Aristotle’s Rules for Living Well
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Great article: concise and to the point. The old Greeks were often first to scribble down a lot of notions, early on. No doubt the same ideas might have surfaced elsewhere too and no doubt we'll hear about those discoveries here on HN.
For the layman such as myself, who might like to get some sort of idea what the old Greek civilization might have been like I do recommend "Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens" SBN 0006863434. Also dive into any modern translation of Herodotus - well worth a read.
Britons might like to investigate: "The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek" SBN: 0140297847. Pytheas describes the Pretanike. Change the P for a B and allow that -ike is an old Greek ending and you can see where Britain comes from. It seems to translate to something like "painted/tattooed peoples". The old Britons - iron age - might have displayed woad tattoos. However, this: https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/dispelling-some-myths... seems pretty well informed. I do find myself agreeing that William Wallace was probably not an Australian! I can also confirm that running up his memorial tower, near Stirling is rather easier when you are 11 than when you are 53. Lovely view though.
Was hal.
It most certainly is not. There's so much water I did not bother but to skim it. I believe the only two things they mention are:
- pull yourself from your negative sides
- understand the rules of understanding itself (today would be scientific principle)
A recent note I took from Ch 7: Unrestraint and Pleasure
"...virtue keeps the source safe, while vice destroys it, and in actions the source is that for the sake of which one acts ... so neither there nor here is reason able to teach anyone the sources, but here it is virtue, either natural or habituated, that directs one to right opinion about the source."
Reminded me of Buddhist teachings that say that moral conduct is necessary and you can't just think/meditate your way to wisdom/enlightenment[2].
[1] Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle. tr. Joe Sachs [2] cf. https://puredhamma.net/living-dhamma/transition-to-noble-eig...
The Judeans and Israelites who would become the first Christians were very much within the Greek cultural and intellectual sphere, so it’s not as if it was a medieval innovation by Aquinas that introduced Christians to Greek thought. Not to say that Aquinas didn’t make huge contributions of course.
We are all the children of God according to the Bible, therefore Jesus was no more than the Son of God than any other man, he simply took on the mantle more fully than most.
Add in the Gospel of Judas and he quickly becomes an apparent Gnostic who engaged in a giant con with the specific intent of widescale social reform (he ordered Judas to "betray" him and take the money to put to the cults efforts, having recognized that any leader who survives -Loh- long enough just becomes another tyrant and only martyrs remain saints who he people use for guidance and example.)
I would replace "Aristotle" to "Ancient Greeks" or "Ancient Stoics" in your sentence. Example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=gold+christian+rule (results in some quote from the Bible)
https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+rule+of+plato (results in very similar quote which has been said way earlier).
Interestingly, I think in both The Illiad and The Odyssey there is a mention of a god making a trip to Ethiopia.
The Illiad is the most ancient writing AFAIK but I do not understand what are you saying in this sentence.
Right now we’re reading “History of the Peloponnesian War” by Thucydides, which is amazing, and the plan is to go in chronological order until the fall of the western Roman Empire. So after this, got example, we’ll probably do Xenophon, Plato, some of the plays, and then Aristotle, before moving on to studying Alexander.
It’s all really interesting stuff and the works are by excellent writers, so they’re relatable and easy to read. I think a big benefit comes from reading primary sources, versus, say for example, taking a class in college.
If anyone is interested now is a perfect time to join, as we’ve just begun book 2 of Thucydides. We also need new members because we’re looking for help with writing content about our readings into the site. Helping us optional though of course.
As an aside, I find it amusing that a piece in the New Yorker has the gall to criticize Aristotle of all people for meandering prose which often leads nowhere.
There seems to be a complete lack of understanding that this approach has been powerful for so many.
It seems to me that hardly anyone anymore understands or tolerated fruitful historical processes for creating systems of ideas.
Which, incidentally, involves reading.
> The main point of contention between Aristotelian and Stoics is the issue of whether virtue is sufficient for happiness (Aristotle, NE 1.8-10, Cicero, On Ends Books 3-5). Both Aristotle and Stoics claim that virtue is an essential component of happiness. But while Aristotle sees happiness as dependent on a combination of virtue and bodily goods (for instance, health) and external goods (for instance, money, power and friends), for the Stoics happiness depends solely on virtue. Thus, for Aristotle virtue is necessary for happiness, but not sufficient, whereas for the Stoics it is both necessary and sufficient.
* https://modernstoicism.com/aristotelian-and-stoic-happiness-...
> * If all external things are deemed by the Stoa unnecessary for our happiness, this will include other people. Yet the affect of love, with its valuation of the other and her good as part of our own, seems to be set irremovably deep in our nature and infancy, and to be the portal to the most meaningful experiences of life: a thought underlying Aristotle’s arguments concerning philia. The Stoic opposition to the pathē more widely, likewise, seems psychologically unrealistic – since passions like love and fear are so basic to our psyches – and to threaten to rob our subjective lives of too much of what gives them their colour. Finally, at a more technical level, the Stoic emphases on virtue as a technē or epistēmē seems to rob practical rationality of the subtle flexibility Aristotle’s differentiation of praxis and phronēsis had won for virtue ethics, and to point forwards towards Kant’s and the utilitarians’ paradoxically impractical, rule-based moralities (Kant greatly admired the Stoics).*
* https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315729053...
That said, Aristotle and Epictetus differed pretty significantly on the question of what constitutes happiness (this English word doesn't really capture the full sense of the Greek well), which is the core question of the ethics.
>Virtue is a state “consisting in a mean,” Aristotle maintains, and this mean “is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it.” (For Aristotle, the “mean” represented a point between opposite excesses—for instance, between cowardice and recklessness lay courage.)
The idea of virtue being a mean is an unchecked assumption, from oversimplified matters.
Reusing the example with the cowardice-courage-recklessness triplet: suppose for a moment a fool that acts only when it is not necessary to act; he runs away from an ant, but throws himself into a fight against a pack of lions. The fool in question is, at the same time, coward and reckless, but he is not courageous.
You might say "he's being coward or reckless on different circumstances"; and you'd be right. This shows that there's a second dimension to take into account here, besides "ability to act": it's "ability to detect when to act". And once you do this split, you notice that courage is not a mean between cowardice and recklessness; it's simply the opposite of cowardice, with recklessness having another opposite (let's call it "carefulness").
I'm not too eager to assume that _all_ virtues work like this, but the presence of at least one virtue not behaving this way already shows that Aristotle's "virtue as a mean" concept is flawed and assumptive.
_________________
Another issue; from the book. Aristotle makes an unholy mess of what's good for the individual and what's good for society, around book III; almost like he was preaching "hey if you want happiness/eudaimonia you should have arete/virtue~". Things simply don't work like this on an individual level - you can be the biggest arsehole in the village and still potentially live a happy, meaningful life. Or live in virtue and miserable.
This is pretty much the complaint of Socrates' interlocutors in The Republic.
Socrates (or Plato) might object that "being the biggest arsehole" would entail security concerns that would hinder happiness.
They may also object to such a life being meaningful if it involves indulging one's desires to the detriment of the rest of the villagers. Don't the villagers make their happiness possible? Will their arseholiness help sustain what makes human life meaningful into perpetuity, or set the stage for its destruction?
I posit that one should be afraid of fighting an ant because the ant is weaker than you. The fear in this case is not of being defeated or humiliated, but of being cruel and unkind. So simply, what kind of character are if you can only fight something that is weaker than you?
On the other hand, if you choose to climb the harder hill or fight the harder fight (lions, kraken, etc.), that isn't indicative of foolhardiness and neither is it indicative of courage (I agree). It is a simply a fight that befell you and you decided not to roll over and die. I think it is nihilist to fight something that is stronger than you, and you tacitly accept your defeat before you even begin the fight.
Tbh, fights are depressing. I am more inclined to being a fool than a fighter.
That's different - that person wouldn't fear the ant like a coward, but take a moral instance against fighting entities weaker than oneself.
>On the other hand, if you choose to climb the harder hill or fight the harder fight (lions, kraken, etc.), that isn't indicative of foolhardiness and neither is it indicative of courage (I agree). It is a simply a fight that befell you and you decided not to roll over and die. I think it is nihilist to fight something that is stronger than you, and you tacitly accept your defeat before you even begin the fight.
I think that courage is only a meaningful attribute to assign to a being when there's an actual choice between fighting and not fighting. In the case of a "fight or die" situation, you don't really have much of a choice.
>Tbh, fights are depressing. I am more inclined to being a fool than a fighter.
Frankly? I hear ya. Ditto, in large part.
The same reasoning could be used with other moral dimensions than coward vs. courageous vs. reckless. I'd argue that it applies to greed; by Aristotle's reasoning the opposite of greed would be making oneself poor, or perhaps lack of care for material possessions. It's a silly argument, in the eyes of someone living in 2023. (Even if it was a rather clever reasoning for those times.)
Not an advice book, but does include heart healthy diet advice
"For if someone should know that light meats are easily digestible and healthful, but is ignorant of what sorts are light, he will not produce health; rather, he who does know that poultry is light and healthful will to a greater degree produce health."
Martha Nussbaum & Bryan Magee on Aristotle
Philosophy it's pretty much full of bullshit. Get over it. Euclid's statements worked well for 17 centuries, while most "facts" about philosophical currents are pretty much subjective garbage.
I've read "Metaphysics" and compared to Euclid's "Elements" the first compendium it's a bunch of nonsense packed together as if they were universal truths.
This is a half-true. I mean, Euclid's research really worked well before Newton's research, but this is just because there were no science in middle-ages. All science were pushed out by Christian religion.
That begs a question, how can we segregate a real science (Euclid, Newton, you know what I mean) from real bullshits like a religion. That is what a philosophy is. Philosophy was never a bullshit but rather a chickenshit. The only reason to call Philosophy a bs is that generally religions (not only Christian one) is used to be called a part of a Philosophy domain, but of course Christians never really φιλ-ed a σοφία.
Some would disagree:
> Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43277412-aristotle-s-rev...
Unlike Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, who wrote down little if anything first-hand, and seemed to have comparatively fewer coherent things to say, which too we only know about from third parties removed hundreds of years later.
But it depends on how you define a religion. If it includes a divinity of some sort, then no. If it includes devoted followers, then yes.
Instead i care if i can get enough sleep, enough relaxing, enough studying, enough working to fullfill my life or not.
There are many specifications for it. Religions also provide many blueprints for living a good life. The Greek philosophers were very interesting in what leading a good life (what they called eudaimonia) would entail.
> Instead i care if i can get enough sleep, enough relaxing, enough studying, enough working to fullfill my life or not.
What your refer to is on another level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
You have to remember that many of those old philosophers were rich or even nobles that didn't have to worry about the basic needs of life.
Only the true enlightened people are able to meditate about philosophy while their stomach is empty.
All the needs (my above needs, not his needs) could/should be fullfilled at the same time, no need for "hiearchy". There's no such thing as "higher need" to me.
And that's not a desire to "live well"?
I think your objection is key to understanding Socrates' denial of "weakness of will" (Protagoras 358d), an idea that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics actually supports (book seven - 1174b-15).
Maybe norms are ultimately guidelines to the good life for groups of people based on past experience, but they can't possibly account for every contingency of any particular existence.
Btw I don't think the idea is to justify any behavior, but to establish that from a rational perspective everybody is making decisions based on what seems right at the moment.
You learn something everyday
> MacIntyre holds that After Virtue makes seven central claims.[1] It begins with an allegory suggestive of the premise of the science-fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz: a world where all sciences have been dismantled quickly and almost entirely. MacIntyre asks what the sciences would look like if they were re-assembled from the remnants of scientific knowledge that survived the catastrophe.
> He claims that the new sciences, though superficially similar to the old, would in fact be devoid of real scientific content, because the key suppositions and attitudes would not be present. "The hypothesis which I wish to advance", he continues, "is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described."[2] Specifically, MacIntyre applies this hypothesis to advance the notion that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment were philosophically doomed from the start because they were formed using the aforementioned incoherent language of morality. MacIntyre claims that this failure encompasses the work of many significant Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment moral philosophers, including Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume. These philosophers "fail because of certain shared characteristics deriving from their highly specific historical background."[3] That background is the Enlightenment's abandonment of Aristotelianism, and in particular the Aristotelian concept of teleology.
[…]
> Another reason MacIntyre gives for the doomed nature of the Enlightenment is the fact that it ascribed moral agency to the individual. He claims this made morality no more than one man's opinion and, thus, philosophy became a forum of inexplicably subjective rules and principles. The failure of the Enlightenment Project, because of the abandonment of a teleological structure, is shown by the inadequacy of moral emotivism, which MacIntyre believes accurately reflects the state of modern morality.
[…]
> In the end, however, MacIntyre tells us that we are waiting not for Godot but for Benedict of Nursia. MacIntyre criticizes individualist political philosophy, such as John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. To MacIntyre, morals and virtues can only be comprehended through their relation to the community which they come from. Whereas Rawls tells us to conceive of justice through abstracting ourselves from who we are (through the veil of ignorance, for example) MacIntyre disagrees. Running throughout After Virtue is the belief that in order to comprehend who we are, we must understand where we come from.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/332138
Even if you don't necessarily agree with his final conclusion, I think MacIntyre does a decent job of examining various ethic systems that that been presented in (Western) philosophy, and trying to poke holes in them. Worth checking out by anyone curious to examine the field of ethics.