Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics: Happiness, Reason and the Ideal Society by Leonard Peikoff

now in a general way Aristotle's ethics as you would expect is neither of the mystic nor the skeptic variety Aristotle does not believe that ethics is a matter of Commandments or of mystic insights into another spiritual super reality as opposed to Plato is ethics attempts to be naturalistic this worldly it's concerned with men living on earth and attempts to guide them to successful behavior here in this life without reference to the supernatural either as the validation of his ethics or as the goal of life and as against the Sophists Aristotle's is not a subjectivist ethics in which anything goes all feelings should be indiscriminately acted on and might makes right morality for Aristotle does not require an appeal to the supernatural nor a collapse into irrational whim worshipping in this general sense his approach to ethics is naturalistic and objective however Aristotle did not know how to implement this general approach in the form of a rational scientific proven code of ethics he held that ethics was not an exact science where you could formulate precise principles and give mathematical proofs from logical premises and ethics he thought you could only formulate rules true in a rough way and for the most part and you couldn't give formal proofs why well you remember that science has to begin with facts from which we then generalize induce arrive at the principles and turn around e-juice systematize and what are the facts in ethics what other data to start with now I interject if Aristotle had given an analysis of the nature of life and of the relationship between life and the concept of value in the form given by iron randon Atlas Shrugged then he could have arrived at an objective ethics based on fact but no such approach is anywhere hinted in what we have he said in effect we have to start with the way people actually behave with what they actually value that is the data the facts of ethics well you ask do we start with just anybody no there are certain men whom we all recognize to be wise and good and Noble says Aristotle an ethics rests ultimately on our perceptions of how these men the wise and Noble Athenians behave we observe them we can then generalize try to eliminate inconsistencies if we find any provide a metaphysical framework to systematize their behavior but after all there are many fluctuations even among wise men many situations where are accepted general rules have exceptions so at best all we'll have at the end is a more systematic account of the moral principles governing the best Athenians not a formal science this is all Aristotle attempts to provide now because Athens was a good culture in many ways Aristotle says many things which are valid in ethics but at bottom and at the base he has no methodology to validate his ethical conclusions and at many points as we'll see his ultimate answer to an objection is that is how the wise man behaves if you don't see it it simply means you haven't been well brought up well now how shall we go about systematizing and ethics well Aristotle observes that values are hierarchical everyone pursues some things for the sake of other things you come to these lectures for the sake of knowledge but the knowledge of ancient and medieval and early modern philosophy is not an end in itself you want it for a purpose to guide your actions suppose for instance you have a career purpose but your career is not an end in itself you want it as a means to support your life and so on some ultimate end some final goal says Aristotle must exist which we want for its own sake and not simply as a means to something else there must be an end in itself and this is logically necessary otherwise we have simply an infinite regress you cannot value everything as a means to an end unless something is the end the ultimate value just as there must be first axioms or archive there must be an ultimate goal and when discovered it will serve as the standard in terms of which to evaluate all other goals and values and so the question of ethics is what is the end and then how best to achieve well we can learn certain things about the ultimate goal it must be an end in itself as we've said it must be self sufficient in other words something which even if we had only it we would have everything worth happy because everything else we want for its sake and thirdly and most importantly it must be possible it must says Aristotle be attainable by man on earth now this is a crucial point of Aristotle's ethics we must remember says Aristotle that we are setting up an ethics for man we are prescribing how this sort of entity should behave we must therefore takers are given the facts of human nature the kind of entity we're talking about for instance man by nature has a body we cannot then dam him for having a body because that is inherent in being man it is a fact immoralist must begin with man has emotions he has desires he is capable of all sorts of feelings this is a fact the moralist must begin with it is ridiculous to says the Aristotelian approach to set up as an ideal the cessation of all feeling in the way that Plato virtually does and that is inherent in man you can't condemn him for having emotion you can't condemn him for being capable of error you can't condemn him for anything which is in his nature it would be the equivalent if I make up my own example as supposing you were making up an ethics for dogs and you were to say the supreme virtue for the dog is to study the theory of relativity and [Music] you then give the dog a book of Einstein and he sniffs at it walks away goes back to his bones and you say you see I always knew all dogs were rotten by nature they are stained with sin because they prefer bones join stone now that's the way a dog is by nature then you are the senseless one to put forward that theory it's not the dog's fault now by this Aristotelian approach to which he is not fully consistent but nevertheless by it the doctrine of original sin is inherently impossible if something is inherent it cannot be sin ethics must prescribe values and virtues based on the facts of human nature capable of attainment by man here on earth it follows according to Aristotle that man at birth is neither innately bad nor innately good he is simply morally neutral at birth if he becomes good that's his achievement if he becomes bad that's his fault he cannot blame his nature he cannot blame his passions passions are simply facts of human nature and as such they are neutral it's what you do with your passion says Aristotle what'd you make of them what form you give to them they being now the matter that is what determines moral virtue all right what is the ultimate goal which fulfills these traits happiness it's an end in itself it's not a means to it it's self-sufficient if all you had was happiness but you really had it you would be lacking in nothing worth having and it is possible if you act properly to attain now the Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia EU dai mo ni a and Aristotle's ethics is therefore often called a you die monastic ethics the word eudaimonia does not literally mean happiness although it's usually translated that way the word happiness for us suggests strictly an emotional state of enduring enjoyment in life now eudaimonia for Aristotle certainly included that he emphasized that pleasure was an essential component of your diamond ear the Greek word for pleasure being had on a AG do anything he emphasized that the man of your diamond ear thoroughly enjoyed life but you domine ax is broader than simply the emotional level it implies successful living on all levels not merely emotional enjoyment but successful action unimpeded thinking in general living functioning acting successful and further for the modern usage happiness suggests primarily an inner state of the person so theoretically you can be happy even if you're poor or persecuted by society at cetera for Aristotle however eudaimonia requires not just this inner happiness although that of course is the crucial ingredient he is in this respect a true follower of Socrates but it requires also what we might call outer happiness eudaimonia he tells us requires a certain amount of money it requires a few friends it requires freedom and even he says requires a decent appearance and well behaved children you'll see then that it's a very all-inclusive state and it's perhaps best translated as a full rich happy prosperous unimpeded life of thought and action on earth but rather than under that mouthful I'll just call it happens now given this as the ultimate goal you will see that Aristotle's ethics will have no trace of the later Christian or Gandhian approach to ethics in other words that ethics is a matter of struggling against temptation forcing down your base impulses in order to be miserable and do your duty he accepts Aristotle accepts Socrates basic idea that virtual leads to happiness he holds at Aristotle halls at the moral man has no conflict between his desires and his moral obligations the moral man recognizes that if something is right it will make him happy and he gladly wants to do what is right therefore to do it for the sake of his own happiness the moral man thoroughly enjoys his life and morality and deed is justified precisely because it gives him the knowledge needed to enjoy his life now you see how opposite this is from all the ethics that came later and even from plato's with its preaching of self-sacrifice for the state or the world of forms etc now the question is how is happiness to be achieved you can't attain it in any old way on this point Aristotle agrees with Socrates against the Sophists happiness requires living a certain way how here is where Aristotle's metaphysics interests everything which exists has a distinctive nature distinctive unique potentialities in the nature of reality we know is that everything acts to achieve to realize to actualize its distinctive potentialities to pass from matter to form to express in reality that which is in it potentially to fulfill itself to realize it so this is inherent each thing the striving after its full realization if so what can the good life what can you die Minea for a thing B except to act as reality and its own nature require now to take another hypothetical case suppose that you were making up an ethics for an acorn the only thing you could tell this acorn is look cooperate wholeheartedly with the laws of reality in your own nature strive with all your might to actualize your distinctive potentialities and become an oak because if you try anything else suppose for instance this acorn conceives an ardent passion to become a willow tree it is doomed to frustration to self negation to misery a happy acorn an acorn of eudaimonia would be one working to actualize its distinctive potential well the same is true for men he too has unique potentialities and the good life your diamond ear consists of realizing what is man's distinctive potentiality Aristotle psychology has already answered that reason noose to be true to his own nature in the nature of reality then man must actualize his distinctive potentiality reason the life of reason is thus the light of happiness but what in this context is recent Aristotle distinguishes two different uses of reason reason which is used to guide life to regulate the emotions to tell us how to act that he calls the practical reason and reason which is used to acquire knowledge as an end in itself just to discover and contemplate truth for its own sake without any reference to practical consequences that he calls the theoretical or the contemplative reason I interjected this is an invalid distinction and I will say a word later about it but for now let's follow our stomachs if there are two uses of reason the practical and the contemplative then the life of reason will have two departments the exercise of the practical reason and the exercise of the theoretical reason and every man for Aristotle must exercise both insofar as it can in each case there will be a proper use of reason a virtuous use and remember virtue for the Greeks means excellence of function so there will be two types of virtues the excellent use of practical reason will give us what is called the moral virtues and the excellent use of contemplative reason will give us what is called the intellectual furnitures let us look at each briefly and first the virtue of the virtues of practical reason the moral virtues now practical reason as I said is reason used to guide or regulate man's actions emotions desires parenthetically I observe that for Aristotle as for Plato emotions are an independent non rational element of the personality which require regulation by the reason but for Aristotle because he believes in only one world and because he does not believe in and metaphysical soul body clash he does not believe that it is as hard to control the emotions as Plato does he doesn't believe that there is an inherent war between reason and emotions he believes that if you use your reason properly you can control your emotions largely and live harmoniously and happening well what is the proper use the virtuous use of practical reason well to this question Aristotle thought he detected a general principle common to all a virtuous practical behavior whatever we do our desire he says we can do our desire in different amounts they can take any human action or emotion and distinguish three amounts on a scale the too much they're too little and to just write the golden mean virtuous behavior will always be the golden mean between the two extremes on the one hand the too much the excess as it's called on the other hand the too little the defect as it's called now Aristotle in a very ingenious way work this out on subject after subject ranging human traits into a three-fold column I'll give you just four I would have a great many example suppose the question is what should your attitude be when facing threats well on the one hand to a little fear kind of rash person who takes senseless chances you know not only walking through a cannibal colony needlessly but doing so naked that is the vice of fool hardness that's too little fear on the other hand there is the other extreme too much fear the kind recall a coward and of course in the golden mean position is the virtue that just right a monk look too little fear not too much but just right courage the courageous person well what should your attitude be to food to sex to money well the defect would be the person who turns against these things completely the ascetic that is a vice that's as much of Vice as a rations or foolhardy mrs. Aristotle did not know what to call it because in an extreme form it did not exist in the Greek world and he calls it in sensibility it became the supreme virtue or one of them in the realm of rain of Christianity if Aristotle knew of the life of st. Francis for instance Aristotle would be appalled at the phenomena but now at the other extreme there's the people who are overzealous about these things the self-indulgent profligates Allah the Sophists or guide Jesus when he gets his ring and runs riot now what is didn't proper virtue here the golden me not too much passion for food drinking money clothes etc not too little just the right amount what Aristotle with the Greek tradition calls temperance and here it does not mean temperance as in the women's Christian Temperance Union it means a sensible balance between the extremes what should your attitude be in regard to social relationships on the one hand there's the person who attaches to little importance to what we would call a misanthrope Aristotle calls that device of sulkiness on the other hand there's the kind of person who is obsessed with people whose obsequious and rushes are on sing to everybody I love you please love me what we would call a social meta physician Aristotle says that's the vice of obsequious and in the middle the golden mean to just right amount they rationally friendly person he has the virtue of friendliness what should be your attitude to yourself on the one hand the person who has too low an estimate the person who walks around saying I'm no good I'm rotten I'm worthless that person has the vice of humility on the other extreme there is the person who walks around saying I'm the greatest thing that ever lived who claims for himself more than is his due that is the vice of vanity or conceit than the golden mean is the person who has a high and earned self-respect the virtue of pride now I must leave the golden mean for a couple of minutes because pride for Aristotle is the crown of the virtues the man of pride is the man of mega Lopes you hate a man with a big soul which is now translated the magnanimous man is his ideal man in terms of the moral virtues and his description of it in the ethics is the liveliest passage in his ethics very famous so I must read it to you even though it will I'll give you just a few excerpts but it'll give you an idea of the type of man Aristotle admired and recommend he's describing the virtue of pride call now the man is thought to be proud who thinks himself worthy of great things being worthy of them for he who does so beyond his deserts as a fool but no virtuous man is foolish the proud man then is the man we have described for he you is worthy of little and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate but not proud for pride implies greatness as Beauty implies a good-sized body and little people may be neat and well proportioned but it cannot be beautiful the proud man then is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims but a mean in respect of the ripeness of them for he claims what is in accordance with his merits while the others go to excess or fall short now the proud man says he deserves most must be good in the highest degree for the better man always deserves more and the best man most therefore the truly proud man must be good in greatness and every virtue would seem to be characteristic of a proud man it would be most unbecoming for a proud man to fly from dangerous swinging his arms by his sides or to wrong another if we consider him point by point we shall see the utter absurdity of a proud man who is not good nor again would he be worthy of Honor if he were bad for honor is the prize of virtue and it is to the good that it is rendered pride then seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues for it makes them great and it is not found without them therefore it is hard to be truly proud for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character it is chiefly with honors and dishonours then that the proud man is concerned and it honors that are great and conferred by good men he will be moderately pleased thinking that he is coming by his own or even less than his own for there can be no honor that is worthy of perfect virtue yea he will at any rate accept it since they have nothing greater to bestow on you but honor from casual people and on trifling grounds he will utterly despise since it is not this that he deserves and dishonor too since in his case it cannot be just the proud man does not run into trifling dangers nor is he fond of danger because he honours few things but he will face great dangers and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth half I interject so much for Aristotle's view on the question of better red than dead continuing the quote and the proud man is the sort of man to confer benefits but he is ashamed of receiving them for the one is the mark of a superior the other of an inferior it is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing or scarcely anything but to give help readily and to be dignified towards people who enjoy a high position in a good fortune but unassuming towards those of the middle class for it is difficult it is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former but easy to be so to the latter and a lofty bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding but among humble people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak again it is characteristic of the proud man not to aim of the things commonly held an honor or the things in which others excel to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honor or a great work is at stake and to be a man of few deeds but of great and notable ones he must also be open in his hate and in his love for to conceal one's feelings ie to care less for truth and for what people will think is a coward's part and he must speak and act open for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous and he is given to telling the truth except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar he must be unable to make his life revolve around another unless it be a friend for this is slavish and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers further a slow step is thought proper to the proud man a deep voice and a level utterance such thing as the proud man the man who falls short of him is unduly humble unquote now if you consider this in the light of what was to come philosophically the man who falls short of this is unduly humble you can't believe it this is one of the few man worshipping passages in all of philosophy and it is fitting that it comes from Aristotle who has needless to say been despised by centuries of Christians for this very passage in this very quality and this I should say is one of the great kinships between Aristotle and objectivism all right so much for pride let's go back to the golden me now if you recall the four examples I gave you the moral that Aristotle draws is it's not what you do or desire but the degree to which you do it that determines a virtue and vice versa as an issue of moderation of not going to extremes now you can see I think that there is a common sense validity and in certain points even a highly admirable quality in the content of the virtues Aristotle endorses and I've just given a few samples the particular virtues that he's in favor of are generally sensible and even noble but as a principle of ethics it should be apparent to you that the golden mean is unsatisfied tria invalid here are a few obvious objections first notice that the Trinity of attitudes which Aristotle ranges on a continuum do not in fact fall on a continuum at all the vices in each case are differentiated from the virtues in kind not just in degree as Aristotle's doctrine requires the obsequious social metaphysician for instance is not differentiated from a rationally friendly person by just having more of the latter's attitude the obsequious persons motive and interest in people is different in kind not just in degree or a mob and the same is true on all these other cases notice secondly if it were just a difference in degree there'd be no argument in favor of the mean there is no reason why a mean is valid just because it's a mean the mere fact that some attitude is in the middle between two other attitudes doesn't at all show that it's therefore desirable for instance on one extreme we have never committing an adultery on the other extreme we have committing adultery every night with a different partner now is the golden mean just the right amount just the right amount of murder just the right amount of envious hatred etc now I'm here obviously you're placed on a continuum is it relevant now Aristotle tries to encompass this type of case and he says in effect these things like murder adultery and so on are already extremes and therefore the doctrine of the mean doesn't apply you can't have a mean of an extreme but this is not a valid answer on his part because the question is how does he know they are extremes if you go solely about the doctrine of the mean we can range three attitudes on murder or on adultery etc and then pick the middle actually the fact is Aristotle knew in advance that murder for instance is wrong and he therefore classified it as an extreme it's not that it's an extreme therefore wrong but rather it's wrong and therefore he concluded an extreme which means that his virtues are not in fact derived from the theory of the mean at all rather from as he himself says the observations of the wise Athenians the mean doctrine is no proof or definition of these virtues just a way of expounding what we know on other grounds and as such as philosophically insignificant and then of course there is the question how do you know what the mean is in a particular case suppose one person says never eat chocolates and the other a chocolate manufacturer says eat 200 boxes a day well what is the golden mean a hundred boxes a day now Aristotle consider such a case and he says no I don't mean the arithmetic mean I don't mean the exact halfway point that would be silly I mean the just right amount for a given person the not too much and then not too little and this varies from person to person for instance on chocolates it depends on your health your taste your money etc that just right amount if you're on a diet is not the same as if you're not the mean he says is a relative to a particular set of circumstances it's not figured out by arithmetic but then of course the question is well how do you know given a set of circumstances what is the mean and you have to know if the doctrine is to be of any use to you in God in your life well Aristotle says in effect if you take into account all the relevant factors in a given situation and if you're well brought up you will just know you will in effect perceive what the right amount is for you by direct insight now then of course the question is well what is being well brought up consistent to be well brought up presumably is to be brought up via V call the mean and the mean is what a well-brought-up person would choose you see it's an extra blue circular and you see a gate he doesn't offer a scientific ethics it's based ultimately simply upon his observations of the wise and Athenians well I don't want to belabor the mean doctrine further it's had very unfortunate consequences it's although I should say for Aristotle's own say that he didn't originate the idea of moderation by any means that was an ancient Greek tradition nothing in excess goes way back before Aristotle and all he did is systematized but in any event that particular Greek doctrine all of given Aristotle's influence has had terrifically unfortunate consequences it's led people to all sorts of compromising fence city contradictions and evasion on principle even though none of this was Aristotle's intention you need merely think of the way that terms moderate and extremist thrown around in American presidential elections to get an idea of the devastatingly bad consequences of the doctrine of the golden mean even though as I say Aristotle would surely never have imagined it's used by modern pragmatist now let's look at the intellectual virtues very briefly that is to say the virtuous use of contemplative reason in this use of reason we pursue knowledge for its own sake essentially science mathematics philosophy we discover and contemplate truth as an end in itself without any concern for practical action or the existential consequences of that note knowledge on this level is not he means to anything but an end in itself now for Aristotle this life of contemplation is the highest embodiment of the life of reason it is superior to the exercise of reason in practical affairs it is the summit of rationality and this is the life which any man of adequate intelligence ought to follow in his view now this brings us to another error in his ethics I don't mean his emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge but the idea that knowledge is an end in itself as against being a means of human action in life why did he commit this error there are many reasons here are some in general no Greek Aristotle included grasp the relationship between knowledge and life between reason and life this is prior to the Industrial Revolution and I would maintain as actual fact that it would be impossible to grasp the relationship between reason and life philosophically prior to the Industrial Revolution no one did and I would say no one could have because at this stage of civilization the skills needed to sustain life were manual and seemed to be obviously unintellectual on the other hand the knowledge which seemed pleasurable and demanding of a man's full intellectual powers science metaphysics physics mathematics seem to have no practical value which it didn't at that early stage in consequently Aristotle along with the rest of the Greeks concluded that knowledge was not ultimately justified by its utility in life this is an error but certainly an understandable one at the stage of knowledge he was writing then in addition there is of course a definite element of Platonism here the exaltation of contemplation retirement from action in the hubbub of life than saw into private contemplation of truth and of course we know that Aristotle never freed himself from this platonic element never freed himself fully in any branch of philosophy and of course the prime mover is relevant here and that in effect is one of the main effects of Aristotle's God on his ethics in this life of contemplation Aristotle says you get as close to the divine life as you can because that's all God does is contemplate for these and still other reasons Aristotle ends up advocating the contemplative life as the highest and best and unfortunately he even declares that human beings are too imperfect to live this perfect life it's not he says insofar as they are human that they can live thus but only insofar as they have an element of the divine in other words he contradicts his own distinctive approach again succumbing to a platonic development now of course this whole doctrine of knowledge as an end in itself has had very bad consequences it has the effect of making Aristotle's ethics impracticable for most men restricted in this respect at least to a comparative few who have the wealth and the leisure to contemplate most men however as Aristotle recognizes have to work they have to act and they have therefore neither the time the wealth nor the ability for this sort of life consequently for them says Aristotle the highest form of human happiness is impossible in this way and in this respect Aristotle ends up with an ethics for a comparative few similar in this one respect to Plato all right let's leave the moral and intellectual virtues and turn to one last point in connection with Aristotle's ethics namely egoism Aristotle is a thorough egoist in ethics he believes that each man should be primarily concerned with the attainment of his own happiness which is to be achieved by the exercise of his own practical and theoretical reason in contrast to Plato there is nothing in Aristotle advocating self-sacrifice self-abnegation the exalting of something above your own happiness on earth Aristotle is a pure egoist and in contrast to the Sophists Aristotle definitely says explicitly that the true egoist is the man of reason not the whim worshipping group thus officed for Aristotle as for Socrates is merely engaged in expressing the worst element in himself the part that isn't really him he has irrational whims and passions as such he is simply destroying his real self his reason and along with it his only chance of fulfillment and happiness in this sense Aristotle is a consistent champion of rational egoism the only philosopher to be such in all of philosophy if you are talking of the major philosophers and not simply the disciples who parrot the master now because this is such an urgent ly important issue in ethics I want to read you a few passages from Aristotle even at the risk of taking a couple of minutes I think don't you think you get a feeling of the philosopher from hearing a few things in his own words that you can't get from any summary the good man he writes was also from the nikah McKean ethics that's the ethics named after his son the komak is dedicated to his son the good man quote wishes for himself what is good and what seems and doesn't and does so for his own sake for he does it for the sake of the intellectual element in him which is thought to be the man himself and he wishes to live and be preserved and especially the element by virtue of which he thinks for existence is good to the virtuous man and each man wishes himself what is good while no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become someone else he wishes for this only on condition of being whatever he is and the element that thinks would seem to be the individual man or to be so more than any other element in him and such a man the good man wishes to live with himself for he does so with pleasure since the memories of his past acts are delightful and his hopes for the future are good and therefore Pleasant by contrast wicked men seek for people with whom to spend their days and shun themselves for they remember many a grievous deed and anticipate others like them when they are by themselves but when they are with others they forget and having nothing lovable in them they have no feeling of love to themselves here's another little excerpt quote just a brief fragment I'll quote you existence is to all men a thing to be chosen and loved and we exist by virtue of activity ie by living and active the producer loves his handiwork therefore because he loves existence unquote how's that and as to self love quote such a man the rational man would see more than the other the irrational man a lover of self at all events he signed he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best and gratifies the most authoritative element in himself reason and in all things obeys this and therefore the man who loves this reason and gratifies it is most of all a lover of self therefore the good man should be a lover of self unquote now you see how this ties in with Aristotle's advocacy of pride as the crown of the virtues it is also a major the important element in his ethics one that went into eclipse and was denounced by all subsequent philosophers I'm not resurrected until many many centuries later now I can't resist adding that Aristotle had a remarkable theory of friendship egoistic friendship a fascinating theory which I love to tell you about because it exemplifies one of the best elements in his ethics but unfortunately there is no time but if you ask about friendship in the question period I'll be glad to say a few words on it then now I just sum up our brief survey on Aristotle's ethics you can see I think that Aristotle's ethics is very mixed in its merits much of the time he's on the right track many points you can agree with his advocacy of happiness on earth as opposed to the Platonic asceticism and supernaturalism his emphasis on reason the acquisition of knowledge egoism pride but these points as you see are embedded in a framework which is streaked with hangovers from Platonism and which is ivali not scientific or proven as such Aristotle's ethics was not strong enough to combat the Platonic and sophistic rivals in the field and therefore to answer a question which I get all the time so I hope you will regard this as at least a partial answer this is one of the major reasons this deficiency of Aristotle's ethics why his philosophy did not become a major influence over all future philosophizing right away when a philosophers ethics is weak no matter how many good points he has in metaphysics and epistemology his influence on men will be significantly lessened because men feel the influence of any philosophy primarily through its ethics that after all is the primary purpose of philosophy to teach men how to live as an analogy if you offer men a magnificent internal combustion machine but they have no idea how to use it and there is no fuel to make it run and the alternative is a horse and buggy which actually works to say nothing of promises of a mystic flying carpet if only they pay enough money and go to church long enough they will choose the horse and buggy or the flying car but over the unusable internal combustion machine if you get my analogy you should not be too surprised therefore to learn that shortly after his death Aristotle's philosophy went into eclipse and took many many many centuries to Xu but that's a story we will start telling next week now in conclusion let us say a very few words about Aristotle's politics for the most part in his political writings Aristotle contented himself with describing existing States in the ancient world and making recommendations for their improvement within the framework of their basic premises Aristotle was not a political revolution with fundamentally original ideas in politics certainly not on the order at least of Plato who regardless of the content of his views was a major innovator in politics Aristotle is more the documentary rather than the Crusader in politics and his politics is therefore less interesting or important than any other part of his philosophy in general to merely synopsize a few of his conclusions he was not a major collectivist like Plato he objected vigorously to Plato's communistic in totalitarian views but Aristotle himself his own political writings was certainly not a major individualist either no it's one thing to say that his metaphysics and ethics laid the basis for which his subsequent followers centuries later derived individualism that is true but judging simply by the actual politics Aristotle himself recommends which reflects the more platonic elements in him you'd have to say in effect that Aristotle unfortunately followed his golden mean in politics he took a position that today would be pretty much described as a variant of the middle of the room for instance he objected to Plato's view that the few ideal philosophers should have absolute power he objected to rule by platonic experts body says this would be ideal only it's impractical and utopian because it's too much risk of a degenerating into tyranny you see conceding to Plato that this would be ideal but simply impractical he also objected to rule by experts on the ground that it must we must have he says a government of law not a man that is essential Aristotelian idea a constitution must be defined which spells out which the government what the government can and cannot do there must be laws and we do not want a government by arbitrary decree in this sense is the father of the idea of constitutional government on the other hand like Plato Aristotle has no concept that all men have individual inalienable rights or that the function of government is only to protect these rights as was common in Greece at the time he was thinking of the state as the city-state of course and he thought that it had a variety of proper functions educational cultural religious economic he says somewhere that it should see that there are restrictions on the amount of wealth so it's not too much or too little in any given person's hands in general he advocates functions of the government quite incompatible with anything that an individual's politics would advocate for Aristotle as for Plato the important issue of politics is what group should have ruling power in the state what group should be able to control the policies of the state and an answer to this question he came up with a sort of mean position that is a moderate position as the most practical and stable type of state he said we don't want one with a few wealthy upper class aristocrats rule because this can generate into tyranny or oligarchy and we don't want one way the masses of poor people rule as in democracy because that becomes unlimited mob rule and that's hopeless both Plato and Aristotle were staunch opponents of the idea of unlimited mob rule rather said Aristotle the best state is a cross between a rule of the rich and of the poor rule of the few and of the men a state ruled neither by the mob nor by an elite of experts but by an intermediate class what we today call the middle class you see a state such as this Aristotle called a polity pól ity and he advocated it as the best most practical constitution in other words a large middle class should hold the balance of power and act as a check on the what today would be called the proletariat on the bottom and the few potentially tyrannical aristocrats at the top so there is a definite sense in which Aristotle differs from Plato's totalitarian philosopher-king theory and as I mentioned Aristotle objects to Plato's communism but in very very mixed and rather feeble terms remember Plato objected to mine and vine well Aristotle says mine and thine are inherent in human nature you only create conflicts and resentments if you try to calm you NIH's property and families better to leave people private property and encourage them to develop a community spirit voluntarily so they'll share with others voluntarily now to this audience such an answer speaks for itself it is not a very powerful answer to play however I should point out that even though Aristotle allows the citizens of his state to have much more safe than Plato does Aristotle state as he describes it also inclines in the direction of being an aristocracy run by a comparative view even if not in nearly so pronounced a form as Plato's for instance Aristotle and Plato I should say and the Greeks in general advocated slavery they had no concept of inalienable rights they argued Aristotle argued for instance and I stress again he did not originate this view nor was he distinctive and holding but he argued that there were natural slaves men who had the capacity to understand a rational argument but not to exercise reason independently who were in effect living tools and he said it would be to their own benefit and to the benefit of a master if they serve and work a natural master in other words those in whom theoretical reason is fully developed because the slave gains the benefit of contact with a fully rational man who direct him and the rational man exempt from the need for menial work has the leisure for contemplation now this is an obvious gross flaw in Aristotle's view but I stress it is not flaw in his ethics or philosophy it is a flaw in his anthropology that is to say in his view of mankind and a flaw which is shared with the Greeks in general the Greeks never really grasped at least not until the time of the Stoics a later school that human beings all human beings are metaphysically equal the Greeks of the Classical period all held that men are divided into the metaphysical superiors and the metaphysical inferiors one destined to rule the other this is an error but it is an error in their theory of the nature of man not an error in their ethics their ethical error is simply a consequence of it and they had some provocation for they were the only civilization around them was not another civilized world but a world of crude ignorant barbarians and at that stage of the game if you lived in Greece you had a certain warrant for looking around you and saying we are human and the aliens are simply savages I may point out that Aristotle also excluded women from citizenship in his state not only slaves but also women on the grounds that they were metaphysically inferior I again equally invalid but equally warranted by a study of the women in his purview he goes so far as to build this into his metaphysics in the doctor which has no importance at all but he says for instance that in conception when men and women unite to produce a child the woman contributes the matter the low element and the man contributes the forms I may say to be accurate on this one point Plato was ahead of Aristotle he recognized the metaphysical equality of women with men Aristotle did not also in his capacity as a playtest Aristotle generally scorned tradesmen mechanics that type of person that he says their life is quote ignoble and inimical to virtue and they too are to be deprived of citizenship or any active participation in the state that's the simply the equivalent of Plato's view that the productive group is out of the state or is it serve a servile position you see from these few points that there's a heavy platonic influence in Aristotle's politics there is not much of great value in it and I do not want to pursue it further now now let's sum up Aristotle as a whole in looking at his overall philosophy you can point out many errors and many bad points to review a few is inadequate account of sense perception is inadequate account at many points of the nature of mind this doctrine of God of teimi ology of contingency of prime matter of the golden mean of contemplation as an end in itself his deficient politics etc etc now all of this you must know if as students of Objectivism you claim any kind of affiliation with aristotle because these are facts and in conversations people will confront you with them and you will be amazed at what Aristotle could say but in the process of inventory his bad points I ask that you not forget what he did achieve and in what context starting from a culture in which there were only plate mists and Sophists Aristotle laid down the basic principles of a scientific epistemology the role of the senses the role of abstraction the laws of logic the types of reasoning the basic rules of validity in deductive reasoning he laid down the principles of a naturalistic this-worldly metaphysics one reality a world of particulars of entities acting in accordance with their natures lawful intelligible graspable by man and in ethics the principles of a this worldly ethics according to which man's goal is to achieve personal happiness and personal pride by exercising his in two sexual powers to the fullest on these topics Aristotle did not say the last word but as I have observed he often said the first of any value the pro reason pro life pro this world approach to philosophy in its essence and at root is the creation of Aristotle and it is for that that we owe him a debt of gratitude no matter how great his other errors and platonic carry-ons now the best summary of Aristotle's achievements of his good points and of his errors is given by Aristotle himself at the end of what is now the final section of his works on logic he is referring in this passage to his work in logic but his remarks are applicable much more widely to his entire philosophy in all branches now this passage that I have in mind is a fairly extended one but I think it only fitting to conclude by reading it to you giving the last word to Aristotle himself to assess his own achievements quote that our program then has been adequately completed is clear but we must not omit to notice what has happened in regard to this inquiry for in the case of all discoveries the results of previous labors that have been handed down from others have been advanced bit by bit by those who have taken them on whereas the original discoveries generally make in advance that is small at first though much more useful than the development which later Springs out of them for it may be that in everything as the saying goes the first start is the main part and for this reason also it is the most difficult for in proportion as it is most potent in its influence so it is smallest in its compass and therefore most difficult to see whereas when once the foundation is discovered it is easier to add and develop the remainder in connection this is in fact what has happened in regard to rhetorical speeches and to practically all the other arts for those who discovered the beginning of them advanced in an all only a little way whereas the celebrities of today are the air so to speak of a long succession of men who have advanced them bit by bit and so our development to their present form of this inquiry in other words logic on the other hand it was not the case that part of the work had been thoroughly done before while part had not nothing existed at all for the training given by the paid professors of contentious arguments that's the Sophists was like them treatment of the matter by gorgeous for they used to hand out speeches to be learned by heart and that was their ideas he of teaching logic and therefore the teaching they gave their pupils was ready but rough for they used to suppose that they trained people by imparting to them not the art but its products as though anyone professing that he would impart a form of knowledge to obviate pain in the feet were then not to teach a man the art of shoemaking or the sources whence he can acquire anything of the kind but were to present him with several kinds of shoes for he would have helped him to meet his knee but he has not imparted an art to him on the subject of reasoning we had nothing else of an earlier date to speak of at all but were kept at work for a long time and experimental researches if then it seems to you after inspection that such being the situation as it existed at the start our investigation is in a satisfactory condition compared with the other inquiries that have been developed by tradition there must remain for all of you or for our students the task of extending us your pardon for the shortcomings of the inquiry and for the discoveries thereof your warm thanks [Applause] you please give Aristotle's views on friendship all fine I just happened to have a little booklet here now I'll give you just a brief summary I wanted to put this in but I just couldn't squeeze it in friendship in the Greek view was any mutual attraction or relation between two human beings it was a wider than our present use Aristotle defines three types of friendship in the Nicomachean ethics one the friendships of utility these are what we would call business relationships commercial relationships in this case there are certain practical advantages that you want from the other person and he wants from you you don't love the person for himself but you want certain advantages from your relationship and that the lowest type of friendship it's perfectly reputable but it's not very much then comes what he calls the friendships of pleasure this is in effect what we would call a social relationship in the sense that you delight in the social pleasure that you get from this particular person he's convivial amusing witty funny nice to go to the movies with as a sparkling personality etc now at this point you have a good time with your friend but you still don't love the person for himself but for the amusement this essentially is the kind of relationship that children have when they have friends or that not fully formed adults have and this type of friendship says Aristotle is comparatively easily dissolved if and went in effect contents the person runs out of jokes he doesn't say that but that's the idea then there is the finally the friendships of the good in this case you love the person for himself because of his character the values he represents he represents all the things that you think are good and you admire him and you mutually help each other to live the good life now I stressed that Aristotle is not a con team he did not think that gaining practical advantages from such a friendship corrupts it he did not think that gaining pleasure from such a friendship corrupts it he is not a kanji and who thinks that to be a true friend you should be completely selfless and get nothing practical or pleasurable out of it so there is utility there is pleasure in this type of friendship but the essence of it and it's the supremely important type of friendship is mutual moral admiration on a profound level between two human beings who are equal morally now Aristotle draws many fascinating conclusions fascinating in the light of the Christianity that is to come by virtue of their diametric opposition it's almost as though he read the Sermon on the Mount and went out of his way to say what he thought of it for instance he stresses that you cannot expect to have many friends like this you cannot say I love everyone I'm Friends of mankind as a whole you must have standards you must know the person intimately you don't love your neighbor as such friendship is a response or love as we would say today is a response to values and virtues in the individual and he says this implies a certain equality between the two a superior cannot feel friendship for an inferior or vice-versa and he says you all more to your friends than you do to strangers of course the exact opposite of the view that you should love your enemies particularly now you know there's a certain type of modern Christian called a utilitarian who says that the proper way to act is the greatest happiness the greatest number so then for instance if you see and this is the typical example of utilitarians give burning on a building on your left burning which has two strangers in it and a burning on your right building on your right burning which has your wife in it you should save the two strangers because there's twice as many as in the other one now of course Aristotle would reject that emphatically you should save your friend because you owe him more he matters more to you rationally than the two strangers and he says since you love the man because he's good if and when he turns bad you dissolve the friendship you do not forgive in any all-embracing Christian away it's not judge not that ye be judged it's judge and be prepared to be judged and if the one of the other defaults then the basis of the relationship is gone now he goes on to ask can you be friendly with yourself in this sense and he says yes if you're a good man he says a friend is one who admires a person for his character who wishes what is for the welfare of that person for that person's sake who lives with that person who has the same taste the same likes the same dislikes who grieves and rejoices along with the person now says Aristotle all of this is most true of the good man's relationship to himself he admires himself remember the greats old man he works for his own welfare his own happiness he has the same likes as himself and dislikes and there of course he means to contrasting with the inconsistent villains who do something and feel guilty about it or want something and feel frightened of it etc who are inconsistent with themselves when this kind of man therefore has complete friendship with himself which is another way of saying he regards himself as the supreme value when he does something for a friend it is not a sacrifice he is selfish because he is still gaining the greatest benefit for himself he is defending his values doing the good being irrational and it is to his own ultimate happiness friendship E concludes is based on self-love you cannot admire goodness and others unless it's present in yourself and if it's present in yourself the first person you should admire is yourself that's a brief taste of what is a very excellent essentials doctrine you have stated that a philosophy has no hope of becoming popular if it has a weak ethics why then has cons philosophy as opposed to Aristotle's had the most influence on subsequent movements isn't Aristotle's ethics more practicable and more appealing to the man on the street a perfectly good question but you are not fully interpret me correctly I can think offhand of four points to make to begin with Kant's ethics has certain attributes that Aristotle's doesn't it is ruthlessly consistent and it has therefore the force of absolute consistency of a kind that nobody else's has and certainly that Aristotle's with its mixture of playtest elements and Aristotelian elements that's a big advantage to an ethics nothing is more crucial in morality than the passion that comes from absolute ruthless consistency Condors makes no bones about it now Aristotle is not on the defensive philosophically but he's not very enthusiastic about ethics that is not his forte he is not pre-eminently a moralist and therefore his ethics lacks a kind of fire or passion which comes across only occasionally as in his description of the magnanimous man second Kant's ethics however vicious it is is universally practicable that is to say no one can practice it but in another sense it's not designed for any special class of man you everyone can wreck his life on it equally if he wants to try it Aristotle's is definitely aristocratic if you take it as a whole because of the stress on contemplation as an end in itself and presupposing wealth of high intelligence etc and so not necessarily would seem irrelevant to the great mass of people thirdly very crucially this is perhaps the most important drawing the preceding two points in the in significance into it cashed in on millennia of Christianity 1,800 years of a powerfully established Christian context which was absolutely taken for granted and he simply drove people to the wall given that context Aristotle took the first steps in a brand new direction without any ancestors or context at all he had before him only Plato or this office now you have to understand this point it is much much easier for you today to be receptive to a philosophy that preaches reason than it would be if the same people with the same honesty and the same intelligence existed in the 4th century BC because I'm not taking of any one of you in person or being in something but I've included myself and I mean as applied to mankind in general at that period of human knowledge to go by reason was a complete unknown there were no theories to say what it would consist of or what it would mean in practice to live avowedly and self-consciously buy a philosophy of reason and to know what that would mean you would have to be a first-rate independent philosopher it would simply not be possible for the decent man on the street to do it he would have no way to figure out what are all the implications and applications and how do you do it and how do you solve all these endless problems etc it's only after centuries and centuries where we've acquired the rudiments of and of course even there mankind is still today in the moral wilderness but now we have of course after Aristotle and the Industrial Revolution and modern science and the birth of United States of America and the development of language etc we have some guidelines and even those proved on insufficient as you know we're in process of losing them and that's the questions that crucial need of Objectivism the Objectivist ethics but you cannot ask why did the people of Aristotle's time not endorse him because that he was better than the rest it simply is anachronistic historically it couldn't have happened I don't think it could have happened even if Aristotle had had a completely consistent philosophy and would have taken centuries and centuries to absorb such a revolution but as it was that he had an inconsistent one and that simply made it worse now I will conclude this question though by giving one point to to Aristotle and that is there is a sense in which Aristotle always has one out in human history insofar as people act or function at all they do function on an Aristotelian base insofar as they accomplish anything of that that they cannot escape and in that crucial sense the common man does go for Aristotle only he doesn't know about Aristotle and he doesn't know that you can't combine the Nicomachean ethics and the Sermon on the Mount and in that same sense nobody can live by can't all they can do is destroy themselves in society in the process that's about as much as I want to say on that question is there any reason in which any respect in which objectivism would disagree that the means to achieve happiness is to actualize one's distinctive potentialities well if you mean by that what objectivism disagree that the means to achieve happiness is to live by reason certainly not of course objective is an advocates that happiness is the means to reach reason is the means to happiness however objectivism does not advocate reason simply because it is distinctive to math you see Aristotle justifies the life of reason essentially on the teleological ground the reason is man's distinctive striving and to Aristotle's defense of the life of reason the objection is well why is the fact that something is distinctive to man per se an argument for living that way one very superficial philosopher that I won't mention by name once said to me what if man's distinctive feature was a long nose what if follow them that you should emphasize the life of the long-nosed just because that's distinctive well I mean that's really not even fair to Aristotle because he explained given his metaphysics why the distinctive was the thing that comes but in any event in a way that kind of objection is open if you reject Aristotle's teleology objectivism says that you should live by the life of reason because reason is a necessary means to sustaining life is therefore to the achievement of happiness but the crucial the middle term is the role of reason in sustaining life the fact that reason is through and through practical and not contemplative and that disembodied otherworldly sense that is a basic disagreement with Aerostar I said according to you that no concept of utilitarian knowledge was possible prior to the Industrial Revolution do I believe that nothing there was no equivalent or partial approach to the Industrial Revolution prior to the late 18th early 19th century in other cultures well first of all you're somewhat stated accurately in my view I do not believe that that that knowledge was entirely divorced from utilitarian purposes and Aristotle indeed has the practical reason which is priscila terian reason I said the knowledge of science of abstract philosophy of mathematics they did not grasp its relationship to life primarily the knowledge of physics math biology psychology and that I say that could not grasp prior to the Industrial Revolution do I believe there was no equivalent of the Industrial Revolution well if you mean by equivalent in early times that men use knowledge they used it to make discoveries on a certain level yes they did but if you mean they created the kind of culture which made oblate and accessible to everyone the imperative role of the mind in actually sustaining human existence the highest reaches of the mind in sustaining the actual physical life of man then I say yes in that sense it was only the Industrial Revolution that made it possible which Aristotle in turn made possible the Industrial Revolution by making possible modern science by making possible a renaissance and from that point of view Aristotle created the circumstances that ultimately corrected his own doctor is believing in something so strongly as to exclude everything that might stand against advice according to Aristotle no he did not make that application of the doctrine of moderation on intellectual matters he thought you should believe strongly firmly and as an absolute in what you regard is true he had passionate convictions which he was willing to stand by the doctrine of moderation was applied specifically to your treatment of emotional matters as I indicated in the lecture who was the father of altruism and philosophy and would it surprise you of you if I said the answer is Fichte that is the answer I defend in my book the ominous parallels in essence I would say that altruism but you'll have to read the book for this because I couldn't condense that all into one answer what it amounts to is that altruism as the formal theory that the essence of the good is sacrificed specifically for other people not mixing in sacrifice for God or any element of egoistic selfishness pure self sacrifice for others is a post cons in development it was foreshadowed by Christianity it was foreshadowed by Platonism there were large hunks of it but mixed in with the idea that more important and sacrificing for others are sacrificing for God and mixed in with the idea there's something in it for you you'll get the other world or whatever the idea of pure selfless total self-sacrifice for others is in post content phenomenon and the first famous influential philosophical consistent altruist is therefore the first famous influential consistent post content 50 whose works I analyzed in my book and thereafter all the rest of them so you could either say Christianity in the sense of starting the element or Kant in the sense of annihilating everything else or 50 as the man who actually did it

Channel: Ayn Rand Institute

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Keywords: history of philosophy, history, philosophy, history of western philosophy, western philosophy, leonard peikoff, ayn rand, ayn rand institute, objectivism, objectivist, political theory, modern philosophy, ancient philosophy, school of life, crash course, lecture, educational video, secular humanism, aristotle, ethics, politics, ethics and politics, happiness, reason

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Length: 77min 52sec (4672 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020