Why read Aristotle today?
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"Throughout modern times, practically every advance in science, in logic, or in philosophy has had to be made in the teeth of the opposition from Aristotle's disciples."
"Aristotle, it should be said, has been one of the great misfortunes of the human race." (Scientific outlook)
Many of my professors loved the idea of the cargo cult, the horror and glory of it. So, don't be fooled: You may discover a bit of cargo cult within modern studies of Plato and Aristotle.
For one thing, Plato and Aristotle both assert that there's some sort of absolute truth or order to the world, but many other human traditions reject this idea and offer a variety of counterpoints. My favorite is that the questions of material/immaterial, monism/dualism are irrelevant, and that the universe is presided over by tricksters of various sorts with almost nothing to do with the co-occurring human world. There's Coyote, Loki, Anansi, Hermes, many mythical characters from across traditions who would have both Plato and Aristotle know they're merely daft professors, and there's no such thing as atoms nor caves.
These ideas and their idealized past always center on the idea of a natural human order. This arises from, in Plato, the idea that each mind is imprisoned in a series of closed cabinets, and can achieve perfect knowledge of neither truth nor justice; in Aristotle, from a first-moving cause within a universe in which all things are bound by a certain causality. Rome utilized an initiate religion which was used to structure business hours, and you can trivially extrapolate to Darwin and Victorian society, or wherever you like. And, generally speaking, things aren't great for people without the "advanced literacy." Philosophers from around the same era would lampoon all of these notions: Heraclitus insisted there was no cause and effect, Diogenes insisted there could be neither ideals nor wisdom. Even today you can find physicists who are skeptical of causality outside of controlled experiments.
When you look at alternatives to the Great Civilizations of the West and Near East, many of them vanished without written record (I wrote from my laptop, as a technology professional) or created massive citadels and then abandoned them the way one leaves behind sand castles (common throughout the Americas). The apocalypse prophecy of the Hopi tradition, Koyaanisqatsi, states that the world ends when people begin to mine for minerals. Note that after the fall of the Roman Empire, steel was lost to civilization (outside of China? Can't remember) for a long time. But of course, you can think of perhaps ten traditions, without using Google, where the end times have always been upon us.
To place faith in one particular myth, philosophy, or history as always defining of an individual person or their world, or somehow superior to another, is to err. Individual world-theories are often the o-rings of our society, to be puzzled out by inspectors like Feynman long after they fail catastrophically, but in other places their graceful interaction can indeed change the world forever and for the better.
Not sure what all these words will mean to you but I hope they helped you understand where my mind has wandered lately.
In each of us there are four internal voices: sensation, rational thought, emotion and intuition. When you choose to listen to one or more of these voices you get a philosophical school. Plato is mainly intuitive with a touch of emotion. Aristotle is mainly rational with a touch of intuition. They're both western philosophers because eastern philosophy focuses a lot on the senses.
Here are some pure philosophies for each of the four voices, so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about:
* Sensation: Taoism
* Rational thought: Rationalism
* Emotion: Romanticism
* Intuition: Mysticism
However, philosophies are rarely pure, which is why there are so many of them.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
This is correct and the fundamental that distinguishes these two thinkers is the Primacy of Consciousness versus the Primacy of Existence, i.e., subjectivity versus objectivity. Kant's theories are a secularized, modernized version of Plato's ideas (i.e., removed the supernatural elements and replaced God with Society) whereas Rand's theories are a revised and more consistent version of Aristotle's ideas (i.e., consistently applied the law of identity to all branches of philosophy and especially to consciousness itself).
So the two poles of Western thought guiding human behavior are Plato/Kant versus Aristotle/Rand.
You're claiming human behavior is much more complex than this. Fine.
How do you know it to be more complex? Through objective sociological methods? Or "just" because of what you intuit?
This is one the most unfortunate things I commonly run into when reading philosophy (or talking with those who study it): imagine if once physics became an established, separate scientific endeavor from philosophy (though it was once a part of it), and yet the majority of philosophers kept on inventing their own versions of physics (without ever doing experimental verification) and pretending the scientific branch didn't exist. I think this is a fairly accurate analogy for the relationship between psychology and philosophy.
To be certain there are many subjects bordering on psychology which are still correctly in the domain of philosophy (e.g. free will or the 'hard problem' of consciousness), but then there are many more mundane issues which are already basically settled in psychology which philosophers still treat as if they were some deep fundamental aspect of reality.
I suppose part of the difficulty is finding quality material in psychology, since it's a vast field with many sub-disciplines. That said, the search can be richly rewarding. There are experiments described in Gazzaniga's The Social Brain, for example, which profoundly changed my understanding of the human brain (and have remained consistent with much more reading over the decade following).
Here's a relevant bit:
"When Aristotle looks for a place to begin the investigation of any topic he suggests that we begin with “the opinions of the many or the wise.” This is hardly because those opinions are thought to be infallible. We need not have a mystical view about “the collective wisdom of humanity” to think it sensible to start there. It simply makes more sense than wasting our time with random fanciful or extraordinary views, views that have come out of nowhere and are likely only to lead nowhere, the wild suppositions of impossible happenings: colors that change on a certain date, universes that consist only of sounds or of one object, and so forth. Under the influence of Descartes’s method, these imaginings have been thought to reveal “conceptual boundaries.”
I totally agree. Aristotle is still relevant today. But regarding happiness, as presented in this article, all these philosophers, Aristotle included, offer behavioral recipies that the SELF must enforce on his body in order to be happy. Usually by enforcing such things as frugality and fasting, instead of letting the body do what it wants. So let the body decide what is best for itself.
But what I want to say is that, happiness is, to a great extent, a feeling resulting from, or caused by, some chemicals. Like melatonin and seratonin. So all we have to do is to create the right conditions for the body to secrete the optimum amount of happiness chemicals. So it seems happiness is not about forcing body to behave a certain way.
You are right, that's why I said, or I was trying to say, that as the conscious self, I will prepare the most favorable environment for the body to relax and have deep sleep.
And what if the body decides that the best thing for itself is crack cocaine? You don't want happiness per se, but a fulfilling and satisfying life.
Think about it, if you could wire yourself to a machine that injected all the happiness chemicals into your brain for the rest of your life would you do it?
"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
Only in the sense that the brain is part of the body.
> You don't want happiness per se, but a fulfilling and satisfying life.
Also see https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/06/the-meani....
Putting aside Aristotelian virtue-of-external-goods, there is so much agreement with the Stoics (action-from-virtue and virtue-from-within). And THEN, when you fold in schools like Daoism and Buddhism (the philosophy, not religion) and their takes on acceptance and happiness ... I am also impressed (comforted?) that there is so much in common with the west. (Confirmation of fundamentals? I recognize this optimism is decidedly un-Stoic. Lol.)
BTW, here's another good article IMO that contrasts the two Greek camps:
http://modernstoicism.com/poor-but-happy-aristotle-and-the-s...
I'd recommend a couple of classics, both accessible to non-specialists:
The Great Chain of Being is a nice overview of some of the main themes of ancient metaphysics and their later influence.[1] It ranges far beyond the ancient world, but it does as good a job as anything can of showing how ancient theories that might easily seem conceptually alien could in fact have been rational.
Shame and Necessity is about what you might call the ethical mindset of the ancient world.[2] The general aim is to explore how the ways Greeks and Romans engaged with moral questions systematically differed from what ethics would become after the advent of Christianity. (I can't praise this book enough. Williams was insanely erudite and analytically sharp.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Great-Chain-Being-Study-History/dp/06...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Shame-Necessity-Sather-Classical-Lect...
If you want to follow the above approach I think the best resource is the fantastic Philosophy Bites podcast (http://www.philosophybites.com/) where philosophers are interviewed. And if you're more of a printed matter type of person, they have books with the transcribed interviews, too (https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Bites-David-Edmonds/dp/019...).
This, I think, is a great way to identify the areas of philosophy you're interested in to zoom in further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics
"Let us resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise."
Together with Socrates and Platon those three Greeks basically posed questions that every age answered in their own way.
>Nobody would call a man ideally happy if he has not got a particle of courage nor of temperance nor of decency nor of good sense, but is afraid of the flies that flutter by him, cannot refrain from any of the most outrageous actions in order to gratify a desire to eat or to drink, and ruins his dearest friends for the sake of a penny…
If Aristotle means that the general lack of these qualities leads to unhappiness than he just needed to have some more profligate friends. I've known cowards, adicts and individuals with terrible practical instincts who were all happy people. If he specifically means the total lack of one of these traits well then no s---. Of course those individuals have a harder time being happy. They're lacking a significant tool the rest of us pack around in tool box for dealing with day to day life. And there's a decent chance they're suffering a debilitating neuroses. In the first case it's naive. In the second it's inane. Obviously Aristotle wasn't an idiot but I find the same flaw among nearly all ancient Greek philosophers. He was retroactively fitting a moral reasoning to his own secular but restrained moral instincts. There's a way of living that felt right to him and he reasoned himself into thinking it was "best". I may be more sympathetic to the Stoics and the Epicureans but I get the same vibe when I read their works.
But yes, I've known alcoholics, pot heads, pill poppers and a few dope fiends who lead productive fullfilled lives, seem extraordinarily content and actively contribute back to their communities. If those aren't signs of happiness, I don't know what are.
Of course I've known many more for whom addiction has been a total disaster. So I'm not recommending it or anything but I don't think it should be a disqualifier for considering one "happy". And yes when I say "happiness" I mean something beyond momentary satisfaction.
This just strikes me as more of the same old school dudes conflating control or self discipline with virtue and conflating virtue with happiness (not that they have nothing to do with each other but I'm not sure they're the same things.)
In my opinion, either Aristotle should've broadened his view of "virtue" or "happiness" to not worry so much about personal weakness or vice. Or his notion of these aren't really worth taking up as a modern measure against one's life.
Aristotle's retort would be that what you are ascribing as 'happiness' is not what he is talking about. There's a reason he speaks of an 'ideally happy' person. I recommend you to read the section 'The Human Good and the Function Argument' of this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/#HumGooF...:
> Aristotle's search for the good is a search for the highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.
> Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms “eudaimonia” (“happiness”) and “eu zên” (“living well”) designate such an end. [...] These terms play an evaluative role, and are not simply descriptions of someone's state of mind.
> No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather, being eudaimon is the highest end, and all subordinate goals—health, wealth, and other such resources—are sought because they promote well-being, not because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue, Aristotle asks what the ergon (“function,” “task,” “work”) of a human being is, and argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue.
Yeah none of that's is true. Failing to know persons in suffsiciently deep level. Any addict, terrible friend etc who has core faculties in place to reflect on themselves knows what's missing. A person unaware of this can disagree. They could also disagree with climate change and gravity but I believe it's for what progress we have today as a whole... Generally accepted that unhealthy behaviors and "happiness" are at odds.
(Please forgive any typos 5am reply here)
Specifically @ the last point it's sad to read. I get and have gotten a sense of uptick that the nobody tries to live well for a root cause outside themselves.. and see politically etc how this is a popular behavior. But it.. in my gut-analytical self feels de-evolution-y of our, well of what we could be doing.
Yep, and this is at the core of C.S. Lewis' work.
To me the notion of a base morality contrived by man seems wildly arbitrary. Taking the most obvious case of murder; without some entity or force outside/independent of man exercising judgment for the act I don't see why one would naturally be compelled to submit to this morality. Especially if said morality could be justified in one's mind as impeding on their own well being.
Contextomy and Aristolean philosophy are like oil and water.
Ancient Greek thinking like this usually leaves me with a sense akin to shock, I think because I'm victim of some darling prejudices of our time: that the quality of human thinking has gradually improved over eons. That the vast number of humans now engaged in thinking on all continents, with marvels of technology at their fingertips would mean we have ready access to unparalleled understanding of the human condition compared to times past. Instead we are like children. We can hardly even understand what those people were talking about.
Moral agency? Never heard about it :-/.
The thing to keep in mind is that there is incredible selection bias at work here. The vast majority of people living then were illiterate and living brutal lives. They didn't know or care about philosophy, much like the majority of people now. Yes, ancient Athens was special in that it had a special focus on thought, but I would still bet that the modern era has a greater percentage of people who are interested in great thought than ever before, and we've had our own thinkers at great heights.
Greek legacy was build in ~100-150 years, which is more like a flash in human history than an era. I'm talking about 5th century BC specifically. Walking to the streets of the Athenian city state you could come across:
- philosophers: Socrates, Isocrates, Protagoras, Parmenides - historians: Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon - authors: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes - scientists(?): Democritus (the atom guy), Phidias (greatest sculptor in Ancient Greece), Hippocrates (father of modern Medicine) - politicians: Pericles and Demosthenes - military minds: Miltiades, Themistocles
I think the fact that democracy was established the century before, had a lot to do with this concentration of minds.
That said, of course, slavery was a thing, women were more like objects and only a few had voting rights.
EDIT Fun fact: Democritus -- also known as the founder of materialism -- is highly influential in modern enlightenment too. Most famously, Karl Marx was heavily influenced by his ideas so much so that his Doctoral thesis was on him. If you read Marx's writings chronologically, you'll see that he started his philosophical career as an idealist, and then (possibly with Democritus influence) turned 180 degrees and became a materialist and dedicated his life to argue against idealism.
That said the quote: “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” spelled more than 2k years before J. Dalton, is enough to call him a scientist IMHO.
After, the only way one can progress and see the future, is by standing at the shoulders of giants.
Our time in contrast has outsourced thinking to experts, who in turn don't think at all, only use various automations (maths or other systems) to synthesize something that is instrumental in some way, be it to sway peoples opinions or (vastly more common) get into their pockets (I've been in marketing, I know how it works). Even free will has been mathematically 'disproved' in our time, and many believe it to be so, so why bother use any moral agency at all?
Too broad a brush? Maybe. But history does have a way of labeling eras. And my guess is ours will be labelled as the era of great automation, without any thoughtful direction.
Take some time and read The Clouds and Plato’s apologia, and think about what happened to Socrates, and think about what that says about how the average person thought about philosophy.
It is quite interesting how in some ways ancient societies were already relatively advanced, how we lost some of it thought the centuries and how only in modern societies we are getting some of those 3000 or something old ideas back.
Naturally there was other stuff that it is quite good that it was lost in the mist of time.
Our technology has improved. That's pretty much it! We're certainly no more intelligent than our ancient cousins...
Which is exactly a notion that's being challenged by modern science. We observe animals from apes to crows that do understand the outcome of their actions. Whether they judge it as good or bad in a grander scheme, we don't know, but that grander scheme is just as well being challenged by nihilism.
Whether an agent has rights also depends on his (in principle) capacity for moral responsibility.
Furthermore, much of what is presented as modern science challenging "classical" views of free will, language and the like is dubious on closer inspection. Libet is a great example.
And it's easy to look back at that and imagine how much we have progressed, yet at the same time we still have as much a fear of words as ever. And I imagine there's hardly a person that would respect our system of law so much as to be voluntarily willing to sacrifice their lives as a matter of principle in obedience to such, even when he certainly felt he was being grievously wronged.
People today in critical situations still do that. Hell, Snowden sacrificed a lot and so did other wistleblowers. Not life, but definitely a lot.
There's immense discussion about the reasons for this, but there's no doubt that a major part of it is that he felt the 'social contract' that held society together was sacred. And so he did what he could to improve that society even when it may have run afoul of that society's laws, but also did not aim to avoid its judgement and justice when it came to that, however unjust he might have felt them. Snowden did the exact opposite in seeking to achieve his ends yet also avoid justice at even extreme costs to himself.
It's a mindset that we can even hardly imagine in times today, which is precisely what Socrates feared society would turn into.
But also, it is less frequent because that mindset achieves nothing. It is interesting personal story as you cross it in history book, but they are drops nobody takes lesson from and nobody cares about. Just about only ones that was close to achieving something were those who made popular martyrs from themselves. From top of head, there was that Polish man who turned himself into concentration camp so that he can escape and be witness. (Was not much believed.)
I suppose I mostly just long for a time when political leaders were those deeply schooled participants in political and logical philosophy. Now a days instead of writings on political theory and ideology, the most we can expect from our political leaders is ghost written "autobiographies" that seem to be little more than self indulgent money grabs.
None of those other deaths created just society - the violent and corrupted people stayed in power till they were topped by other violence. (Or in case of communism regime remained violent till it died dozens years after for different reasons).
I don't know when deeply thinking political and logical philosiphers were supposed to rule. I also don't think it would necessary imply just or fair society. It might end like cruel but effective society too with strong entrenched power structure.
Though in my comment I was alluding to the founding of the US in particular. The writings and philosophy that underpinned the founding and logic of this nation were incredible and undoubtedly set the stage for a rural backwoods colony to, in less than 300 years, become the most powerful and influential nation in the world. Of course much of the philosophy and logic that the nation was founded on has been disregarded or ignored when convenient and it's not so hard to argue that our ongoing success has been more the result of inertia than a fundamental superiority.
Two of Socrates students, overthrown the democratic government twice and killed a lot of people. Thousands, plus others lost properties or were send away. One of those students was friend of Socrates. The authoritarian killers here being friends and students of Socrates. So you know, some hard feelings are to be expected toward Socrates too.
Maybe he was considered dangerous, because his ideas were used in past to kill a lot of people. Where rule based society would respect amnesty (there was amnesty) despite fear and danger, this one was violent. Socrates might been big thinker, but his death is not the only one in the story that counts or counted for his contemporaries.
It is not totally entirely clear how Socrates was involved with what, but the society there was dealing with a lot of violence in close memory and that is ignoring violence against slaves.
It took a lot of violence too, in coming to power for US, not just writings and philosophy. And a lot of that philosophy was not "disregarded" in violence, but instead used to argue for violence and to defend violence. For both good and bad causes. And a lot of gains were not inertia, it was decision to take things and fight to take things from others. Not that other powers were not like that too, absolutely they were violent and entitled too.
But, the freedom rhetorics was often used to take away property or freedom from others.
I'm also not sure what you mean now that the founding US philosophy was used to justify violence. Things like westward expansion is what I imagine you're referencing, but that had nothing to do with the political philosophy of the founding of the nation.
Teritory is one thing, south and west. Freedom and property rights theories were developed and used to argume for slavery expansion and slavery itself. Freedom and destiny no matter what you are about to do, not just the big questions but also the smaller conflicts around.
Both sides of civil war said to fight for freedom too and the affair had huge number of deaths.
Socrates knew his teachings could run afoul of the law. And in fact it already had put him in contention with this in power, which many believe was an underpinning of his prosecution. In particular Socrates was a strong and vocal critic of democracy, which is the direction that 'the powers that be' were taking Greece. He feared that masses of people, of no meaningful qualification, were unlikely to be able to be able to vote to effective ends. He similarly feared the election of demogogues, which even at the time democracy had started to show trends towards.
And he was stating all of this at the height, and eventual decline, of Athenian democracy. Said democracy was in fact overthrown multiple times during Socrates' life in movements headed by former pupils of his! At one point Socrates was ordered to arrest one of his pupils. An order which he refused though at the same time making no effort to avoid its execution such as, for instance, by informing his pupil of it. See the nuance? Perhaps most ironic is that his final fate was decided by a vote of 500 Athenians of no particular qualification. And he was put to death by a 52% to 48% margin.
The point is difference between deference to law and deference to justice. Socrates would not obey the law without consideration, but he would also not seek to avoid repercussion for his actions.
It's like saying Sam Harris would make a lot of sense if he'd just stop rambling about consciousness, ethics, and AI.