “He has no pride.” I’m mentioning this, because the friendship, the friend that you present to others must be of a certain quality to lead to a happy life. A man must act with virtue. These virtues are fully explained by Aristotle.  He later informs us that these virtues are rare qualities. So while the point of the Ethics, and philosophy for that matter is to change the world, seems the world is resisting.

Aristotle sets us up for an incredible amount of work. This might be the main difference between the ethics and a self-help book. The Ethics, while written more than 2000 years ago, includes in its pages, an opening for the entirety of human knowledge. We, according to Aristotle, are to learn absolutely everything, and then through deliberation, a kind of good and right thinking, act virtuously in accordance with a kind of harmony with this good and right thinking.

The opening, the space left for the sphere of deliberation, the future of knowledge, the openness of the Ethics, might be the key to its longevity. Look at Bradshaws book. Close down the new knowledge, fix it, then fix it. If you believe that we know, then you can believe that you know and feel better about yourself. Aristotle proposed a kind of experimental life, the good life as the experiment of the good man. There are a lot of unknowns in that proposition.

From the Introduction by Jonathan Barnes

The Ethics is a work of practical science. What that means is that the characteristic aim of studying ethics is not the acquisition of knowledge about action but action itself – we read the Ethics, according to Aristotle, not in order to know what good men are like, but in order to act as good men do (1095a5; 1103b25).

The student of ethics is unlikely to discover how a good man will act unless he has some knowledge of the general capacities and characteristics of human beings.

Aristotle is impressed by the seemingly infinite variety of human circumstances and situations.

It is worth underlining the fact that Aristotle is here adopting an extreme position, not unlike the one taken up by some existentialist thinkers: morals, he implies, cannot by any means be reduced to a set of universal principles; any principle that may be formulated is liable to exeption, any universal moral judgement (strictly construed) is false.

“the Ethics is expressly practical: its philosophy aims at changing the world, not at interpreting it.”

“the ‘happy’ man will be a lover of men and an admirer of beauty as well as a contemplator of truth – -a friend and an aesthete as well as a thinker.”

the case against marriage

“What lurks behind this narcissistic attitude is, however, the Freudian death drive, a kind of “undead” stubbornness denounced already by Kant as a violent excess absent in animals, which is why, for Kant only humans need education through discipline. The symbolic Law does not tame and regulate nature but, precisely, applies itself to an unnatural excess” – Zizek from Organs without Bodies

Atlantic Article

toward a paradigmatic revolution in domestic science

A post on Aristotle’s Ethics is in the works, for now…

The Domestic and political spheres: The domestic sphere is where we live everyday and how we live in this sphere is more in the realm of deliberative powers.

According to A. Democracy is the corruption of a corruption.

The point… “Get to the point” imagine a pyramidal structure the point supported by an incredible amount of material.

note: the perversion of the best (monarchy)form of constitution (of state) becomes the worst (tyranny)

The least bad of the tree perversions is democracy.

The self is constituted by a process of socialization.

The self or soul or spirit or person as grafted on to the body. The indistinguishable difference between self and life.

self criticism and self love: turned inward love and criticism are… What about self development? Criticism and love are best expressed in the sphere of human interaction. (organs without Bodies p.61 …self analysis is structurally impossible…)

How does a non-gay read the repression of gay action?

Colonization — an imposition of god and law — authority within a domain – the dominion of Canada – Harper says no history of colonialism. What?

Anti-Oedipus the family as structure of repression.

Engels – the imposition of family relations by church is one process of colonization.

Kim Davis’s article on co-housing — This article about a company/organization streamlining the co-housing process lacks an ethic, or a practical way of living well. Domestic science: the subjected body – the individual is made a subject -is socialized into the colony; the state; within a dominated boundary. The relationships and characteristics set in motion by socialization/colonization – are the way of life. An external power forges its subjects. with decolonization a vacuum is created. The relationship is changed and the subjects of those relationships find themselves in an asocial space. Man isn’t born Democratic he must be made so. men can be remade differently. We made others. Others make our selves. That is the project at hand. How do we create a set of characteristics and practices for living communally and democratically?

“Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated and continually called out into exercise by the great phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves through chance and change, or of literature as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, romance, etc., it is certain that, like any animal power or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle.” – Thomas De Quincey from The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power

“But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other consideration than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care presious little what anybody thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual — and that will be the end of it.” — Frederick Engels from The Origins of the Family, Private Property and The State.

From Eleanor Burke Leacock’s Introduction to The Origins of the Family, Private Property and The State. — “The position of women among the Naskapi hunting people of the Labrador Peninsula was stronger in the past than it is today. Seventeenth century Jesuit missionaries writing of their experiences state that “the women have great power here” and that “the choice of plans, of undertakings, of journeys, of winterings, lies in nearly every instance in the hands of the housewife” (Thwaites, 1906: Vol.V, 181; Vol.LXVIII, 93). A Jesuit scolds a man for not being “the master,” telling him “in France women do not rule their their husbands” (Vol. V, 181). To make the women obey their husbands became one of the concerns of the missionaries, particularly inrelation to the sexualfreedom that obtained: “I told him that it was not honorable for a woman to love anyone else except her husband, and that, this evil being among them (women’s sexual freedom) he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son.” The Naskapi’s reply is telling” “Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe” (Vol. VI, 255).

“Once developed historically, capital itself creates the conditions of its existence (not as conditions for its arising, but as results of its being)” – Marx

Links:

Intentional community

Kim Davis’s article on co-housing

Co-housing at Green Living Ideas

Party like it’s 1999…

From the CBC indepth profile on Svend Robinson:

1999: Alexa McDonough relegates Robinson to the backbenches after he tables a petition calling for the word “God” to be removed from the preamble of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Svend Robinson at the March for Peace in 2004:

From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Here’s a note: In Canada you’ve got the freedom to voluntarily unite for life with one man or one woman, to the exclusion of all others:

Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada — a Victorian-era law, developed specifically to prosecute Mormons for polygamy, which makes it illegal to enter into multiple conjugal relationships.

The law says that anyone who practices or agrees to enter into a polygamous relationship — essentially, a conjugal union with more than one person at the same time — is guilty of polygamy, whether the relationship is recognized by law or not.

Further, anyone who assists, celebrates or is party to such a ceremony can be charged under this law. If they were convicted, the maximum sentence is five years in jail.

How will it work?

The practices of communal living are a constant concern for those opposed to the idea. Has this question ever stopped anyone who wanted to work something out?

notes toward a sexual liberation

We really do need to start talking about sex politics in the context of true social change. When you think about it, how we relate is the basis of the social.

How and why to act is still a question for deliberation. This is for now my main proposition.

The sphere of action I am deliberating in is love, intimate, sexual and friend relationships. I feel the need to defend this choice of sphere. Favi writes that speaking about open relationships is as hard as talking about the war on drugs.

— What does this mean? —

First — speaking is done to communicate something. Are we to engage in a dialogue or a polemic? Polemic. Why? Because the opposition to any argument for change in sexual relationships or the politics of intimacy is short circuited by an institutionalized desire. Design and architecture, there’s the word ergonomical, what word describes design for the couple?

The couple is “natural”, “normal”, and as such the reaction against a difference… (think about the punishment for actions outside the institutionalized couple — stonings, ostrasizing, shaming, dehumanizing) both homosexual love and extramarital love are, when you consider the actual effect of such acts, extremely punished.

The subject is not in the public sphere of variability. More harshly, the subject is taboo. Consider the love taboo. George Orwell writes of the taboo and the limitation it places on freedom.

Here’s as good as any point to connect the limit on freedom imposed by the love taboo and the connection to socail justice and democracy.

The point has its critics. The desire to maintain familial relations (exclusive love contracts), even in breakout communities (ei: same sex marriage struggles), is so strong and the image of the libertine or pervert so sticky, that any talk of sexual politics is abstracted and the sphere of deliberation actually begins outside the sphere of the body (person). The reduction of a call for a discussion of an everyday activism to its limit (ie: the limit of communal living vs. the expance of governmental directives(policy)) and the seperation of everyday life from an abstract social in which a future justice is imagined.

The complex of social relations

The bondage in love relations. parent child social bonds.

total independence and absolute freedom are fantasies. No one would argue for these, but love relations as they are practiced are excessively binding. (closure – lack of ventilation)

“Were it not that human sensibilities are ventilated and continually called out into exercise by the great phenomena of infancy, or of real life as it moves through chance and change, or of literature as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, romance, etc., it is certain that, like any animal power or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle.” – Thomas De Quincey from The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power

Socialized sexual constraints as block to communal living. The discomfort of living in close proximity. resonance of desire )Bodily(  in a social where the body is subservient, secondary, base.

Emotional reactions as thought objections to communal living as inarticulable discomfort.

Good has a communal quality.