Aristotle’s Rules for Living Well

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/how-to-flourish-an-ancient-guide-to-living-well-aristotle-susan-sauve-meyer-book-review

by benbreen • 3 years ago

152 55 3 years ago

newyorker.com

mberning2• 3 years ago

You can get the cliffs notes version of virtue ethics from the stoics. Very approachable and clear to implement in life.

As an aside, I find it amusing that a piece in the New Yorker has the gall to criticize Aristotle of all people for meandering prose which often leads nowhere.

leoh• 3 years ago

It’s depressing to me how few folks are willing to tolerate “meandering prose” from folks they respect.

There seems to be a complete lack of understanding that this approach has been powerful for so many.

It seems to me that hardly anyone anymore understands or tolerated fruitful historical processes for creating systems of ideas.

Which, incidentally, involves reading.

gcoladon• 3 years ago

I can't help but be reminded of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMHixb0KSI

throw0101a4• 3 years ago

Some differences between the two as well:

The main point of contention between Aristotelian and Stoics is the issue of whether virtue is sufficient for happiness (Aristotle, NE 1.8-10, Cicero, On Ends Books 3-5). Both Aristotle and Stoics claim that virtue is an essential component of happiness. But while Aristotle sees happiness as dependent on a combination of virtue and bodily goods (for instance, health) and external goods (for instance, money, power and friends), for the Stoics happiness depends solely on virtue. Thus, for Aristotle virtue is necessary for happiness, but not sufficient, whereas for the Stoics it is both necessary and sufficient.

* https://modernstoicism.com/aristotelian-and-stoic-happiness-...

* If all external things are deemed by the Stoa unnecessary for our happiness, this will include other people. Yet the affect of love, with its valuation of the other and her good as part of our own, seems to be set irremovably deep in our nature and infancy, and to be the portal to the most meaningful experiences of life: a thought underlying Aristotle’s arguments concerning philia. The Stoic opposition to the pathē more widely, likewise, seems psychologically unrealistic – since passions like love and fear are so basic to our psyches – and to threaten to rob our subjective lives of too much of what gives them their colour. Finally, at a more technical level, the Stoic emphases on virtue as a technē or epistēmē seems to rob practical rationality of the subtle flexibility Aristotle’s differentiation of praxis and phronēsis had won for virtue ethics, and to point forwards towards Kant’s and the utilitarians’ paradoxically impractical, rule-based moralities (Kant greatly admired the Stoics).*

* https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315729053...

mberning2• 3 years ago

Seneca seemed to have an Aristotelian streak.

bandrami4• 3 years ago

Just here to throw in that the English word "happiness" probably doesn't give a great sense of the Greek εὐδαιμονία but it's what we're stuck with.

bandrami4• 3 years ago

Aristotle's writings are already Cliffs notes; they're basically lecture notes as it is.

That said, Aristotle and Epictetus differed pretty significantly on the question of what constitutes happiness (this English word doesn't really capture the full sense of the Greek well), which is the core question of the ethics.

briancleland2• 3 years ago

While they both might be cited as examples of "virtue ethics" (a modern term and category) Stoicism and Aristotelianism are completely different philosophies.

dsubburam• 3 years ago

Am reading the book[1] slowly, two pages at a time, taking notes.

A recent note I took from Ch 7: Unrestraint and Pleasure

"...virtue keeps the source safe, while vice destroys it, and in actions the source is that for the sake of which one acts ... so neither there nor here is reason able to teach anyone the sources, but here it is virtue, either natural or habituated, that directs one to right opinion about the source."

Reminded me of Buddhist teachings that say that moral conduct is necessary and you can't just think/meditate your way to wisdom/enlightenment[2].

[1] Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle. tr. Joe Sachs [2] cf. https://puredhamma.net/living-dhamma/transition-to-noble-eig...

lll-o-lll• 3 years ago

Or the book of James from the bible. “Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works”

User23• 3 years ago

It would be hard to overstate the debt Christian philosophy in particular and classical theism in general owes to Aristotle.

The Judeans and Israelites who would become the first Christians were very much within the Greek cultural and intellectual sphere, so it’s not as if it was a medieval innovation by Aquinas that introduced Christians to Greek thought. Not to say that Aquinas didn’t make huge contributions of course.

gerdesj• 3 years ago

FFS, please tag 400BCE!

Great article: concise and to the point. The old Greeks were often first to scribble down a lot of notions, early on. No doubt the same ideas might have surfaced elsewhere too and no doubt we'll hear about those discoveries here on HN.

For the layman such as myself, who might like to get some sort of idea what the old Greek civilization might have been like I do recommend "Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens" SBN 0006863434. Also dive into any modern translation of Herodotus - well worth a read.

Britons might like to investigate: "The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek" SBN: 0140297847. Pytheas describes the Pretanike. Change the P for a B and allow that -ike is an old Greek ending and you can see where Britain comes from. It seems to translate to something like "painted/tattooed peoples". The old Britons - iron age - might have displayed woad tattoos. However, this: https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/dispelling-some-myths... seems pretty well informed. I do find myself agreeing that William Wallace was probably not an Australian! I can also confirm that running up his memorial tower, near Stirling is rather easier when you are 11 than when you are 53. Lovely view though.

Was hal.

agomez314• 3 years ago

good recommendations and observations! I would also like to add Will Durant's Life of Greece - I found immensely entertaining as well as informative about all things Ancient Greece.

lostmsu• 3 years ago

Great article: concise and to the point

It most certainly is not. There's so much water I did not bother but to skim it. I believe the only two things they mention are:

- pull yourself from your negative sides

- understand the rules of understanding itself (today would be scientific principle)

johngossman• 3 years ago

I was amused to see this the same day I finished reading it.

Not an advice book, but does include heart healthy diet advice

"For if someone should know that light meats are easily digestible and healthful, but is ignorant of what sorts are light, he will not produce health; rather, he who does know that poultry is light and healthful will to a greater degree produce health."

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

In general, I think beginners are better off reading a good commentary or summary, at least at first. That is also generally the case across the board, across fields. Commentators with the background knowledge and scholarly perseverance can make the salient points of a work more conspicuous in a way a novice cannot. Read a few commentaries and sort of spiral in on the original work, if you really want to. It will give you knowledge and perspective that will make reading it more fruitful. Virtue law ethics and natural law theory are key terms. (David Oderberg has published some recent introductory texts [0][1] in this vein, but I have not read them. A well-regarded textbook explicitly in the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition is Fagothy[2].) (N.b., Mieczysław Krąpiec, a scholar of Thomistic and Aristotelian thought and a colleague of Karol Wojtyła, once said that it took him 50 years to truly grok Aristotle. In my own small way, I can relate to this claim.)

[0] https://a.co/d/aT0vfUy

[1] https://a.co/d/14asjp8

[2] https://a.co/d/6hiWaVo

throw0101a4• 3 years ago

With regards to virtue and virtue ethics, it's probably also worth checking out After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre:

MacIntyre holds that After Virtue makes seven central claims.[1] It begins with an allegory suggestive of the premise of the science-fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz: a world where all sciences have been dismantled quickly and almost entirely. MacIntyre asks what the sciences would look like if they were re-assembled from the remnants of scientific knowledge that survived the catastrophe.
He claims that the new sciences, though superficially similar to the old, would in fact be devoid of real scientific content, because the key suppositions and attitudes would not be present. "The hypothesis which I wish to advance", he continues, "is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described."[2] Specifically, MacIntyre applies this hypothesis to advance the notion that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment were philosophically doomed from the start because they were formed using the aforementioned incoherent language of morality. MacIntyre claims that this failure encompasses the work of many significant Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment moral philosophers, including Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume. These philosophers "fail because of certain shared characteristics deriving from their highly specific historical background."[3] That background is the Enlightenment's abandonment of Aristotelianism, and in particular the Aristotelian concept of teleology.

[…]

Another reason MacIntyre gives for the doomed nature of the Enlightenment is the fact that it ascribed moral agency to the individual. He claims this made morality no more than one man's opinion and, thus, philosophy became a forum of inexplicably subjective rules and principles. The failure of the Enlightenment Project, because of the abandonment of a teleological structure, is shown by the inadequacy of moral emotivism, which MacIntyre believes accurately reflects the state of modern morality.

[…]

In the end, however, MacIntyre tells us that we are waiting not for Godot but for Benedict of Nursia. MacIntyre criticizes individualist political philosophy, such as John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. To MacIntyre, morals and virtues can only be comprehended through their relation to the community which they come from. Whereas Rawls tells us to conceive of justice through abstracting ourselves from who we are (through the veil of ignorance, for example) MacIntyre disagrees. Running throughout After Virtue is the belief that in order to comprehend who we are, we must understand where we come from.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/332138

Even if you don't necessarily agree with his final conclusion, I think MacIntyre does a decent job of examining various ethic systems that that been presented in (Western) philosophy, and trying to poke holes in them. Worth checking out by anyone curious to examine the field of ethics.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

thebooktocome• 3 years ago

After Virtue is one of the books I read roughly once a year. It is an excellent antidote to the constant screaming match that is contemporary discourse on law and ethics.

shubhamgrg04• 3 years ago

The difficulties in understanding Aristotle's writings due to lost cultural references highlight the importance of preserving cultural knowledge in our digital age. How can we better document and preserve the context of our current philosophical and ethical discussions for future generations?

watwut• 3 years ago

We will archive 4chan and 8chan?

bandrami4• 3 years ago

I really liked the idea that since virtue is a mean, the opposite of a vice is not a virtue but a different vice (the opposite of cowardice is not courage but foolhardiness, the opposite of arrogance is not proper self-regard but pusillanimity, etc.) Aristotelian virtues don't have an "opposite".

amelius• 3 years ago

Ok, but what is really the importance of the concept "opposite" in this context?

bandrami4• 3 years ago

That George Costanza was wrong. If a behavior of yours is making you unhappy the answer is not to simply do the opposite.

revskill2• 3 years ago

Why do i care if i'm living well or not ? There's no absolute specification for it.

Instead i care if i can get enough sleep, enough relaxing, enough studying, enough working to fullfill my life or not.

bhaak• 3 years ago

Why do i care if i'm living well or not ? There's no absolute specification for it.

There are many specifications for it. Religions also provide many blueprints for living a good life. The Greek philosophers were very interesting in what leading a good life (what they called eudaimonia) would entail.

Instead i care if i can get enough sleep, enough relaxing, enough studying, enough working to fullfill my life or not.

What your refer to is on another level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

You have to remember that many of those old philosophers were rich or even nobles that didn't have to worry about the basic needs of life.

Only the true enlightened people are able to meditate about philosophy while their stomach is empty.

revskill2• 3 years ago

No, i don't think Maslow is the rule.

All the needs (my above needs, not his needs) could/should be fullfilled at the same time, no need for "hiearchy". There's no such thing as "higher need" to me.

masswerk• 3 years ago

And this is, where the cooking parallel is that great: How do you become a decent cook? Well, there are recipes, but this is neither your judgement, nor your technique, or maybe art, you're just following along, hoping for the best. This is not you. But, eventually you'll have a dish. You may get lucky, but there my be room for improvement. The only way to tell and to improve is to eat what you've cooked… at least, eating was the general idea right from the beginning… next try, there may be things you like more, and other things that you had better avoided… you discriminate, too much of this, too little of that… this starts to be fun… and eventually, you may be able to produce a pleasing meal to your own standards and satisfaction. It's your meal and probably (still) a decent representation of the cultural standard. (And, as you learn to generalize on this, gaining sovereignty to express yourself while respecting the general idea of a specific dish, you may actually become a decent cook. At least, that's what your meals are telling you, and with a bit of luck your guests, as well.)

ttonkytonk4• 3 years ago

Instead i care if i can get enough sleep, enough relaxing, enough studying, enough working to fullfill my life or not.

And that's not a desire to "live well"?

I think your objection is key to understanding Socrates' denial of "weakness of will" (Protagoras 358d), an idea that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics actually supports (book seven - 1174b-15).

Maybe norms are ultimately guidelines to the good life for groups of people based on past experience, but they can't possibly account for every contingency of any particular existence.

Btw I don't think the idea is to justify any behavior, but to establish that from a rational perspective everybody is making decisions based on what seems right at the moment.

mellosouls• 3 years ago

For a more general discussion on his wider philosophy, and just an opportunity to plug a terrific old BBC TV series (also available in book form, a great intro to philosophy generally):

Martha Nussbaum & Bryan Magee on Aristotle

https://youtu.be/DbTUAqlLlHg

chaosjevil2• 3 years ago

The author might call Nichomachean Ethics "ancient"; I'd call it "unrefined".

Virtue is a state “consisting in a mean,” Aristotle maintains, and this mean “is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it.” (For Aristotle, the “mean” represented a point between opposite excesses—for instance, between cowardice and recklessness lay courage.)

The idea of virtue being a mean is an unchecked assumption, from oversimplified matters.

Reusing the example with the cowardice-courage-recklessness triplet: suppose for a moment a fool that acts only when it is not necessary to act; he runs away from an ant, but throws himself into a fight against a pack of lions. The fool in question is, at the same time, coward and reckless, but he is not courageous.

You might say "he's being coward or reckless on different circumstances"; and you'd be right. This shows that there's a second dimension to take into account here, besides "ability to act": it's "ability to detect when to act". And once you do this split, you notice that courage is not a mean between cowardice and recklessness; it's simply the opposite of cowardice, with recklessness having another opposite (let's call it "carefulness").

I'm not too eager to assume that _all_ virtues work like this, but the presence of at least one virtue not behaving this way already shows that Aristotle's "virtue as a mean" concept is flawed and assumptive.

_________________

Another issue; from the book. Aristotle makes an unholy mess of what's good for the individual and what's good for society, around book III; almost like he was preaching "hey if you want happiness/eudaimonia you should have arete/virtue~". Things simply don't work like this on an individual level - you can be the biggest arsehole in the village and still potentially live a happy, meaningful life. Or live in virtue and miserable.

ttonkytonk4• 3 years ago

Things simply don't work like this on an individual level - you can be the biggest arsehole in the village and still potentially live a happy, meaningful life. Or live in virtue and miserable.

This is pretty much the complaint of Socrates' interlocutors in The Republic.

Socrates (or Plato) might object that "being the biggest arsehole" would entail security concerns that would hinder happiness.

They may also object to such a life being meaningful if it involves indulging one's desires to the detriment of the rest of the villagers. Don't the villagers make their happiness possible? Will their arseholiness help sustain what makes human life meaningful into perpetuity, or set the stage for its destruction?

lusus_naturae• 3 years ago

Reusing the example with the cowardice-courage-recklessness triplet: suppose for a moment a fool that acts only when it is not necessary to act; he runs away from an ant, but throws himself into a fight against a pack of lions. The fool in question is, at the same time, coward and reckless, but he is not courageous.

I posit that one should be afraid of fighting an ant because the ant is weaker than you. The fear in this case is not of being defeated or humiliated, but of being cruel and unkind. So simply, what kind of character are if you can only fight something that is weaker than you?

On the other hand, if you choose to climb the harder hill or fight the harder fight (lions, kraken, etc.), that isn't indicative of foolhardiness and neither is it indicative of courage (I agree). It is a simply a fight that befell you and you decided not to roll over and die. I think it is nihilist to fight something that is stronger than you, and you tacitly accept your defeat before you even begin the fight.

Tbh, fights are depressing. I am more inclined to being a fool than a fighter.

chaosjevil2• 3 years ago

I posit that one should be afraid of fighting an ant because the ant is weaker than you. The fear in this case is not of being defeated or humiliated, but of being cruel and unkind. So simply, what kind of character are if you can only fight something that is weaker than you?

That's different - that person wouldn't fear the ant like a coward, but take a moral instance against fighting entities weaker than oneself.

On the other hand, if you choose to climb the harder hill or fight the harder fight (lions, kraken, etc.), that isn't indicative of foolhardiness and neither is it indicative of courage (I agree). It is a simply a fight that befell you and you decided not to roll over and die. I think it is nihilist to fight something that is stronger than you, and you tacitly accept your defeat before you even begin the fight.

I think that courage is only a meaningful attribute to assign to a being when there's an actual choice between fighting and not fighting. In the case of a "fight or die" situation, you don't really have much of a choice.

Tbh, fights are depressing. I am more inclined to being a fool than a fighter.

Frankly? I hear ya. Ditto, in large part.

The same reasoning could be used with other moral dimensions than coward vs. courageous vs. reckless. I'd argue that it applies to greed; by Aristotle's reasoning the opposite of greed would be making oneself poor, or perhaps lack of care for material possessions. It's a silly argument, in the eyes of someone living in 2023. (Even if it was a rather clever reasoning for those times.)

isaacfrond• 3 years ago

an unexampled work

You learn something everyday

asimpletune2• 3 years ago

For anyone who may be interested, my friends and I have a book club called Public Works, where we only read stuff that’s in the public domain, and we just began an arc on antiquity.

Right now we’re reading “History of the Peloponnesian War” by Thucydides, which is amazing, and the plan is to go in chronological order until the fall of the western Roman Empire. So after this, got example, we’ll probably do Xenophon, Plato, some of the plays, and then Aristotle, before moving on to studying Alexander.

It’s all really interesting stuff and the works are by excellent writers, so they’re relatable and easy to read. I think a big benefit comes from reading primary sources, versus, say for example, taking a class in college.

If anyone is interested now is a perfect time to join, as we’ve just begun book 2 of Thucydides. We also need new members because we’re looking for help with writing content about our readings into the site. Helping us optional though of course.

https://r33d.org/

anthk3• 3 years ago

Aristotle's philosophy died in the 16th century with Francis Bacon.

Philosophy it's pretty much full of bullshit. Get over it. Euclid's statements worked well for 17 centuries, while most "facts" about philosophical currents are pretty much subjective garbage.

I've read "Metaphysics" and compared to Euclid's "Elements" the first compendium it's a bunch of nonsense packed together as if they were universal truths.

thenerdhead2• 3 years ago

Found the nihilist.

eimrine4• 3 years ago

Nihilists do not respect Euclid, I would rather suppose he is a scientist/mathematician.

eimrine4• 3 years ago

Euclid's statements worked well for 17 centuries

This is a half-true. I mean, Euclid's research really worked well before Newton's research, but this is just because there were no science in middle-ages. All science were pushed out by Christian religion.

That begs a question, how can we segregate a real science (Euclid, Newton, you know what I mean) from real bullshits like a religion. That is what a philosophy is. Philosophy was never a bullshit but rather a chickenshit. The only reason to call Philosophy a bs is that generally religions (not only Christian one) is used to be called a part of a Philosophy domain, but of course Christians never really φιλ-ed a σοφία.

throw0101a4• 3 years ago

Aristotle's philosophy died in the 16th century with Francis Bacon.

Some would disagree:

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science.

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43277412-aristotle-s-rev...

anthk3• 3 years ago

Not with quantum mechanics.

FireBy2024• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/9WgGg

Razengan• 3 years ago

I always wondered why the Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates, Plato etc. did not cause religions to form.

Unlike Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, who wrote down little if anything first-hand, and seemed to have comparatively fewer coherent things to say, which too we only know about from third parties removed hundreds of years later.

thenerdhead2• 3 years ago

Pythagoras is a good example of both a philosophy and religious practice.

But it depends on how you define a religion. If it includes a divinity of some sort, then no. If it includes devoted followers, then yes.

gecersiznick• 3 years ago

They didn’t promise “accept and you’ll be saved,” they were more saying “understand, and you might lead a better/more virtuous/more fulfilling life.” On the one hand, you have figures who promise salvation if you just submit, on the other, the opposite. No surprise there when the majority goes for the former.

Aristotle’s Rules for Living Well

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