Americans sometimes claim to be moderate in their views. "I don't believe in abolishing the Fed, for I am a moderate," is an example. Moderation means limiting change to a moderate distance from present policy. But what if present policy is extreme? Franklin Roosevelt might have said: "I don't believe in ending concentration camps for Japanese Americans. I believe in a more moderate course." Andrew Jackson might have said: "I don't believe in ending my policy of banishing all Native Americans east of the Mississippi. I believe in the moderate course of extending the Indian Removal Act to just one more tribe."
Is moderation as a mere increment meaningful in the context of policies whose effects are devastating or reprehensible?
There are other possible meanings, though. Perhaps moderation underlies a claim that state action is not a moral but a pragmatic question. "Only extremists hold that theft is wrong under all circumstances. We moderates hold that taxing some to redistribute to others is a pragmatic course." Here, however, the claim is contradictory. If morality that prohibits theft is extreme, why is the morality that motivates redistribution of wealth not an extreme? If it is wrong to say that theft is wrong, why is right to say that income inequality is wrong?
Since all government action involves violence, and since the elimination of violence is a prerequisite to the foundation of civilization, all government action involves moral choice. Choice about violence,murder, or theft is inherently moral, and all government action involves violence, murder, or theft. Therefore, all government action is extreme if extreme is to be defined as making state decisions on the basis of morality.
A third possible meaning of moderation is that it accords with the majority. The majority in America believe the claims made on television and in newspapers. The writers in these sources are not well educated, and they have demonstrated a repeated capacity for advocating erroneous courses of action. One example was the Vietnam War. Another was, in New York City, the urban renewal policies of Robert Moses. A third was the Iraqi War and the strategy behind it. A fourth is America's monetary policy. Ancient Athens lost the Peloponnesian War because it chose to invade Sicily, a decision that was politically popular. America's disastrous invasion of Iraq was similarly popular, and I was among the mistaken supporters.
In other words, defining moderation as incremental decision making, pragmatism, or accordance with majority rule potentially leads to policies that are extreme. A fourth definition is mathematically certain, but it is also self-contradictory and equally vacuous. The ancient Greeks defined sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη) as temperance or moderation in the sense of being well balanced. Aristotle spoke of a range of virtues such as prudence, justice, and courage as well as sophrosyne. Moderation, in Aristotle's view, is the mean between two extremes. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, for instance.
Perhaps moderation in state action can mean the mean between two extreme courses of action. In this sense, though, current American policies are not moderate. An economy in which public debt is in excess of $55,000 per man, woman, and child, forty-four percent of whom have no savings, is hardly a mean between two extremes. It is an extreme. The same may be said of monetary policy. The tripling of the money supply in 2008 and 2009 can hardly be called a mean between two extremes: Historically, monetary expansion of that magnitude has led to economic collapse. Nor can we say that a nation that subsidizes one industry, banking, to the extent that the US government has is taking actions that are the midpoint between two extremes.
Moderation can be defined as a small increment over current policy, pragmatism, majority rule, or the mean between two extremes, but none of these meanings is inconsistent with policies that are genocidal, horrific, radically redistributive, or economically destructive. Americans' claim that their choices are moderate, like their claim that they are free or their claim that they are prosperous, is a chimera.
Showing posts with label aristotle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aristotle. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2015
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The Altruistic Fallacy
I recently gave a talk at Brooklyn College's Faculty Day, a delightful annual event at Brooklyn College where about 100 of the faculty come together to share ideas. I put together a symposium entitled "Why Business Schools Can't Teach Ethics" and my paper was entitled "Ethics and the Enlightenment in Business Education." The other participants were two philosophers, Professors Michael Menser and Christine Vitrano, and my business department colleague Professor Carol M. Connell. I thought all of the presentations were very good, but a breach between the business faculty and our philosophical colleagues was evident. The philosophers tended to view ethics in terms of altruism, while I do not. Professor Connell focused on pedagogical issues. I do believe that business schools can't teach business ethics; I coined the symposium's title. But I came away thinking that philosophy departments cannot do so either.
In particular, the interpretation of ethics as altruism is misguided. Aristotle gave the first rigorous alternative to Plato's confusion between collectivism and morality--he suggested that human happiness is the best moral ground. It is true that Aristotle did not like retail trade or commercialism as we know it today, but he did not at all object to affluence, which he saw as necessary to the best life, that of philosophical contemplation. His belief in affluence as a necessary condition to the contemplative life is consistent with a belief in profit-making as we know it. Aristotle did believe in the morality of household management, oiconomos, from which the word economics is derived. However, to make the distinction between retail trade and household management intelligible in today's mindset it needs to be reversed.
Aristotle's objection to retail trade rested on the absence of a mean with respect to profit. More profit is always better, hence there is no way that a retailer can strike an intermediate between profit making and alternative aims. This is analogous to today's discussion about corporate social responsibility. However, he did see the aristocratic life of the Athenian landowner and slave master as capable of a mean. The closest analogy in our experience is the life of the Southern slave owner, who did not need to maximize profit because he was assured of a graceful life so long as he managed his plantation well. Someone like Thomas Jefferson, who engaged in philosophical contemplation as well as political activity while benefiting from his slaves' labor may be closest to the Aristotelian ideal. But as we now know, and as Jefferson himself thought, Jefferson's life depended on the profound immorality of slavery.
It is evident that in today's world, household management is less moral than retail trade, for we know that Aristotle's support for slavery was wrong. (In fact, some Sophists had argued against the institution of slavery, and Aristotle rejected their arguments.) Moreover, it is possible today to balance an affluent life with philosophical contemplation because of the separation of ownership and control, that is, because of modern capitalism. In a purely socialist or altruistic society such balance would not be possible.
Grounding morality in a belief in the worth of every individual, and rejection of Aristotle's belief that it is in the character of slaves to be slaves, we can update Aristotle and so recognize the value of his ethics. Without doing so we must reject all of Aristotle; his work is only intelligible if we replace his rejection of retail trade with a recognition that achievement is possible in the economic context. For it is only through profit-making that balance is possible. This recognition is inconsistent with the claim that altruism is moral.
Aristotle could not have conceived of instruments like stocks, bonds and pension funds that permit income without one-sided fixation, and, better than an Athenian oikos, permit philosophical contemplation. Aristotle could not have visualized the enormous effect of economic and technological advance on human welfare that has only existed under profit-seeking capitalism. The pursuit of profit has tripled life expectancy, reduced hunger for billions and made widespread education possible. In a socialist state like India infant mortality remains much higher than in capitalist countries. In the former Soviet Union male life expectancy is still in the 50s.
Aristotle could only visualize retail trade as it was limited to the ancient context. Even then, as Rostovtzeff describes in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic world had made tremendous advances with respect to agriculture and manufacturing that Aristotle may not have recognized because of his aristocratic orientation and his contempt for craft and technology.
In other words, human fulfillment and morality are synonymous with profit. A rigid equation of altruism to ethics ignores Henry Sidgwick's observation that we know ourselves better than others and so are better equipped to maximize our own happiness than that of others. A system that strains the possibilities of human rationality, i.e., a system based on altruism, is bound to lead to profound immorality. Altruism's responsibility for the most egregious immorality in history evidences my claim. Adolf Hitler did not pursue profit. He pursued socialist ideals as he conceived them. The altruism of Marxism is responsible for 100 million murders, the bloodiest, most immoral outcome in human history. Altruism has been responsible for uglier immorality and depredation than any outcome of capitalism. In contrast, capitalism has improved the quality of life beyond recognition to the residents of the pre-capitalist or socialist world.
The claim that there is an inconsistency between morality and profit fails to consider the distinction between profit and theft. As Benjamin Franklin claimed in the eighteenth century and as Stanley and Danko empirically confirm in their Millionaire Next Door, written in the 1990s and very much in line with Franklin's claims, the wealthy tend to be more moral than others. They tend to defer gratification, save, and productively invest. They tend to care for their families and donate to charity when they die (not before). The deferment of gratification is very much in line not only with Franklin's but with Aristotle's vision of human happiness and morality.
Business students ought not be taught that altruism is preferable to profit seeking. Rather, they ought to be taught that profit seeking needs to be rational and balanced with other goods--that it ought not to contradict the moral foundations of a free society. To claim that the quest for economic achievement is immoral is to sink backward into the immorality of Medieval tribalism and socialism.
In particular, the interpretation of ethics as altruism is misguided. Aristotle gave the first rigorous alternative to Plato's confusion between collectivism and morality--he suggested that human happiness is the best moral ground. It is true that Aristotle did not like retail trade or commercialism as we know it today, but he did not at all object to affluence, which he saw as necessary to the best life, that of philosophical contemplation. His belief in affluence as a necessary condition to the contemplative life is consistent with a belief in profit-making as we know it. Aristotle did believe in the morality of household management, oiconomos, from which the word economics is derived. However, to make the distinction between retail trade and household management intelligible in today's mindset it needs to be reversed.
Aristotle's objection to retail trade rested on the absence of a mean with respect to profit. More profit is always better, hence there is no way that a retailer can strike an intermediate between profit making and alternative aims. This is analogous to today's discussion about corporate social responsibility. However, he did see the aristocratic life of the Athenian landowner and slave master as capable of a mean. The closest analogy in our experience is the life of the Southern slave owner, who did not need to maximize profit because he was assured of a graceful life so long as he managed his plantation well. Someone like Thomas Jefferson, who engaged in philosophical contemplation as well as political activity while benefiting from his slaves' labor may be closest to the Aristotelian ideal. But as we now know, and as Jefferson himself thought, Jefferson's life depended on the profound immorality of slavery.
It is evident that in today's world, household management is less moral than retail trade, for we know that Aristotle's support for slavery was wrong. (In fact, some Sophists had argued against the institution of slavery, and Aristotle rejected their arguments.) Moreover, it is possible today to balance an affluent life with philosophical contemplation because of the separation of ownership and control, that is, because of modern capitalism. In a purely socialist or altruistic society such balance would not be possible.
Grounding morality in a belief in the worth of every individual, and rejection of Aristotle's belief that it is in the character of slaves to be slaves, we can update Aristotle and so recognize the value of his ethics. Without doing so we must reject all of Aristotle; his work is only intelligible if we replace his rejection of retail trade with a recognition that achievement is possible in the economic context. For it is only through profit-making that balance is possible. This recognition is inconsistent with the claim that altruism is moral.
Aristotle could not have conceived of instruments like stocks, bonds and pension funds that permit income without one-sided fixation, and, better than an Athenian oikos, permit philosophical contemplation. Aristotle could not have visualized the enormous effect of economic and technological advance on human welfare that has only existed under profit-seeking capitalism. The pursuit of profit has tripled life expectancy, reduced hunger for billions and made widespread education possible. In a socialist state like India infant mortality remains much higher than in capitalist countries. In the former Soviet Union male life expectancy is still in the 50s.
Aristotle could only visualize retail trade as it was limited to the ancient context. Even then, as Rostovtzeff describes in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic world had made tremendous advances with respect to agriculture and manufacturing that Aristotle may not have recognized because of his aristocratic orientation and his contempt for craft and technology.
In other words, human fulfillment and morality are synonymous with profit. A rigid equation of altruism to ethics ignores Henry Sidgwick's observation that we know ourselves better than others and so are better equipped to maximize our own happiness than that of others. A system that strains the possibilities of human rationality, i.e., a system based on altruism, is bound to lead to profound immorality. Altruism's responsibility for the most egregious immorality in history evidences my claim. Adolf Hitler did not pursue profit. He pursued socialist ideals as he conceived them. The altruism of Marxism is responsible for 100 million murders, the bloodiest, most immoral outcome in human history. Altruism has been responsible for uglier immorality and depredation than any outcome of capitalism. In contrast, capitalism has improved the quality of life beyond recognition to the residents of the pre-capitalist or socialist world.
The claim that there is an inconsistency between morality and profit fails to consider the distinction between profit and theft. As Benjamin Franklin claimed in the eighteenth century and as Stanley and Danko empirically confirm in their Millionaire Next Door, written in the 1990s and very much in line with Franklin's claims, the wealthy tend to be more moral than others. They tend to defer gratification, save, and productively invest. They tend to care for their families and donate to charity when they die (not before). The deferment of gratification is very much in line not only with Franklin's but with Aristotle's vision of human happiness and morality.
Business students ought not be taught that altruism is preferable to profit seeking. Rather, they ought to be taught that profit seeking needs to be rational and balanced with other goods--that it ought not to contradict the moral foundations of a free society. To claim that the quest for economic achievement is immoral is to sink backward into the immorality of Medieval tribalism and socialism.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
New Year's Resolution: Ethics Is HR's Business
I submitted the following article to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' newsletter, AICPA Career Insider.
New Year's Resolution: Ethics Is HR's Business
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
In the last two years several leading institutional players, to include the Society for Human Resource Management, the Business Roundtable's Institute for Corporate Ethics, and the Deloitte accounting firm have noticed that trust between firms and their employees has flagged and that trust can, or ought to be, viewed as an ethical issue. A 2009 Business Roundtable and Arthur W. Page Society survey found that the public sees a power imbalance that enables business to abuse its position. The Business Roundtable recommends renewal of public trust in business through common sense: the production of quality services; steady jobs in healthful environments; and reasonable stockholder returns. Last year, Deloitte found that of one third of Americans who plan to seek a job, 48 percent cite a loss of trust due to poor communication as a reason. Deloitte notes that lack of trust affects talent management. Moreover, competence and ethics go together. 91% of employees say that they are more likely to be ethical when they fit their jobs.
But, if we are to believe Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, trust is, as statisticians might put it, a dependent rather than an independent variable. That is, trust depends on good ethics. It is not good ethics. As Smith argues[1]:
Our rank and credit among our equals…depend very much upon … our character and conduct, or upon the confidence, esteem and good will which these naturally excite...
Three virtues, in Smith's view, constitute good character: prudence with respect to our dealings, justice and beneficence with respect to others. Self-command is needed to ensure that knowledge of the right thing to do is accompanied by ethical action.[2] In these claims Smith follows the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoic philosopher Zeno, who emphasize virtue and self-restraint. Smith distinguishes between commutative justice, according to which which we do no harm to others and distributive justice, according to which we give due credit. Much as Deloitte found, Smith argued in 1759 that a good life-work fit relates to ethics[3]:
(W)e are said to do injustice to ourselves when we appear not to give sufficient attention to any particular object of self-interest. In this last sense, what is called justice means the same thing with the exact and perfect propriety of conduct and behavior, and comprehends in it not only the offices of both commutative and distributive justice, but of every other virtue, of prudence, of fortitude, of temperance.
Smith writes in the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics, according to which virtues or competencies ground ethics. In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle claims that virtues, especially prudence, self-command, courage (risk neutrality) and most of all justice need to be applied through practical wisdom and deliberation, which are similar to what Daniel Goleman has called emotional intelligence.[4]
Virtue Ethics as Emotional Intelligence
The 18th century Enlightenment philosophies of David Hume and Immanuel Kant created a gulf between ethics and competence. Hume claims that there is no logical foundation for ethics and that ethics is pure emotion. Kant claims that ethics is based on practical reason. In the late twentieth century Alisdair MacIntyre[5] pointed out that the attempt to absolutely ground ethics in emotion or reason through sweeping philosophical systems lead to Nietzsche's nihilism and rejection of ethics altogether. Nietzschean nihilism is reflected in the evolution of management thought through writers like Chester Barnard, who claims that morality is malleable and grounded in the executive's ability to manipulate employees' emotions.[6] Arguably, the Nietzschean mindset has influenced fallen managers and investment bankers like Jeffrey Skilling and Ivan Boesky. It is unfortunate that the Nietzschean view has come to be associated with business and capitalism when capitalism more directly rests on the benevolent self-interest of Smith and Aristotle.
Once the gulf between emotional intelligence and practical wisdom is bridged Milton Friedman's claim that business's job is to produce a profit in opposition to corporate social responsibility falls by the wayside. It is business's job to produce a profit consistent with ethical norms, justice and benevolence. Neo-classical economic theory makes similar implicit assumptions. The equation of wage and marginal revenue product echoes Aristotle's concept of justice as proportion, and some philosophers even have controversially claimed that Aristotle was the first to enunciate marginalist economic theory. Given the free market's foundations of justice and benevolence, illegal or unethical behavior is as bad as losing money. We have seen this demonstrated again and again in government and business. The failures of Robert Moses and Robert McNamara in government were failures of competence. The failures of Long Term Capital Management and Arthur Anderson were also so.
Ethics Is a Human Resource Function
The Sophists were the first to claim that ethics is relative and can be viewed as a teachable competence. Plato argued that ethics has a natural foundation and it depends on universal Ideas. Aristotle agreed that ethics depends on natural foundations but that it needs to be applied particularly, to the appropriate circumstances, and the competencies on which it depends are subject to what March and Simon, 2,400 years later, call bounded rationality.[7] Smith saw his ethical system as consistent with the Aristotelian view. Several Enlightenment philosophers, most importantly Kant, rejected Aristotle's emphasis on judicious contextual and particular application of virtues and argued for Platonic ethical universality. This has the unfortunate effect of banishing ethics from profit seeking because there are always exceptions to universal ethical laws. The exceptions debase ethical currency and managers adopt Nietzschean nihilism. In contrast, Smith grounded his ethics on virtue and competency and does not make universalistic claims. Smith argues that culture modifies underlying natural ethical patterns.
Human resource managers are expert in understanding and applying competencies. Job analysis is the gathering of valid information about jobs including job specifications or tasks and job criteria or competencies. In fact, the trend in job analysis has been away from emphasis on duty or task and toward competency. Yet, the classical Greek word for competency, arête, is the same as the word for virtue. Hence, in Aristotle's view (if Aristotle could have imagined a world based on technology and trade, neither of which he saw as important or even desirable beyond a small degree) human resource managers are the arbiters of virtue in the corporation. Moreover, there are universals but they are modified by circumstances. Universal rules need to be tempered with judgment and deliberation.
More to the point, justice is the fundamental competency on which all job responsibilities are based. Its application is imperfect and subject to cognitive limits on rationality. Practical deliberation and judgment are crucial to all professional and managerial jobs but without justice cooperation and coordination necessary in large firms are impossible. Hence, HR managers ought to be the advocates of justice in the corporation. For upon justice prudence, benevolence and all other competencies as we define them today depend.
[1] Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments. Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1817. Volume II, p. 26
[2] Ibid., p. 65
[3] Ibid., p. 112
[4] Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.
[5] Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
[6] Chester Barnard, Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.
[7] James G. March and Herbert Simon, Organizations. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1958.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Leo Strauss, American Ethical Decline and Aristotle's Highest Hope
I was just reading Leo Strauss's magnificent Natural Right and History. Strauss is a first rate thinker, on a par with the great libertarians, yet I disagree with a large chunk of his perspective. I must say that the early chapter on Max Weber is of tremendous importance to the work I have been doing on business schools' teaching of justice as the core management competency and the Aristotelian and Nietzschean traditions in mangement theory. Strauss's arguments in favor of natural right and law are profound and explicate a core insight at which I arrived in my undergraduate years. That is, that the justification of ethics is inherent in the socio-biology of humanity. Natural right and natural law are socio-biological constructs. Conventionalism, the notion that ethics is arbitrary, can be disproved empirically. Strauss makes invaluable arguments along those lines. As well, Strauss outlines the very concept I have been thinking about and am working toward: the crucial importance of decentralization to the development of the virtuous and liberal state. I am glad I am reading Strauss now after I have outlined the project in my mind. Although the idea is my own independent of Strauss, Strauss must be given major credit for conceptualizing the project in 1953.
I do not agree with Strauss in a number of ways. Most important among these is his emphasis on human differentials with respect to the prospects of attaining virtue. Strauss's emphasis on this aspect of Plato and Aristotle leads to elitism which I do not share. This elitism is very much in the Progressive and Marxist traditions. I do not agree that there are people who have a special claim to virtue. Anyone who thinks so can try to fix their own plumbing or their own cars. Just because someone can go to Harvard does not make them more valuable than a plumber. When my pipes go, I care about a plumber, not a philosopher or a politician. Sorry, Ayn Rand. What I want is a virtuous plumber. And a virtuous plumber will not go home, drink a 12-pack of beer, and wash his hands of what has happened to the nation. Rather, America has declined because of the elitism inherent in Progressivism.
Coincidentally Jim Crum sent me Andrew Malcolm's LA Times article that suggests that America is indeed in serious moral decline due to the Progressive and socialist policies that the Democratic and Republican Parties advocate. The article finds that 41 Obama appointees have not paid their taxes. As well, federal employees in general owe a billion dollars in unpaid taxes, and 638 workers on capitol hill owe $9.3 million in unpaid taxes. As Treasury Secretary, who is in charge of collecting taxes, Obama appointee Timothy Geithner owes $43,000 in unpaid taxes. As well, within the department of homeland security "4,856 people owe $37,012,174."
Aristotle argued that the role of the city state is to educate moral citizens. Clearly American society has failed in this elementary task. The problem is not just with dysfunctional schools which systematically fail to teach the three 'rs along with basic morals; nor with the decaying family, harmed by the Wall Street economy that has destroyed job opportunities in general but especially for men and has fractured the family by forcing women to return to work at an early age. It is also due to the miasma of bad ethics that imbues the casino economy; the get-rich-quick psychology of Federal Reserve Bank-financed Wall Street speculation and the carry trade; the mentality that one gets rich by sucking at the tit of the state rather than working hard. All of this is nothing new. For decades the Progressive state structure has systematically rewarded fast-talking corporate types with smooth interpersonal but limited productive skills and penalized those who take legitimate risks. The Federal Reserve Bank churns out easy credit made available to speculators in stocks and real estate but the government taxes work (through the income tax) and thereby inhibits small scale capital accumulation, creating a bank-dominated economy that is inherently corrupt. All of this tends to manipulation of paper and cheating, at which Republicans like Rick Lazio as well as Democrats like Timothy Geithner excel.
A nation which allows cheats like Lazio and Geithner to attain high office has failed Aristotle's highest hope for the city state. The nation is failing morally and the fault is Progressivism. Moral failure will lead to collapse. The Founding Fathers knew Aristotle and they were aware of this point. So were the Mugwumps of the Gilded Age. Because of its fascist economy, the nation has foresaken its moral foundations.
I do not agree with Strauss in a number of ways. Most important among these is his emphasis on human differentials with respect to the prospects of attaining virtue. Strauss's emphasis on this aspect of Plato and Aristotle leads to elitism which I do not share. This elitism is very much in the Progressive and Marxist traditions. I do not agree that there are people who have a special claim to virtue. Anyone who thinks so can try to fix their own plumbing or their own cars. Just because someone can go to Harvard does not make them more valuable than a plumber. When my pipes go, I care about a plumber, not a philosopher or a politician. Sorry, Ayn Rand. What I want is a virtuous plumber. And a virtuous plumber will not go home, drink a 12-pack of beer, and wash his hands of what has happened to the nation. Rather, America has declined because of the elitism inherent in Progressivism.
Coincidentally Jim Crum sent me Andrew Malcolm's LA Times article that suggests that America is indeed in serious moral decline due to the Progressive and socialist policies that the Democratic and Republican Parties advocate. The article finds that 41 Obama appointees have not paid their taxes. As well, federal employees in general owe a billion dollars in unpaid taxes, and 638 workers on capitol hill owe $9.3 million in unpaid taxes. As Treasury Secretary, who is in charge of collecting taxes, Obama appointee Timothy Geithner owes $43,000 in unpaid taxes. As well, within the department of homeland security "4,856 people owe $37,012,174."
Aristotle argued that the role of the city state is to educate moral citizens. Clearly American society has failed in this elementary task. The problem is not just with dysfunctional schools which systematically fail to teach the three 'rs along with basic morals; nor with the decaying family, harmed by the Wall Street economy that has destroyed job opportunities in general but especially for men and has fractured the family by forcing women to return to work at an early age. It is also due to the miasma of bad ethics that imbues the casino economy; the get-rich-quick psychology of Federal Reserve Bank-financed Wall Street speculation and the carry trade; the mentality that one gets rich by sucking at the tit of the state rather than working hard. All of this is nothing new. For decades the Progressive state structure has systematically rewarded fast-talking corporate types with smooth interpersonal but limited productive skills and penalized those who take legitimate risks. The Federal Reserve Bank churns out easy credit made available to speculators in stocks and real estate but the government taxes work (through the income tax) and thereby inhibits small scale capital accumulation, creating a bank-dominated economy that is inherently corrupt. All of this tends to manipulation of paper and cheating, at which Republicans like Rick Lazio as well as Democrats like Timothy Geithner excel.
A nation which allows cheats like Lazio and Geithner to attain high office has failed Aristotle's highest hope for the city state. The nation is failing morally and the fault is Progressivism. Moral failure will lead to collapse. The Founding Fathers knew Aristotle and they were aware of this point. So were the Mugwumps of the Gilded Age. Because of its fascist economy, the nation has foresaken its moral foundations.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Aristotle on Money and Happiness
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, who lived in the fourth century, BC. Contrary to Plato, he believed in freedom, although he was not overly fond of democracy. He preferred an ideal kingship, but recognized that few kings lived up to his ideal and that kingship typically turns into tyranny. Democracy, in his view the corrupted form of constitutional government, is not so bad a perversion as tyranny.
He was an advocate of the middle class. He thought reason to be the way to greatest happiness and happiness to be the ultimate good. Morality was based, in his view, on virtues, habits or states of character in accordance with the right rule learned from childhood. Virtues include moral virtues like courage, temperance and justice. Other moral virtues include good temper, tact and interpersonal skills, generosity or liberality, the ability to virtuously make (or at least have) money, the magnificence of a generous man of great wealth, and the ability to succeed in the political world of the Athenian democracy. He views virtuous behavior as appropriate in a given situation, the mean or optimal way of behaving. As well, Aristotle emphasized the intellectual virtues of philosophic wisdom, science, intuitive understanding, practical wisdom, and knowledge of crafts or skills. Practical wisdom involves applying a particular to a general principle. Excellent deliberation succeeds in attaining the ends sought. There is no conflict between success in what today we would call the economic sense and morality. Rather, economic success would have been inconceivable to Aristotle as success were it not virtuous.
Aristotle saw the highest virtue as a life dedicated to philosophy and thought. But he was a realist. He did not see money as the root of all evil. Rather, the virtues are a unity. For instance, one cannot be successful without being truthful. That is a far cry from today's post-Enlightenment world, where ethics and the ability to be successful are viewed as contradictory.
In the final book of his Nicomachean Ethics he discusses the link between money and a life devoted to philosophical wisdom:
"But, being a man, one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body must be healthy and must have food and other attention. Still, we must not think that the man who is to be happy will need many things or great things, merely because he cannot be supremely happy without external goods; for self-sufficiency and action do not involve excess, and we can do noble acts without ruling earth and sea; for even with moderate advantages one can act virtuously (this is manifest enough; for private persons are thought to do worthy acts no less than despots--indeed, even more); and it is enough that we should have so much as that; for the life of the man who is active in accordance with virtue will be happy. Solon, too, was perhaps sketching well the happy man when he described him as moderately furnished with externals but as having done (as Solon thought) the noblest acts, and lived temperately; for one can with but moderate possessions do what one ought. Anaxagoras also seems to have supposed the happy man not to be rich nor a despot, when he said that he would not be surprised if the happy man were to seem to most people a strange person; for they judge by externals, since externals are all they perceive. The opinions of the wise seem, then, to harmonize with our arguments. But while even such things carry some conviction, the truth in practical matters is discerned from the facts of life, and if it harmonizes with the facts we must accept it, but if it clashes with them we must suppose it to be mere theory. Now he who exercises his reason and cultivates it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most dear to the gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which was best and most akin to them...And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher is manifest. He therefore, is dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be the happiest..."
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Origins of the Three Branches of Government in the US Constitution
A friend asked me to review the antecedents of the three branches of government in the US constitution. This was not a new idea at the time of the founding. In general, the best book to read to understand what the founders were thinking is the Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. It is evident in reviewing the Federalist Papers that the founders were students of the Enlightenment and in particular the ideas of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, who in 1748 finished one of the greatest works of political science, Spirit of Laws. But Montesquieu was not the only important political scientist who informed the founders. Aristotle, who wrote in the fourth century BC and whom the Englightenment famously rejected was still read. It is important to understand that the education of that period and through the 19th century was religious in nature and emphasized the classics in the original Greek and Latin. In political science and ethics students read Aristotle as part of the curriculum. The founders were mostly knowledgable in Latin and Greek, and were certainly familiar with Aristotle's Politics.
Aristotle was one of the most important advocates of freedom in the history of ideas. Unlike some of his Athenian contemporaries, he was not an abolitionist. However, he responds thoroughly to the communist ideas of his professor, Plato. He makes clear that it is fundamental to a state to have plurality and openness of exchange, and that excessive unity is deleterious. He begins Book IV, Chapter 13 of his Politics as follows:
"Having thus gained an appropriate basis of discussion we will proceed to speak of the points which follow next in order...All constitutions have three elements, concerning which the good lawgiver has to regard what is expedient for each constitution. When they are well-ordered, the constitution is well-ordered, and as they differ from one another, constitutions differ. There is (1) one element which deliberates about public affairs; secondly (2) that concerned with the magistracies--the questions being, what they should be over what they should exercise authority, and what should be the mode of electing to them; and thirdy (3) that which has judicial power."
Aristotle there refers to the three branches of government that correspond to the US Constitution, the deliberative or legislative; the magistracy or executive; and the judicial. Aristotle was not unkind to democracy, but he saw it as flawed unless it contained elements of aristocracy, by which he meant selection of the most virtuous to rule. This could be done using republican methods.
Montesquieu relies on Aristotle's framework in writing his monumental Spirit of Laws. The scope and scholarship of Montesquieu's book is still awe inspiring today. In Book XI Section 6 Montesquieu discusses the Constitution of England. England at that time was the freest country, and he admired it greatly. He writes:
"In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals or determines the disputes that arise between individuals..."
In the Federalist Papers, which Hamilton and Madison published in several newspapers to drum up public support for the Consitution, Montesquieu is referred to numerous times. In general, the founding fathers were students of the Enlightenment and applied their understanding of Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers to their conceptualization of the Constitution.
The United States had been founded by religious sects fleeing persecution in Europe. At least several of the original 13 colonies were founded by religious groups. New York was not (it was founded by a commercial enterprise, the Dutch West India Company), nor was Virginia. The founders differed considerably as to their religious orientations. All were trained religiously, for education in those days was a religious enterprise. However, not all were religious. George Washington was an observant church goer. Benjamin Franklin was an atheist. Jefferson and Adams were Deists, which is not quite being a full Christian. Jefferson re-wrote the Bible, taking out all of the miracles. The Jefferson Bible is available to read. Jefferson was an enlightenment rationlist. Deism is something like Unitarianism. On his grave Jefferson had three achievements listed: (1) author of the Declaration of Indepdence; (2) author of the Virginia Statute of Religious freedom and (3) founder of the University of Virginia. He did not list President or Governor of Virginia. The Virginia Statute on Religious freedom concludes:
"Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right."
Aristotle on the Middle Class and the Socialist Banking Oligarchy
Aristotle is the most prominent ancient advocate of freedom. However, his argument is imperfect because he supports the institution of slavery and opposes equality of women. It is asking much of a philosopher to overcome the prejudices of his era. Certainly no philosopher did so perfectly. But the fundamentals of the argument for freedom are in Aristotle's Politics. In this he differs markedly from Plato, who was a totalitarian. Aristotle's arguments against Plato's Republic suggest the arguments that the Austrian economists used nearly a century ago to show why socialism inevitably fails to operate efficiently.
One of the points that Aristotle emphasizes is the importance of the middle class to the functioning of constitutional government. As well, he notes that kingly government was characteristic of "barbaric" Europeans. He writes:
"For barbarians, being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a despotic government. Such royalties have the nature of tyrannies because the people are by nature slaves; but there is no danger of their being overthrown, for they are heditary and legal. Wherefore also their guards are such as a king and not such as a tyrant would employ, that is to say, they are composed of citizens, whereas the guards of tyrants are mercenaries. For kings rule according to law over voluntary subjects, but tyrants are involuntary..."
Thus, writing in the fourth century BC, Aristotle outlined the nature of medieval Europe. For following the decline of Rome in the fifth century AD, 900 years later, the same European barbarians conquered the former Roman Empire and established barbaric kingly rule across Europe, which remained intact until the 1800s (and in several cases is still intact today). Today's socialist Europe reflects the evolution of the servility of Europeans to the kingly state that goes back for millennia.
The claim of some conservatives that retention of the barbaric kingships is "conservative" is a matter of perception. For it would have been more "conservative" to re-institute the dictatorial Roman Empire than to retain barbaric kingly rule, or more conservative still to re-institute the kings of the other primitive barbarians such as the Celts that go back further. Democracy would be the conservative path for someone wishing to "conserve" Athenian culture. Personally, I prefer the "conservatism" of Aristotle, who believed in pluralism, freedom and constitutional rule, to the conservatism of barbarians or the reactionary socialist primitivism of Plato and Marx.
Aristotle's Politics anticipated Book I of Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies by 2,400 years. For like Aristotle, Popper outlines the totalitarian nature of Plato's Republic, fleshing out Aristotle's argument in the opening chapters of Politics.
Concerning the middle class, in Politics Book IV, chapter 11 (1296) Aristotle writes:
"...it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme--either out of the most rampant democracy or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them...The mean condition of states is clearly best, for no other is free from faction; and where the middle class is large, there are least likely to be factions and dissensions. For a similar reason large states are less liable to faction than small ones, because in them the middle class is large; whereas in small states it is easy to divide all the citizens..."
The considerable harm that the Federal Reserve Bank's and the illegitimate socialist federal government does to democracy and to freedom. For in creating money and distributing it to wealthy investment bankers, the Fed harms the middle class; and in taxing the middle class further and redistributing the wealth to the lumpenproletariat, the middle class is harmed further still. As America is pushed into a two-tier society, dominated by wealthy socialists who provide just enough to the lumpenproletariat to keep them happy, fewer and fewer can sustain a middle class lifestyle; the lumpenproletariat grows; and the socialist banking elite becomes an oligarchy.
One of the points that Aristotle emphasizes is the importance of the middle class to the functioning of constitutional government. As well, he notes that kingly government was characteristic of "barbaric" Europeans. He writes:
"For barbarians, being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a despotic government. Such royalties have the nature of tyrannies because the people are by nature slaves; but there is no danger of their being overthrown, for they are heditary and legal. Wherefore also their guards are such as a king and not such as a tyrant would employ, that is to say, they are composed of citizens, whereas the guards of tyrants are mercenaries. For kings rule according to law over voluntary subjects, but tyrants are involuntary..."
Thus, writing in the fourth century BC, Aristotle outlined the nature of medieval Europe. For following the decline of Rome in the fifth century AD, 900 years later, the same European barbarians conquered the former Roman Empire and established barbaric kingly rule across Europe, which remained intact until the 1800s (and in several cases is still intact today). Today's socialist Europe reflects the evolution of the servility of Europeans to the kingly state that goes back for millennia.
The claim of some conservatives that retention of the barbaric kingships is "conservative" is a matter of perception. For it would have been more "conservative" to re-institute the dictatorial Roman Empire than to retain barbaric kingly rule, or more conservative still to re-institute the kings of the other primitive barbarians such as the Celts that go back further. Democracy would be the conservative path for someone wishing to "conserve" Athenian culture. Personally, I prefer the "conservatism" of Aristotle, who believed in pluralism, freedom and constitutional rule, to the conservatism of barbarians or the reactionary socialist primitivism of Plato and Marx.
Aristotle's Politics anticipated Book I of Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies by 2,400 years. For like Aristotle, Popper outlines the totalitarian nature of Plato's Republic, fleshing out Aristotle's argument in the opening chapters of Politics.
Concerning the middle class, in Politics Book IV, chapter 11 (1296) Aristotle writes:
"...it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme--either out of the most rampant democracy or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them...The mean condition of states is clearly best, for no other is free from faction; and where the middle class is large, there are least likely to be factions and dissensions. For a similar reason large states are less liable to faction than small ones, because in them the middle class is large; whereas in small states it is easy to divide all the citizens..."
The considerable harm that the Federal Reserve Bank's and the illegitimate socialist federal government does to democracy and to freedom. For in creating money and distributing it to wealthy investment bankers, the Fed harms the middle class; and in taxing the middle class further and redistributing the wealth to the lumpenproletariat, the middle class is harmed further still. As America is pushed into a two-tier society, dominated by wealthy socialists who provide just enough to the lumpenproletariat to keep them happy, fewer and fewer can sustain a middle class lifestyle; the lumpenproletariat grows; and the socialist banking elite becomes an oligarchy.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Aristotle on the Limitations of Rationality in Ethics
"Our discussion will be adequate if its clarity matches the subject matter. For we should not seek exactness in all accounts alike...And fine and just actions, which political theory investigates, exhibit difference and fluctuation, so that it seems they exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also exhibit a similar sort of fluctuation because they cause harm to many people. For it has happened that some have been destroyed because of their wealth, and others because of their bravery. Thus we must be content, in speaking about and from such things, to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and we must be content in speaking about things that hold for the most part and in drawing conclusions of the same sort from such things."
---Aristotle, circa 325 BC, Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by N. Sherman in N. Sherman "Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue", p.268.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Disempowering Rather than Disbanding Congress
Contrairimairi just sent me an e-mail about a Natural News post by Mike Adams. The author argues that because of electronic telecommunication:
"...instant communication is available to almost everyone. A new law being proposed in Washington could be instantly read -- and voted on -- by the People all across America. The Internet has made the whole purpose behind the U.S. Congress obsolete... irrelevant. Why do Americans need someone else to represent them when we can all just read and vote on the bills ourselves? In an age of instant communications, Congress is no longer needed."
The author misconstrues the reason for republican as opposed to democratic government. In fifth century Athens, 2,200 years before the American revolution, direct democracy did exist. The problems were not a matter of communication because Athens was small. Aristotle did not see democracy to be as good as aristocracy. He had seen democracy first hand in Athens. The problems with it were severe. They had to do the emotional nature of groups and mobs; the willingness of the populace to succumb to tyrants; and the eagerness of opportunistic poor people to steal the property of those more successful than themselves. Crowd psychology is easily manipulated. Lynchings and mass murder have been associated with democracy as well as tyranny (which Aristotle saw as the perverse form of monarchy). Aristotle preferred aristocracy to democracy, but held that a mixed form of government is most preferable.
The Founders were aware of these arguments, and equally, were concerned with Aristotle's claim that democracy amounted to rule by the needy. The many will not acquire as much property as the few, and will pass laws to deprive the competent and successful of property, arrogating it to themselves. This will cause the economy to deteriorate as competent people cease to put forth effort.
In our world, the existence of electronic media permits elites to manipulate public opinion in their favor. The ease of communication that television and the Internet permit means that hundreds of millions can think like a single mob. Plans like the bailout and the health insurance bill will seem on the surface to support the poor, in the case of the bailout to prevent unemployment and in the case of the health care bill to make coverage universal. But the effect of these laws is inevitably to further the ends of economic elites.
More democracy gives greater power to the elite power structure. The power of the mass media is too great for bloggers to compete. Even conservative bloggers allow the Wall Street-dominated mass media to control the terms of public debate and harp endlessly about the brain-dead mass media. They do not trust themselves to generate their own ideas, and remain slaves of the Wall Street power structure.
Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu developed the idea of mixed government further. He argued that the republican form of government is best supported by a federation or federal form of government. The Founding Fathers studied Montesquieu carefully. The Swiss provided an example of a federation that was stable.
The Founders argued that the mixed form of government would work best, and they were right. The American republic has lasted longer than any other.
But Aristotle argued that all forms of government are unstable, and that they transmute into each other. We are seeing that now. The instability began with Progressivism, which enhanced the amount of democracy. The high degree of democracy led to the manipulability of public opinion by the power elite and the increasing amount of lobbying and special interest power. Repeatedly, led by the left (whose impulses, including its advocacy of socialism have repeatedly served Wall Street's interests), America has instituted laws that seem to serve the mass but instead serve the wealthy. This has led to the same pattern that will result from Mike Adams's plan in Natural News: more democracy on the surface coupled with greater power in fact to the power elite.
A better approach would be to disempower Congress. That means reinventing federalism to download power to the states and end Congress's ability to pass the bullsh*t laws that is has. Spin off the federal regulatory structure to the states (including social security) and allow each state to decide how to pass laws. The competition that will result will infinitely improve decision making.
"...instant communication is available to almost everyone. A new law being proposed in Washington could be instantly read -- and voted on -- by the People all across America. The Internet has made the whole purpose behind the U.S. Congress obsolete... irrelevant. Why do Americans need someone else to represent them when we can all just read and vote on the bills ourselves? In an age of instant communications, Congress is no longer needed."
The author misconstrues the reason for republican as opposed to democratic government. In fifth century Athens, 2,200 years before the American revolution, direct democracy did exist. The problems were not a matter of communication because Athens was small. Aristotle did not see democracy to be as good as aristocracy. He had seen democracy first hand in Athens. The problems with it were severe. They had to do the emotional nature of groups and mobs; the willingness of the populace to succumb to tyrants; and the eagerness of opportunistic poor people to steal the property of those more successful than themselves. Crowd psychology is easily manipulated. Lynchings and mass murder have been associated with democracy as well as tyranny (which Aristotle saw as the perverse form of monarchy). Aristotle preferred aristocracy to democracy, but held that a mixed form of government is most preferable.
The Founders were aware of these arguments, and equally, were concerned with Aristotle's claim that democracy amounted to rule by the needy. The many will not acquire as much property as the few, and will pass laws to deprive the competent and successful of property, arrogating it to themselves. This will cause the economy to deteriorate as competent people cease to put forth effort.
In our world, the existence of electronic media permits elites to manipulate public opinion in their favor. The ease of communication that television and the Internet permit means that hundreds of millions can think like a single mob. Plans like the bailout and the health insurance bill will seem on the surface to support the poor, in the case of the bailout to prevent unemployment and in the case of the health care bill to make coverage universal. But the effect of these laws is inevitably to further the ends of economic elites.
More democracy gives greater power to the elite power structure. The power of the mass media is too great for bloggers to compete. Even conservative bloggers allow the Wall Street-dominated mass media to control the terms of public debate and harp endlessly about the brain-dead mass media. They do not trust themselves to generate their own ideas, and remain slaves of the Wall Street power structure.
Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu developed the idea of mixed government further. He argued that the republican form of government is best supported by a federation or federal form of government. The Founding Fathers studied Montesquieu carefully. The Swiss provided an example of a federation that was stable.
The Founders argued that the mixed form of government would work best, and they were right. The American republic has lasted longer than any other.
But Aristotle argued that all forms of government are unstable, and that they transmute into each other. We are seeing that now. The instability began with Progressivism, which enhanced the amount of democracy. The high degree of democracy led to the manipulability of public opinion by the power elite and the increasing amount of lobbying and special interest power. Repeatedly, led by the left (whose impulses, including its advocacy of socialism have repeatedly served Wall Street's interests), America has instituted laws that seem to serve the mass but instead serve the wealthy. This has led to the same pattern that will result from Mike Adams's plan in Natural News: more democracy on the surface coupled with greater power in fact to the power elite.
A better approach would be to disempower Congress. That means reinventing federalism to download power to the states and end Congress's ability to pass the bullsh*t laws that is has. Spin off the federal regulatory structure to the states (including social security) and allow each state to decide how to pass laws. The competition that will result will infinitely improve decision making.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Aristotle: Federal Government Not A State
In Politics (1279-81) Aristotle argues that states exist for the sake of a good life. The Declaration of Independence restates this when Jefferson writes that rights include "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", an Aristotelian as well as a Lockean formula. In fact, Jefferson had been trained in Greek and Latin, as were the majority of the Founders. Positing the pursuit of happiness as the chief constitutional goal was taken from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, in which Aristotle posits "eudaimonia", normally translated as "happiness", as the chief object of human existence. As Jefferson and the Founders well knew, happiness was the product of a virtuous life. In Aristotle's view, the existence of virtue suggested the existence of God.
Aristotle insists that states do not exist for alliances or security from crime, or for economic exchange and commerce. Rather, "virtue must be the care of a state which is truly so called...for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and law is only a convention, 'a surety to one another of justice,' as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens' good and just.
"This is obvious; for suppose distinct places such as Corinth and Megara, to be brought together so that their walls touched, still they would not be one city, not even if the citizens had the right to intermarry, which is one of the rights peculiarly characteristic of states. Again, if men dwelt at a distance from one another but not so far off as to have no intercourse, and there were laws among them that they should not wrong each other in their exchanges, neither would this be a state. Let us suppose that one man is a carpenter, another a husbandman, another a shoemaker and so on and that their number is ten thousand: nevertheless, if they have nothing in common but exchange, alliance and the like, that would not constitute a state...It is clear then that a state is not merely a society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connexions, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship, for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sacrificing life, by which we mean a happy and honourable life.
"Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue."
But is the United States a nation that encourages virtue? The United States has increasingly disowned the Christian religion, which for many, likely a majority, is the foundation of virtue. The United States does not offer in the place of Christianity a coherent definition of virtue. Many argue for secular humanism, an inarticulate, disjoint set of claims that devolves into special interest brokerage, the commercial contracting which Aristotle argues cannot be the foundation of a living state.
The recent bailout rejects virtue in the interest of opportunism. Forgetting the claim (which I say elsewhere is nonsensical) that the bailout was necessary to prevent a "depression", to what degree is a nation that rewards sloth and incompetence with a large share of the national wealth one that is committed to virtue?
Moreover, and this is the point of greatest interest to me, I do not think that Americans share a common definition of virtue. On the one hand, the Progresssives and secular humanists reject traditional Christianity, preferring instead a Social Gospel based on violent redistribution and capricious definitions of "positive rights," which are whatever the whims of Wall Street and the New York Times say they are. On the other hand, liberals (libertarians) and traditionalists of various kinds reject the socialism of the Democratic Party and the Rockefeller Republicans and believe in the traditional virtues of religion and freedom.
I do not think that a reconciliation is possible. America is no longer a nation with a shared sense of virtue. It is no longer a state.
Aristotle insists that states do not exist for alliances or security from crime, or for economic exchange and commerce. Rather, "virtue must be the care of a state which is truly so called...for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and law is only a convention, 'a surety to one another of justice,' as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens' good and just.
"This is obvious; for suppose distinct places such as Corinth and Megara, to be brought together so that their walls touched, still they would not be one city, not even if the citizens had the right to intermarry, which is one of the rights peculiarly characteristic of states. Again, if men dwelt at a distance from one another but not so far off as to have no intercourse, and there were laws among them that they should not wrong each other in their exchanges, neither would this be a state. Let us suppose that one man is a carpenter, another a husbandman, another a shoemaker and so on and that their number is ten thousand: nevertheless, if they have nothing in common but exchange, alliance and the like, that would not constitute a state...It is clear then that a state is not merely a society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connexions, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship, for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sacrificing life, by which we mean a happy and honourable life.
"Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue."
But is the United States a nation that encourages virtue? The United States has increasingly disowned the Christian religion, which for many, likely a majority, is the foundation of virtue. The United States does not offer in the place of Christianity a coherent definition of virtue. Many argue for secular humanism, an inarticulate, disjoint set of claims that devolves into special interest brokerage, the commercial contracting which Aristotle argues cannot be the foundation of a living state.
The recent bailout rejects virtue in the interest of opportunism. Forgetting the claim (which I say elsewhere is nonsensical) that the bailout was necessary to prevent a "depression", to what degree is a nation that rewards sloth and incompetence with a large share of the national wealth one that is committed to virtue?
Moreover, and this is the point of greatest interest to me, I do not think that Americans share a common definition of virtue. On the one hand, the Progresssives and secular humanists reject traditional Christianity, preferring instead a Social Gospel based on violent redistribution and capricious definitions of "positive rights," which are whatever the whims of Wall Street and the New York Times say they are. On the other hand, liberals (libertarians) and traditionalists of various kinds reject the socialism of the Democratic Party and the Rockefeller Republicans and believe in the traditional virtues of religion and freedom.
I do not think that a reconciliation is possible. America is no longer a nation with a shared sense of virtue. It is no longer a state.
Aristotle and the Second Amendment II
"...when citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name--a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as the number increases it becomes more difficult for them to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they may be in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens."
--Aristotle, Politics, 1279b-5.
--Aristotle, Politics, 1279b-5.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Aristotle on Politically Correct Socialism of Ancient Crete
There was no laissez faire capitalism or system of individual rights in the ancient world, but collectivism and socialism were common. Hence, socialism is a reactionary system. In Book II, chapter 10 of Politics Aristotle reviews a number of socialist economic systems that were employed in the Hellenic world. One of the more politically correct was that of Crete. Here is Aristotle's description:
"The Cretan constitution nearly resembles the Spartan...in Crete... (of) all the fruits of the earth and cattle raised on public lands, and of the tribute which is paid by the Perioeci*, one portion is assigned to the gods and to the service of the state, and another to the common meals, so that men, women and children are all supported out of a common stock. The legislator has many ingenious ways of securing moderation in eating, which he conceives to be a gain; he likewise encourages the separation of men from women, lest they should have too many children, and the companionship of men with one another--whether this is a good or bad thing I shall have an opportunity of considering at another time. But that the Cretan common meals are better ordered than the Lacaedaemonian** there can be no doubt."
* According to Aristotle, "the subject population of Crete". The Spartans had colonized them. From Wikipedia: the name περίοικοι derives from περί / peri, "around," and οἶκος / oikos, "dwelling, house." They were the only people allowed to travel to other cities, which the Spartans were not, unless given permission. In other words, the subjects enjoyed greater freedom than their socialist conquerors.
**The Lacaedaemonians included the Spartans, the subject of the recent action film, "300". Notice that the more warlike culture of Sparta was socialistic, while the culture of Athens, the founder of western civilization, was closer to a free market system.
"The Cretan constitution nearly resembles the Spartan...in Crete... (of) all the fruits of the earth and cattle raised on public lands, and of the tribute which is paid by the Perioeci*, one portion is assigned to the gods and to the service of the state, and another to the common meals, so that men, women and children are all supported out of a common stock. The legislator has many ingenious ways of securing moderation in eating, which he conceives to be a gain; he likewise encourages the separation of men from women, lest they should have too many children, and the companionship of men with one another--whether this is a good or bad thing I shall have an opportunity of considering at another time. But that the Cretan common meals are better ordered than the Lacaedaemonian** there can be no doubt."
* According to Aristotle, "the subject population of Crete". The Spartans had colonized them. From Wikipedia: the name περίοικοι derives from περί / peri, "around," and οἶκος / oikos, "dwelling, house." They were the only people allowed to travel to other cities, which the Spartans were not, unless given permission. In other words, the subjects enjoyed greater freedom than their socialist conquerors.
**The Lacaedaemonians included the Spartans, the subject of the recent action film, "300". Notice that the more warlike culture of Sparta was socialistic, while the culture of Athens, the founder of western civilization, was closer to a free market system.
Aristotle on the Right to Bear Arms
In Book II, chapter 8 of Politics Aristotle describes the city of Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon. Aristotle credits Hippodamus with the invention of the art of planning of cities. As well, Aristotle says that he was "the first person not a statesman who made inquiries about the best form of government."
In critiquing the city that Hippodamus proposed, which was to be of 10,000 citizens divided among artisans, farmers and warriors, Aristotle writes:
"The first of these proposals to which objection may be taken is the threefold division of the citizens. The artisans and the husbandmen, and the warriors, all have a share in government. But the husbandmen have no arms, and the artisans neither arms nor land, and therefore they become all but slaves of the warrior class. That they should share in all the offices is an impossibility; for generals and guardians of the citizens, and nearly all the principal magistrates, must be taken from the class of those who carry arms. Yet, if the two other classes have no share in the government, how can they be loyal citizens? It may be said that those who have arms must necessarily be masters of both the other classes, but this is not so easily accomplished unless they are numerous; and if they are, why should the other classes share in government at all..."
In critiquing the city that Hippodamus proposed, which was to be of 10,000 citizens divided among artisans, farmers and warriors, Aristotle writes:
"The first of these proposals to which objection may be taken is the threefold division of the citizens. The artisans and the husbandmen, and the warriors, all have a share in government. But the husbandmen have no arms, and the artisans neither arms nor land, and therefore they become all but slaves of the warrior class. That they should share in all the offices is an impossibility; for generals and guardians of the citizens, and nearly all the principal magistrates, must be taken from the class of those who carry arms. Yet, if the two other classes have no share in the government, how can they be loyal citizens? It may be said that those who have arms must necessarily be masters of both the other classes, but this is not so easily accomplished unless they are numerous; and if they are, why should the other classes share in government at all..."
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Aristotle: Virtue Proves the Existence of God
"The question might be raised 'Is luck the cause of this very thing--desiring what one should or when one should?' Or will luck in that way be the cause of everything? For it will be the cause both of thinking and deliberating; for a man who deliberates has not deliberated already before deliberating and deliberated also about that--there is some starting point. Nor did he think, after thinking already before thinking, and so on to infinity. Intelligence, therefore, is not the starting point of thinking, nor is counsel the starting point of deliberation. So what else is there save luck? Thus everything will be by luck. Or is there some starting-point beyond which there is not other, and this-because it is of such a sort--can have such an effect? But what is being sought is this: What is the starting point of change in the soul? It is now evident: as it is a god that moves in the whole universe, so it is in the soul; for in a sense, the divine element in us moves everything; but the starting-point of reason is not reason but something superior. What then could be superior to knowledge and intelligence but a god? For virtue is an instrument of intelligence."
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, Book VIII.
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, Book VIII.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Toward an Aristotelian Moral Ubermensch
In his >Mugwumps, Morals and Politics 1864-1920 Gerald McFarland writes (p. 147):
"The consequences of the progressive perspective were evident in an older Mugwump organization, the National Municipal League. Gradually, the NML shifted its goal from one of creating municipal efficiency by throwing out the rascals to creating efficient administration by working with whomever was in. As less emphasis was put on individual moral responsibility and more on malfunctioning of the system, the tone of municipal reform changed. It was a change of style that even progressively inclined Mugwumps found quite jarring."
In The Lonely Crowd David Riesman argued that the twentieth century saw an evolution from inner directedness, whereby personal goals and firm morals drive aims and values, to other directedness, where conformity, peer pressure and media opinion drive aims and values. The transition from Mugwumpery to Progressivism that occurred among some few of the Mugwumps during the first decade of the 1900s (many Mugwumps had died by then and two thirds of the Mugwumps did not adopt Progressivism or publicly adopted only one Progressive issue, according to McFarland).
The transition from inner-directedness to other-directedness may have resulted from (or at least be related to) the change in political emphasis from the late nineteenth century Mugwumps to the Progressives. The Mugwumps were largely religiously educated and mainly came from Protestant backgrounds. They had a specific moral sense, part of which involved an emphasis on individual responsibility and morality. In contrast, the shift among the Progressives to a systems approach lifted the emphasis on responsibility and morality from the individual and turned it into a political or public problem. The Progressives may have emphasized this in their educational activities, which were led by John Dewey. In other words, the shift from inner-directedness to other-directedness may be a result from the Progressives' political ideology. Their emphasis on systems may have been linked to scientific management and the idea that you can improve output through rationalization of systems. Herbert Croly discusses scientific management in Progressive Democracy.
Business schools also gained currency around this time or a bit later, and the ideas of Chester Barnard and the human relations advocates of the 1930s were reflective of the progressives' emphasis on systems as opposed to individual moral responsibility. Barnard emphasized morals heavily in his Functions of the Executive , but his interpretation of morals was entirely relativistic. He argued that executives must be morally creative to motivate workers. Such moral creativity leaves little room for moral grounding. He probably thought that public morality and public scrutiny and control systems would be sufficient to prevent deviant moral beliefs from becoming part of executives' moral creativity. But Barnard does not treat the problem adequately. Rather, he gives examples that suggest that deviant behavior, such as becoming indifferent to the death of one's parent, can be induced through moral creativity. In this, Barnard was not unlike Adolf Eichmann, the chief of the Nazis' prison camp operations. In Eichmann in Jerusalem , Hannah Arendt quotes Eichmann as saying that he is a Kantian and that the duty to obey orders was his moral imperative. This kind of moral creativity finds little inhibition once the problem of morality becomes one of moral systems rather than conscience or individual responsibility.
The management literature has addressed the problem of inhibiting moral deviance in two key ways: through control systems (financial accounting and incentive systems that reduce conflicts between agents and principals) and through organizational culture. But neither approach anticipates the possibility of sociopathic or morally deviant management, as occurred with Enron and other firms in the first decade of the 21st century.
The inclucation of moral sense is a lifelong process. Aristotle argued that the young must develop habits through their upbringing, and if such habits are not developed then they will not be able to be taught to be moral decision makers. Progressive education approaches that encourage students to discover principles for themselves may fail to encourage the habits necessary for moral decision making. Thus, Progressive education contribute to the lax morality that we have witnessed in business. But even those who have good upbringings in the first place can develop bad habits when they work. Social pressure to conform to deviant orgnaizational norms can displace the good habits a young executive learned when he was young.
Aristotle argued that moral behavior involves balancing extremes. Excessive honesty, revealing too much information, is foolish and can lead to being duped. Excessive dishonesty leads to criminality. The mean involves good faith, fair dealing and comeptent negotiation. The competent executive needs to negotiate the moral challenges with which organizations cope but needs to retain the ability to judge when compromises with his basic personal values are too great. That our education has failed to do this is evident from the case of Enron, whereby young MBA graduates bought into Enron's dishonest handling of regulatory agencies; accounting fraud; willingness to cheat investors; and similar kinds of criminality.
Progressivism and its followers, to include Chester Barnard and the advocates of modern management theory, agency theory and systems-based approaches to control, de-emphasize individual responsibility. This is erroneous, as Adolph Eichmann and Jeff Skilling proved. The unscrupulous will always find the way around systems. Not that systems can be ignored or should be, but they are not enough.
Students must learn to balance Aristotle's moral mean with Barnard's moral creativity. To do so requires a considerable degree of self-awareness and managerial skills, of the very kind that managerial skills advocates such as David Whetten and Kim Cameron have advocated. Finding the Aristotelian moral mean in a complex organization means have considerable interpersonal skill and moral awareness, both of which are too often missing.
"The consequences of the progressive perspective were evident in an older Mugwump organization, the National Municipal League. Gradually, the NML shifted its goal from one of creating municipal efficiency by throwing out the rascals to creating efficient administration by working with whomever was in. As less emphasis was put on individual moral responsibility and more on malfunctioning of the system, the tone of municipal reform changed. It was a change of style that even progressively inclined Mugwumps found quite jarring."
In The Lonely Crowd David Riesman argued that the twentieth century saw an evolution from inner directedness, whereby personal goals and firm morals drive aims and values, to other directedness, where conformity, peer pressure and media opinion drive aims and values. The transition from Mugwumpery to Progressivism that occurred among some few of the Mugwumps during the first decade of the 1900s (many Mugwumps had died by then and two thirds of the Mugwumps did not adopt Progressivism or publicly adopted only one Progressive issue, according to McFarland).
The transition from inner-directedness to other-directedness may have resulted from (or at least be related to) the change in political emphasis from the late nineteenth century Mugwumps to the Progressives. The Mugwumps were largely religiously educated and mainly came from Protestant backgrounds. They had a specific moral sense, part of which involved an emphasis on individual responsibility and morality. In contrast, the shift among the Progressives to a systems approach lifted the emphasis on responsibility and morality from the individual and turned it into a political or public problem. The Progressives may have emphasized this in their educational activities, which were led by John Dewey. In other words, the shift from inner-directedness to other-directedness may be a result from the Progressives' political ideology. Their emphasis on systems may have been linked to scientific management and the idea that you can improve output through rationalization of systems. Herbert Croly discusses scientific management in Progressive Democracy.
Business schools also gained currency around this time or a bit later, and the ideas of Chester Barnard and the human relations advocates of the 1930s were reflective of the progressives' emphasis on systems as opposed to individual moral responsibility. Barnard emphasized morals heavily in his Functions of the Executive , but his interpretation of morals was entirely relativistic. He argued that executives must be morally creative to motivate workers. Such moral creativity leaves little room for moral grounding. He probably thought that public morality and public scrutiny and control systems would be sufficient to prevent deviant moral beliefs from becoming part of executives' moral creativity. But Barnard does not treat the problem adequately. Rather, he gives examples that suggest that deviant behavior, such as becoming indifferent to the death of one's parent, can be induced through moral creativity. In this, Barnard was not unlike Adolf Eichmann, the chief of the Nazis' prison camp operations. In Eichmann in Jerusalem , Hannah Arendt quotes Eichmann as saying that he is a Kantian and that the duty to obey orders was his moral imperative. This kind of moral creativity finds little inhibition once the problem of morality becomes one of moral systems rather than conscience or individual responsibility.
The management literature has addressed the problem of inhibiting moral deviance in two key ways: through control systems (financial accounting and incentive systems that reduce conflicts between agents and principals) and through organizational culture. But neither approach anticipates the possibility of sociopathic or morally deviant management, as occurred with Enron and other firms in the first decade of the 21st century.
The inclucation of moral sense is a lifelong process. Aristotle argued that the young must develop habits through their upbringing, and if such habits are not developed then they will not be able to be taught to be moral decision makers. Progressive education approaches that encourage students to discover principles for themselves may fail to encourage the habits necessary for moral decision making. Thus, Progressive education contribute to the lax morality that we have witnessed in business. But even those who have good upbringings in the first place can develop bad habits when they work. Social pressure to conform to deviant orgnaizational norms can displace the good habits a young executive learned when he was young.
Aristotle argued that moral behavior involves balancing extremes. Excessive honesty, revealing too much information, is foolish and can lead to being duped. Excessive dishonesty leads to criminality. The mean involves good faith, fair dealing and comeptent negotiation. The competent executive needs to negotiate the moral challenges with which organizations cope but needs to retain the ability to judge when compromises with his basic personal values are too great. That our education has failed to do this is evident from the case of Enron, whereby young MBA graduates bought into Enron's dishonest handling of regulatory agencies; accounting fraud; willingness to cheat investors; and similar kinds of criminality.
Progressivism and its followers, to include Chester Barnard and the advocates of modern management theory, agency theory and systems-based approaches to control, de-emphasize individual responsibility. This is erroneous, as Adolph Eichmann and Jeff Skilling proved. The unscrupulous will always find the way around systems. Not that systems can be ignored or should be, but they are not enough.
Students must learn to balance Aristotle's moral mean with Barnard's moral creativity. To do so requires a considerable degree of self-awareness and managerial skills, of the very kind that managerial skills advocates such as David Whetten and Kim Cameron have advocated. Finding the Aristotelian moral mean in a complex organization means have considerable interpersonal skill and moral awareness, both of which are too often missing.
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