Apr
30
How do Knowledge and Virtue Relate? On Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk. 2 Chp. 4
Filed Under aristotle, philosophy | Leave a Comment
The translation of the Ethics used below is Joe Sachs’. The quotes are from Bk. 2, Chapter 4 (1105 a17 – 1105 b18)
The issue is locating the key problem in the opening paragraph of Aristotle’s chapter. We will begin with a part of it and skip ahead in the chapter to shed light on it:
One might raise as an impasse, though, how we mean that it is necessary to become just by performing just actions and temperate by performing temperate actions, for if people do things that are just and temperate they already are just or temperate people, just as, if they do the things that have to do with writing or with music, they are literate or musical people. Or is it not even this way in the case of the arts?
Now in Christian thought, and the thought of our secular world with its emphasis on freedom, one is usually only responsible for a moral wrong when one knows what one does is wrong.
Aristotle brings up the issue of the arts because he cannot even conceive of virtue devoid of knowledge. It is true that at 1105 b1-5, he will say the following:
For having the other kinds of artfulness, these things do not count, except the mere knowing, but for having the virtues, the knowing is of little or no strength, while the other conditions ave not a little but all the power, and they are the very ones which arise from repeatedly performing just or temperate actions.
Such a quote might lead us to think “knowing” doesn’t matter as much as “doing.” I actually think the key to this quote is at 1105 b12-18:
Most people… believe that by taking refuge in talk they are philosophizing and in that way will be people of serious stature, doing something similar to those sick people who listen to the doctors carefully but do none of the things they order. So just as they will be in no good condition in body if they treat themselves in this way, neither will those who philosophize in this way be in any good condition in soul.
The issue is that the knowing is so important, I think, it must be made manifest in action. For the emphasis, in virtue, is on such knowledge being made strength through action. For arts, to go back to the previous quote, “mere knowing” will do – the “knowledge” there is immediately effectual, and hard to distinguish truly from action. Thus it seems to me to be of a lesser quality.
To go back up to the quote that started this essay, we can see that the problem with knowledge of the arts stems from deduction. Deduction means we start with a product (1105 a23-4 for art, & a25-32 for virtue), and try to figure out the “causes” of the “effect” that product is. So what one might argue, then, is that the product of virtue does not require one take any pleasure in virtue (note how Bk. 2, Chp. 3’s opening paragraph contrasts with the thought of Immanuel Kant), or that one concentrate on actually producing virtue – “enlightened self-interest” might all be society needs.
The way Aristotle gets around this “impasse” is by hinting, i.e. the passage we started with, that knowledge of the arts is a deviation from knowledge of virtue. For arts should ideally be concerned with only the product effected, but we instead make judgments about the artists’ ability through his creation. The product of virtue, then, is not merely a virtuous action, but a state of the soul, an ability to relate to knowledge and hold it highest properly:
But with the things that come about as a result of the virtues, just because they themselves are a certain way it is not the case that one does them justly or temperately, but only if the one doing them also does them being a certain way: if one does them first of all knowingly, and next, having chosen them and chosen them for their own sake, and third, being in a stable condition and not able to be moved all the way out of it (1105 a29-35).
And now you can see why I’ve purposely picked a convoluted order to discuss this chapter. The key is seeing that knowledge and choice relate to being a certain way, and that cannot be emphasized enough. Such a thought being tucked away in the middle of Aristotle’s chapter, in these modern times, requires a drawing out with which to begin our contemplation.
Apr
29
For all the complaining I do about my professors, I greatly admire them in one way – they know how to stay young while not acting like high schoolers.
They’ve grown old and matured. And I can’t help but think that this is a result of appreciating knowledge.
Outside of my immediate circle of friends, the stories are so much the same they’re interchangeable. I don’t want to get moralistic about booze and sex and drugs, because I don’t really have to – it’s boring, and if you don’t believe me because you’re young and looking good now, imagine when you’re older and more attractive even and everyone else is going after younger and easier people.
Not getting paid attention to is the worst thing. We literally have to drink to get it out of our minds most times. And cliques always take on people that shouldn’t be there – heck, shouldn’t be anywhere, really – because of our own want of attention.
My guess with my profs is that since they can sit and wonder about a few words for hours at a time, they can keep themselves patient and active, both at once. That’s a combination that I don’t think can occur in life outside of the mind, and it is a combination that I can’t romanticize too much, for it produces nothing – there is no attention to be had.
But it does keep them young at heart, and for the one that is a good friend, and for the ones that I owe a lot to and will become good friends with – well, I wanna join those ranks too.
Technorati Tags: aging, academia
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Apr
28
I really don’t want to write anything today. Thank you all for your prayers, wishes and support.
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Apr
24
Do feel free to drop comments in this entry linking to your best posts explaining why people should read them. (I kinda want stuff to read when I’m goofing off on the computer later.)
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Apr
24
The Spirit of A Nation: A Brief Comment on Yeats’ "Easter 1916"
Filed Under poetry, politics, yeats | Leave a Comment
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
- from “Easter 1916,” by William Butler Yeats
We have discussed this issue before – whether an entire nation can lose its spirit and go through life as if life were mere motion. And the issue unnerves us: it evokes notions of Sparta and fascism as the “spirited” alternative to Constitutionalism.
But perhaps we only see such an “alternative” because our hearts are stone, and we can only conceive of strength as being stone.
The cycle is the problem. When our spirit is manifest in making, hoping that Providence will carry our works beyond us, we produce necessarily an “excess of love.” That same “excess of love” can be stared at incomprehensibly by those who only dream. They are not aware of what is in front of them, the very real promise and problems of love.
How is this a cycle? We who are loving chant and remember and pray – they, on the other hand, sleep and dream and are thus disconnected from this world. In order for them to “keep faith,” they would have to invest faith in the fact others do or say things.
You can see the Dionysian/Apollonian distinction at work here, if you wish to use some fancy terms, but the point is simple: these are two sides of a whole being discussed here, but a whole that is falling apart. To pray is to dream, to dream is to pray. People are not so distinctly different they cannot become the other.
One could say that love underlies both, and that love is omnipresent. But that wouldn’t be quite correct. Love underlies everything, and exhausts itself in dreaming and praying. Thus it is possible for one activity to bleed the other dry.
And that is what could happen if the names are not repeated and remembered, if the tombstone is not seen as the only stone there should be. The murmuring of name ties the motion of life (“limbs that had run wild”) to a particular sort of dream – the external utterance stems from whatever formed internally. Some dreams empty life of all content. But if we can dream better, we can love better, and make life for all something more beautiful. Tragedy is the realization of what is at stake, of the fact that life is worth living, and things are worth fighting for.
Technorati Tags: yeats, nationalism, politics, easter 1916, poetry
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