(Aristotle 10) Worldly and Other-Worldly Ethics; Aristotle vs. Plato

                                                                   Plato (327-428 BCE)

 

Plato and Aristotle are not fundamentally at odds in many respects. But there is a fault line that separates them. It is a fault line that ran through European culture for centuries, though things are relatively quiet along that fault these days. That fault line is the love of the world versus contempt for the world – this “fallen” world we live in and it was no less “fallen” during the lifetimes of Plato and his student Aristotle. It may take a few entries for me to make sense of this fault line.  

    This fault line runs through their respective thinking, starting with their thinking about Being or reality as a whole (seen as a limited whole, sub specie aeternitatis – from the perspective of eternity, as Spinoza and then Wittgenstein put it). Plato's other-worldliness leads to a view of forms as transcendent, abstract ideas - the so-called form, that intelligible aspect of beings that a clear, ego-less mind can apprehend in a limited way - accessible only through purely intellectual contemplation. Aristotle's worldliness results in a conception of forms as immanent, intrinsic to the physical world, and unknowable without our senses. For Plato and Aristotle, the reality of, say, a tree or a circle makes it intelligible, knowable to us – that which makes it what it is, what kind of a thing it is. The reality of the tree imprints our mind when we understand that the word “tree” (or Baum, Boom, Arbor, δένδρον, дерево, Treow, etc. – words expressing the same “idea” or concept): that is, understand that the particular tree we perceive and perhaps find beautiful is intelligible and that other beings are essentially like it. If we are fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, we can refine and deepen this initial imprinting of reality (e.g. of trees) as long as we are fully alive.

   But the difference is where reality-as-intelligibility – as that which discloses or reveals itself – is located, ontologically, for the two fathers of philosophy (as I understand it): for Aristotle, it is in our world, in the things themselves, in trees themselves; for Plato, our world is at best a pale reflection of reality and at worst a bad copy. Aristotelian impetus is to immerse ourselves in the trees we see with our eyes; for Plato, we cannot trust our eyes and must turn inward to the intellect instead, which is the part of us able (with appropriate education and training) to intellectually “see” the real world of ideas that exists in another dimension. Reality imagined in the world suggests a love of the world; reality imaged outside the world implies a devaluing and demeaning of the world.

 

. . .

 

   We observe this Faultline and Plato’s side of it in the famous “Allegory of the Cave.” The allegory begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. Plato would have used the screen for his allegory were he alive today. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they've known nothing else. These prisoners do not understand that they are prisoners. They do not understand that the shadows that they take for real are social constructs. These social constructs appear on the cave wall (the screen) only because it is in the interest of the constructors – those with the power to construct – that the prisoners internalize their particular constructs as real. For example, the prisoner’s idea of “trees” are social constructs that mask the reality of real “treeness” i.e. the true and complete idea that only the intellect (nous) can apprehend.

     The idea is that the power holders construct images of the things we experience, including deep concepts like ‘soul’, ‘self,’ ‘human nature’ ‘nature,’ ‘beauty’, ‘pleasure,’ ‘valuable’, and ‘justice.’ The constructions project all the varying particular shadow-images we perceive, and which form our minds and our ideas of things. We take these shadows of constructs for reality, mostly unaware that they are constructs and that these constructs are projections of power and will, desire and fantasy. 

That is a picture of the world for Plato. (Or one way he pictured it, to be precise. He explored and perhaps never settled for a definitive understanding.)

Plato’s philosophy can be understood as an attempt to understand how the wisest, most pious, and most virtuous of human beings – Socrates – could be so misunderstood by his political community (polis) that his peers had him executed for impiety and corrupting the youth. He often understood the political community as the false world as seen from inside the cave of individual fantasy and group ideology. The Republic – the dialog where he presents the Cave allegory – turns from initially exploring the idea of justice to a radical elimination of politics and the political community from human life. What Aristotle argued was the precondition of the possibility of realizing our full humanity – a polis-like community – Plato believed was the Cave we must turn our backs on to have any hope of salvation.

 

. . .

 

   This other-worldliness shows itself in an ethical idea that goes deep for Plato: “a good man can’t be harmed” he has Socrates inform his judges and jurors in the Apology, denying their power to harm him in any way. Plato's Socrates believes a good man cannot be harmed because true harm affects only the soul, not the body, and a virtuous soul remains untainted by external misfortunes. This belief stems from Plato's dualistic view that the soul belongs to an eternal, unchanging realm of forms, and true well-being is achieved through moral integrity, which external circumstances cannot corrupt. Blessedness is the harmony of the soul with this truly real dimension from which human beings are mostly cut off by the physical and political world. External goods are meaningless. In contrast, Aristotle rejects this dualism, seeing the soul and body as inseparable (as the idea of a tree is inseparable from physically existing trees) and acknowledging that external goods and conditions contribute to eudaimonia (flourishing, becoming fully human in the normative sense). For Aristotle, while moral virtue is central, a good life partly depends on favorable external circumstances, making a person vulnerable to harm from misfortunes.

 

. . .

 

The attempt to understand Socrates as a victim of life in the world finds its pinnacle in Plato’s account of his mentor’s death. Facing imminent death in the Phaedo, Socrates delves into arguments concerning the immortality of the soul, but without much sense of urgency and not overly invested in the outcome. It’s like he knows the answer – perhaps he has had a vision of the Good, as portrayed in the myth he concludes the chain of arguments with. It is like he is just curious to see how close human reasoning can get to it. And then the scene that disturbs me. Socrates indicates that he should take the poison. Crito objects, telling Socrates that there is still time and that many prisoners don't take the poison until well into the night. Socrates replies that men cling too desperately to life, whereas he has no reason to fear death. Socrates is brought the cup of hemlock, which he receives quite cheerfully. Socrates offers a prayer to the gods that his journey from this world to the next may be prosperous – a prayer that suggests that life is a disease and death its cure. Then he downs the cup in one gulp. At this point, Phaedo and all the others break down in tears of grief. Socrates chastises them, saying he sent the women away to avoid such a show of tears and urges his friends to be brave. Ashamed by his rebuke, Socrates' friends fall silent. His last words were: “Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?” Asklepios is the God of healing. The sacrifice expresses gratitude for being healed. The disease he was cured of? Life in this world.

     This scene, as I respond to it, embodies the following view of the meaning of death:

·        It is a good thing because life is a misfortune, at least to the extent it is not lived in search of the wisdom of its own unimportance.

·        Grieving over the death of a beloved friend is like an irrational superstition, based on a mistake of sorts – the belief that life is good and death is bad. 

·        Facing death does not really involve courage, not in the sense most people understand courage – as the overcoming of the fear of death (or harm) to do the good thing. The fear itself is irrational. It is a matter of knowledge and acting on that knowledge. The knowledge that death is not an evil takes away the fear, a fear that arises only in our ignorance.

What is the consequence of this for me? That I have brought three children, three souls into this prison house, and that the best I can do for them is to teach them to learn contempt for the world and live to escape it for the true world, which is purely spiritual and transcendent. That’s a downer.

    I can fully understand those who embrace Aristotle precisely because he shows us how meaning belongs to this world. I think of a passage from Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Why human? the poet asks.

…because just being here matters, because

the things of this world, these passing things,

seem to need us, to put themselves in our care

somehow. Us, the most passing of all.

Once for each, just once. Once and no more.

And for us too, once. Never again. And yet

it seems that this—to have once existed,

even if only once, to have been a part

of this earth—can never be taken back.

 

Homer, Aristotle, and most of the free Greek world would agree, even if for them “never be taken back” was connected with the idea of being remembered.

    Aristotle’s admirers and Plato’s detractors divide precisely over the question of the value and meaning of this life in only world we immediately know. Martha Nussbaum, for example, criticizes Plato's way of thinking by arguing that his focus on the soul's invulnerability and the devaluation of the physical world and external circumstances leads to an unrealistic and incomplete understanding of human life and morality. She contends that Plato's dismissal of the importance of external goods and physical well-being ignores the complexities and vulnerabilities inherent in human existence. Nussbaum asserts that true ethical and philosophical inquiry must account for the tangible, lived experiences of people, including their bodily needs, emotions, and the impact of external factors on their ability to live a flourishing life. To love anything makes us vulnerable. To love Socrates as an individual man of flesh and blood, doomed to die; to love the Athenian world that was during Plato’s lifetime in its death throes – such loves made Plato vulnerable. On a psychological level, he dealt with the losses by demeaning them.

 

This is an interpretation of Socrates’ life (one that I cannot reconcile with other aspects of Plato’s Socrates). It tells us why as a soldier he retreated before the Spartans while perfectly calm, inspiring the wonder of his fellows. Death was a matter of indifference; life not something to cling to. It tells us why a good man can’t be harmed: because nothing done to him, not even killing him, touches the soul devoted to goodness. This life doesn’t matter once the philosopher has arrived at that insight. It tells us why it is better to suffer rather than do injustice: doing injustice damns your soul; suffering injustice doesn’t. This death scene ties all the fundamental Socratic thoughts together.

. . .

The parallel between the Christian story of Jesus’ execution and Socrates is obvious. Despite the very different worlds and beliefs, the same inability of the world to recognize goodness is there: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Darkness. The Cave. The Christian picture is even more extreme. God become human, pure Goodness and Love took on a human face – and was nailed to a cross by the Cave dwellers.

 Christianity was more radically anti-Aristotelian. And “whoever makes himself high will be made low, and whoever makes himself low will be made high.” That people Aristotle embodied the human essence were now the chaff to be burned. All those deprived of human flourishing – the poor, oppressed, children, women, handicapped, etc. – they are the true human beings; they have value and are loved by God.

    The question is: does the ability to keep those of us who fall through the cracks of the world with us – to imagine the least fortunate of us and the evil-doers among us (the “sinners”) as morally our equals – require this devaluation of the world? Once we define a good human life in a way that make a certain kind of community and individual character & achievements - as well as a bit of good fortune - necessary conditions, then we inevitably create a hierarchy of dignity, a "natural aristocracy" as Jefferson put it. (e.g. Lebron James belongs to the natural aristocracy of basketball; Magnus Carlson of chess, etc. - apply the analogy to life as such). As soon as we equate dignity (morality) with equality, such that every member of the species is equal in dignity just by being a member of the species, and is owed equal respect, then experiencing humanity as a hierarchy of worth is immoral - or sinful in religious terms. Which then sets up another kind of hierarchy (heaven and hell) unless God does love all his creatures and it is unthinkable that He would ever shut the door on any (e.g. the parable of the Prodigal Son). Thus in chess or basketball - limited fragments of life - we might accept a hierarchy, but morally and legally the ideal is not to. We just can't live up to that ideal - evidence that it is not "natural" or "worldly" but other-worldly. It is a fantasy, or a leak from another dimension, accessible at times to "the human heart" (through compassionate love). It not a fantasy, it relativizes ethical life. 

(Aristotle 9) Human Dignity and Virtue 

We have analogies to Aristotelian thought in our world but below the level of politics and socially fragmented.  Aristotle, I fear, would see most of us as “barbarians,” and not just because we don’t speak Greek but because, like a flower that cannot blossom because planted in desert soil, we have been thrown into a society which, by and large, prevents us from developing an integrated, virtuous character capable of authentic speech and action, a personality that transcends the purely private ego. Basically, human dignity is part achievement and part endowment, like "dignity" in basketball or physics.  Even though a relative few of us achieve great things in particular activities – sports, music, science, engineering, medicine, etc. – and to that extent transcend the merely human, even these people are fragmented, perhaps schizophrenic in a metaphorical sense. For their personality, once it leaves their practice-community, is part of and thus socialized by the larger anti-Aristotelian society. We are overwhelmingly partly at least pre-virtue ego dominated by private desires for external goods and even seeing intrinsic goods as a means to an end – basketball as a means to money, fame, and women. We would not impress Aristotle.

   And Aristotle, impressive as he is, cannot completely impress us. Aristotle had no concept of human dignity. The Greek world he lived in lacked such a concept. The whole world at his time, as far as I know, lacked such a concept. [And our world is in the process of losing it.] I became aware of this early on in my Greek studies. For example, in one of my favorite dialogues by Plato, The Euthyphro, I was disturbed by the incident that led Euthyphro to prosecute his own father for murder (in Athens, anyone could charge anyone else; the judge and jury were the assembly of citizens).

The victim, as a matter of fact, was a certain laborer of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he was employed by us there. Drunk and having been provoked by another one of our household, he slit this man’s throat. So my father bound his feet and hands, threw him into some ditch, and sent a man here to inquire of the interpreter of religious law about what should be done. But during that time he paid no attention to the bound man and neglected him as a murderer and thought nothing of it if he died too, which is in fact what happened, since he died of hunger and cold and his bonds before the messenger returned from the interpreter.

I assumed after reading this that Socrates would approve of what Euthyphro was doing, that the father should answer for the laborer’s death. And it took quite some time before I realized that Socrates – here siding with public opinion – believed that Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father was shameful and impious. It certainly wasn’t a noble deed to leave the laborer to die of exposure in the ditch, but that weighed nothing compared to the impiety of prosecuting your own father (cf. That shalt honour thy father and thy mother). Nobody lost any sleep over the laborer’s death and the insinuation is that Euthyphro can only be using it as a pretext to appear before the Athenians as more righteous than they were and perhaps get back at his father for some wrong done to him, real or imaged. Otherwise, his actions would be unintelligible. Granted the laborer had apparently killed someone in anger. But even such as he is owed justice. I offer this as an illustration of a culture that has no concept of human dignity. That fact that is was a slave society and that women were considered pre-rational as a rule is further proof of this.

    Compare my reaction to the death of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.  I didn’t think that execution was an unjust punishment. But the way it was done and the treatment of the corpse by the mob was inhuman. I later read this view of a witness: “I was convinced Mussolini deserved death ... but there should have been a trial according to law. It was very barbarous.” Moreover, when I read about how the angry mob hung up Mussolini’s body together with the body of his mistress and other fascist party members who had been shot, I was disgusted and actually pitied that evil-doer. This is from Wikipedia:

Their bodies were left in a heap, and by 9:00 a.m. a considerable crowd had gathered. The corpses were pelted with vegetables, spat at, urinated on, shot at and kicked; Mussolini's face was disfigured by beatings. Allied forces began arriving in the city during the course of the morning and an American eyewitness described the crowd as "sinister, depraved, out of control."

Aristotle would probably have considered such behavior vulgar; I consider it – with full understanding of the hatred Mussolini inspired – as evil. That is the difference.

    (Evil done to a person can cause them to lose their soul in hatred and grief – here Dante is brilliant: the scene in the Inferno where Dante comes across two sinners in such close proximity that one is gnawing on the back of the other's neck. Dante offers to tell the sinner's story in the upper world, if the sinner would tell it. He was Count Ugolino, and the soul he feeds upon was Archbishop Ruggieri, who betrayed him in life. Ruggieri imprisoned Ugolino and his four sons in a tower, nailed the doors shut, and starved them all to death. Ugolino is forced to watch his young boys starve one by one. And his hatred for Ruggieri increases with each of his son's death. Once through with his long and passionate tale, Ugolino goes back to feeding on Ruggieri. What a perfect image for how hatred and desire for revenge - even when so understandable - can destroy a soul.)

 

. . .

 

In "Politics," Aristotle describes a natural hierarchy in which men are naturally superior to women. He argues that men are more rational and suited to rule, while women are more emotional and thus should be ruled. He states, “the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled.” Thus he believed that women’s primary role was in the domestic sphere, as wives and mothers. He viewed the household as a microcosm of the state, with men as the heads of households and women as subordinate partners. Women's primary functions were seen as managing the home and bearing children. In "Generation of Animals," he posited that women are essentially "mutilated males" and that they contribute only the matter to reproduction, while men provide the form and essence. He believed that men’s semen contains the active principle of life, whereas women’s role in reproduction is passive. Finally, he argued that men are more rational and logical, while women are more emotional and less capable of rational thought. This belief influenced his view that men should govern and women should be governed.   It also clearly implies that – all things being equal – men have more human dignity than women: that is, men are (in general) more likely to become fully human. (I already mentioned his views about natural slavery somewhere.)

 

    Thomas Aquinas adopted many of Aristotle's views on women, particularly the ideas of natural hierarchy, biological inferiority, and distinct roles in society. He integrated these views into his theological framework, reinforcing the belief in male superiority while also acknowledging the spiritual equality of men and women in the eyes of God. Well, at least that. But another example of how Aristotle and Christianity make difficult bedfellows. I think this did untold damage in blocking out God's light from the world.

  It’s not just that the science behind this is wrong. As a scientist, he would presumably accept a better explanation of the data as known to science today. The important point is that human dignity – here I use the term anachronistically – can only be a potential and an achievement for Aristotle. Practically it is something only few can aspire to. Most of us lack full human dignity. Our value as human beings is a function of our character, of developing our highest potentials. Accidents of birth and socialization are decisive. That is not how most of us think.

 

. . .

 

Modern Aristotelians like MacIntyre or Nussbaum (from very different angles: MacIntyre is at least sympathetic to Thomism; Nussbaum is a kind of left-liberal) want to reconceptualize what is valuable in Aristotle in a modern context: that is, a context in which all human beings are thought to have human dignity just by virtue of being human. This is valuable, this attempt. In a worldly sense, Aristotle is right. But if there is nothing but this worldly sense, life would turn out to be a horrible thing, at least for all the chaff that gets burned.

   Still it is like trying to harmonize two different scales. I think we constantly go back and forth between them. Sometimes we judge people from an Aristotelian standpoint. “None of the players care about the name on the front of the jersey,” is a common criticism of the University of Kentucky basketball program these days. That means, they are nothing but private individuals with self-gain on their mind; the program and its good mean nothing to them. That is Aristotelian. And a headline from The Guardian today reads: “The brutality and inhumanity of Israel’s assault on Gaza is no surprise. It’s just what was promised.” That makes sense against a morality based on human dignity (as does the condemnation of the Hamas atrocities of October 7).

  I think both frameworks are necessary. It’s a matter of working it out in practice. But whenever there is a conflict between them, human dignity must win out. “Morality” – a word I am not overly fond of – is predicated on human dignity, on the idea of a shared common humanity. To a worldly naturalist like Aristotle (and many people today) this common humanity is not visible. To me it surfaces in the (different) kinds of evil done by Hamas and the right-wing Israeli government. It shows itself in the mutilated body of a child. That is not sentimental. That is reality showing itself. Hamas and the right-wing Israeli government – standing for a multitude of other cases – are just blind to it. Hate can blind. Hatred is a form of Hell. A soul cut off from reality. But even if the destruction of Gaza is motivated by “rational” security concerns – like Cato the Elder of Rome when he insisted at the end of every Senate meeting that "Carthage must be destroyed" – it is just a different form of Hell.

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

This dimension of good and evil goes deeper than anything the worldly Aristotle could conceive of.

 (Aristotle 8) Tolstoy's Contribution to Understanding the Limits of Aristotelian Virtue

Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych shows the kind of limits in Aristotle in another way. I will just leap into how I read the book. Ivan seems to be a member of a community and a family (a kind of ur-community).

  Ivan Ilych is a judge – specifically, a high-court judge in the Russian judicial system. As such he would typically deal with cases of significant legal importance and complexity. That should put him squarely within an Aristotelian-type practice/community. As a judge he must constantly exercise the virtues of justice, practical wisdom (applying law to specific cases justly, and thus interpreting the law and the specific case together). His social function as judge involves him with those who appear before him and the legal community in a way that makes his words and actions meaningful.

   He is also a father and husband, and the same applies to fathers and husbands: they constantly need to exercise justice and practical wisdom, which could include other virtues such as patience, honesty, and constancy. What makes a good judge differs from what makes a good father, but both senses of good share the transcending of the private ego, integrating the good of a community of others into what fulfills a person.

    Both involve the development and exercise of the virtues although just as the meaning of good shifts when said of a judge and a father, so the meaning of just, wise, and courageous shifts. An analogy exists between the uses of good, just, wise, and courageous when applied to father, husband, and judge: the meaning shifts as the reality of the context shifts but an essential core remains. Thus a "good" judge applies the law impartially, without bias, and with integrity. This involves making decisions based on evidence and legal principles, ensuring that justice is served. A "good" father is caring, nurturing, and supportive. He prioritizes the well-being and development of his children, providing emotional support and guidance. In both roles, being "good" involves acting with integrity and in the best interest of others, whether it's the litigants in a courtroom or one's children. Both judge and father are practices you can be good at.

    Justice and wisdom, when applied to family and courts, share core meanings but have distinct applications. In courts, justice involves the objective application and interpretation of laws to ensure fairness and equity. This requires impartiality, adherence to legal standards, and procedural fairness. Conversely, in a family context, justice revolves around fairness and equality in relationships, addressing the needs and rights of family members, resolving conflicts fairly, and maintaining harmony. While both settings demand equitable treatment and a balanced approach to resolving conflicts, the court's focus is on legal precedents and unbiased judgment, whereas the family emphasizes individual needs and equitable treatment.

      Wisdom in the judiciary involves a deep understanding of the law and its broader implications, requiring judges to interpret the law in ways that serve the greater good. This demands legal insight, judicial prudence, and balanced judgment. In a family setting, wisdom is about understanding human emotions and relationships, providing sound advice, anticipating consequences, and fostering a nurturing environment. It presupposed a deep familiarity with children and spouses. Like being a judge, being a father and husband requires deep understanding and insightful judgment, but the contexts differ: courts focus on legal and societal impacts, while families prioritize the well-being of children and spouses.

    In addition to these blessings, Ilych has more than sufficient “external” goods: wealth and social prestige. He seems firmly rooted in Aristotelian “flourishing.”

   But facing death, he realizes that he has wasted his life.

False. Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie, concealing both life and death from you.

What, if anything, does this say about Aristotelian ethics?

. . .

  Well, in one respect, not much. Despite being a part of the law and a family, Ivan’s core self is not rooted in any community. His profession – not a vocation – and even his family are nothing but means to external goods: social prestige and wealth, mostly. And in that he is not especially corrupt but follows the norm of his society where only such external goods are valued. I assume this is connected to Tsarist Russia, whose exploitative, unjust power structure drained the life out of both upper-class families and the Law. Conforming to social expectations was the name of the game. What Ivan thought of his wife who was conforming to something like wifely expectations during his sickness applies equally to him:

Everything she did for him was entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake as something so incredible that he would take it as meaning the opposite.

She had become a mirror of himself. It feels like Ivan was in a role-playing game where winning is defined by how much social prestige and wealth. Thus Ivan’s empty life doesn’t refute but rather confirms Aristotle: on the other side of being integrated into a practice/meaning-community is the meaninglessness of the purely private ego, which death negates. That is also Tolstoy’s point. [I think Christopher Cordner doesn’t clearly see this in his discussion.]

   As a result of remaining imprisoned in a pre-community ego, not only Ivan’s life but his wife and children were not fully present to him, not fully real. They were like role-players in the social game he was playing. If being a judge, husband, and father had gone deep with him, it would have been different. The question is: do they become real to him after he has accepted inevitability of his impending death? And if so, it would seem that it cannot be explained in Aristotelian terms – flourishing through developing higher human capacities in community with others. [This is Cordner’s belief and I agree with him.]

  Here are the crucial passages from chapter XII:

In his isolation he looked at those about him and ‘saw himself — all that he had lived for — and saw plainly that it was all wrong, a horrible, monstrous lie concealing both life and death. This consciousness increased his physical suffering tenfold.

At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What is the right thing?" and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for her too.

"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will be better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not the strength to utter it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. with a look at his wife he indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for you too...." He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would not leave his was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!" he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are you, pain?"

He turned his attention to it.

"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."

"And death...where is it?"

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.

 

I want to say: his family became real to him. A sublime experience, made possible by death.  Of course, as the everyday people they were he had been acquainted with them. What happens now is that he sees them in a purer, truer light: he sees them in the light of justice, love, and (as part of love) pity. He sees them as mortal creatures doomed to die, made possible by facing the reality of his own death and empty life. His ego consciousness is almost completely subsumed by this heightened consciousness of reality. It’s like the blinders have come off that prevented him from seeing his own true nature as well as that of his loved ones and indeed the world he lived in. A gift of death.

    And that is not in Aristotle.

[see Christopher Cordner, Ethical Encounter: The Depth of Moral Meaning, 2002. I am indebted to this author for idea of contrasted Tolstoy's masterpiece to Aristotle, and agree with his basic insight while understanding Aristotle a bit differently. I have learned a lot about Aristotle from Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 1981 and Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 1986.] 

 (Aristotle 7) Remorse as a Window to Human Reality

                                                                Raimond Gaita

I agree with Raimond Gaita that remorse gives us a key to what is missing in Aristotle, to the idea that every human being is – at least to God – an intelligible object of love, and thus of value, and thus confronts us as someone who could suffer evil, and thus forces us to understand as evil certain kinds of things done to them.

     Martha Nussbaum – a modern, liberal Aristotelian – in Anger and Forgiveness (2016) has no place for remorse – the pained recognition of guilt, of having wronged a human being. At most, it can be a spur to redress any harm one has caused – say a husband who has betrayed his wife then tries to compensate for the damage he has inflicted on her by being helpful in practical matters. Suffering from remorse beyond that, for Nussbaum, can only be pathological or corrupt, a form of anger at oneself. Anger, in turn, is either irrational as it involves either the wish for retribution (against the self), which helps no one and does not undo the wrong; or involves an immoral attempt to regain diminished status vis-à-vis another by lowering or humiliating the other – in which case against presumably another part of the self (perhaps the ‘good self’ attempting to elevate itself by humiliating the ‘bad self’). That is all remorse can be for Nussbaum, thinking in the spirit of Aristotle. For Aristotle a good person might feel shame over acts directed at those lesser human beings like a beggar. But shame is not remorse.

      A big part of Nussbaum’s previous work has been devoted to a critique of those ways of conceiving the moral life that seek to make oneself immune from the vulnerability that comes from loving. If you love a person or a place nothing can guarantee that you will not lose them through guilt or misfortune, and nothing can guarantee that one love may conflict with or be completely incompatible with another or even with what is moral and decent – as perhaps in the case of the husband who betrayed his wife. I have always thought that true. But because she interprets remorse as anger against the self, she cannot see that she is doing precisely what in other places she criticizes: making oneself invulnerable, immune to pain. (And thus subjecting morality to ego, which is little more than a program for pursuing what is pleasant and avoiding what is painful.)

      Another person’s reality is partly constituted by the sense in which it is terrible to wrong them. Remorse is the painful understanding of what it means to have wronged someone; it is a disclosure in that form of the reality of the other person; it is a receptivity to that reality, a letting the victim of wrong appear to the loving part of the wrong-doer  (the lucid moral center of a person that is in touch with reality). Through the pain of remorse, the victim appears as a being that must be unconditionally respected, even in a certain sense loved, a being that cannot be erased by the need of the one who wrongs them to justify their actions by denying this reality – a reality, again, that Aristotle was blind to. [This partly explains the sentimental, narcissistic cult of victimhood as we see it in modern society.]

        Of course, there are corrupt forms of remorse – remorse can be self-display, remorse can be pathological (self-centered) self-hatred, and much more. But these are corruptions of an emotional response that otherwise allows the reality of the person wronged to be disclosed to the wrong-doer. And this reality can be disclosed in no other way when wrong has been done. Nussbaum, by ignoring what remorse in its core really is, protects the wrong-doer from the reality of those they wrong. Trying to help repair the wrong, if possible, is right. But it makes a difference whether I am helping a friend recover from having been betrayed by another, or whether I am the person who betrayed the friend: the helping actions might be the same; the spirit in which they are taken, and the relationship between the helper and the person being helped, will be very different.

 

. . .

 

   So I say I can pity the beggar, but cannot completely escape condescension, cannot really believe that “in God’s eyes” we are “brothers.” Imagine he became aggressive with me when I was feeling down and irritable. I pushed him away, he fell, and, clumsy soul that he is, cracks his skull and goes into a coma. Of course, I did not mean to hurt him, but I did. I feel rotten about it. I visit him daily at the hospital, hoping he will recover. He dies and now there is nothing I can do to make it up. (Gaita gives such an example.)

   Now my relationship with him has no condescension. In my remorse a dimension of his reality as a fellow human being (a fellow traveler to the grave) has penetrated my ego, even an ego transformed by Aristotelian-type community. The pain of remorse opened my eyes to this dimension of human reality – and our common humanity – that transcends what Aristotle (I think rightly) thought of as our nature. I don’t think Aristotle would have been able to take such remorse seriously because his (slave) culture lacked the conceptual resources to even dream of it (though slaves may have dreamed of it).

   We can only try to understand what is revealed in such remorse with pictures, I think. Many of us see fellow human beings as objects of such remorse and thus see ourselves as the kind of creatures that can be wronged in a way that is unjust or evil. (Trump, who the religious right loves, see immigrants as vermin polluting our blood. There are always those who work against the reality I say (with Gaita) is disclosed in remorse.) My picture is the common picture handed down in the New Testament of a God as a “loving father” since a parent’s love for their children is independent of their children’s achievements. A parent may be proud of their child’s genuine achievements but they will not cease to love all their children the same, in a certain sense. Or are bad parents if they do. And thus in God’s eyes (beautiful metaphor, God’s eyes) the beggar is my brother, even if I in this life cannot fully believe it.

    I don't for this reason reject Aristotle. I do say Aristotle is blind to another dimension of our reality, our nature, one that goes beyond his conceptual space. I am not willing to say with Aristotle of the beggar: if we are sober and honest to ourselves, we must say that it were better had the beggar - standing for all kinds of categories of people - never been born. This belief if connected to divine love, and so I don't pretend to understand or know fully what I am talking about. I can only gesture toward it. 

. . .

Of course, the problem remains: it is intelligible to me that I would feel remorse for killing the beggar as described, but would my remorse be of the same quality as in a case where I did something similar to a young college student, full of life and promise, loved by their family, etc.? Then it seems like grief: I would be sad over the death of the beggar but genuine grief I can only feel for those I love. Not quite the same: grief is more restricted than remorse (i.e. you can only grieve for those you know and love). But it seems the quality of our remorse does include a judgment-feeling about the value of the life of the person we wronged. 

Books by Gaita (just what I have read - each at least three times)

The Philosopher's Dog

Romulus, My Father

Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception

A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice

 (Aristotle 6) Limits of Aristotle, cont. Dante and Aquinas, Aristotle Christianized

I have been reading Dante since I first read The Inferno at the age of 18 at Centre College in the course that changed my life (for better or worse): Literature and Philosophy, taught by Professor Milton Riegelman. (I still remember sitting around his fireplace around Halloween drinking Sassafras tea and discussing Dante’s trip through Hell. Since then I have probably reread the epic poem thirty times at least. Fascinated and disturbed. Love and hate. But in this meditation on Aristotle, I think I realize why in the end I hate the religious vision that informs the poem. (You can check the Internet for a summary of the poem, Sparknotes, for example, or Wikipedia.)

   It is known that Dante (1265-1321) was heavily influenced by St. Thomas Aquinas, some going so far as to suggest the Divine Comedy is like a translation of Thomist thought into epic poetry. (I agree with those who point out Dante makes some wild and probably heretic changes to Thomas.) Thomas is a major philosopher and theologian for me, has been for many years. I guess he made it possible for me to come back to Christianity at the age of 33 by offering a Christian vision starkly different from the evangelical protestant version I had known growing up and that by that time meant nothing to me, had meant nothing to me since I was a teen. In Thomas’ thought, philosophy and theology, human reason and divine revelation were married; the Creation received a powerful and powerfully relevant (and true) interpretation; his understanding of reality, reason, knowledge still appeal to me. His moral realism still appeals to me: that is, the belief that the reality of people and the Creation is meaningful and makes claims on me to respect it, etc. His thought gave me the resources to understand and reject the corrosive subjectivism of capitalist culture. I could go on. Thomas was able to speak to me because, as people say, he Christianized Aristotle: transcended the limitations of Aristotle’s own Greek culture, and reinterpreted his thought in a way that left space for love and human dignity, which is to say, for morality, for the Good (in Plato’s sense). Yes, he also reconciled Plato and Aristotle for me.

    And yet, as with Dante, something always held me back. I never “identified” as a Thomist, for example. Dante tells me why. Now I think I understand why. It has shaken up my belief system (not for the first time in my life lol). That is one of the dangers of trying to think.

    So here it is. I’m giving the short version here.

Aristotle’s philosophy implies a gap between those people who by nature and luck are capable of developing into a truly real, valuable human being – of course, only by living in a certain kind of community, a community with the structure of a practice like piano playing, basketball, or teaching - a type of community that is not impossible for us but increasingly out of reach for majorities. And hardly anyone is fully formed by such a community in our time. Especially since such a community came with a political dimension such that you can reveal who you are (as an individual and a human being) through showing your character (loving the good of the community, possessing the character traits necessary to thrive in a community and contribute to making it better) but also through meaningful words and actions. I agree with Aristotle that mere human life is a pretty poor thing outside such a community. That is my reason for thinking it is ‘natural’ for us, that being deprived of such an opportunity violates our nature, our reality, our essence. (Marx draws heavily on Aristotelian thought. So does Wendell Berry.)

     I have pointed out the problem with this kind of thinking for those of us who find it compelling: what to do with those who fall outside it, who remain private egos – whether it be those so oppressed by poverty and social demeaning that life becomes a war of all against all to survive or those super-rich parasites who through their power to command labor and governance have placed themselves outside of the community (and any number of seemingly disparate categories of people). Aristotle, his mind clouded by the injustices of his time (as ours are by those of our time), believed that some people were deprived by nature of full humanity, lacked the capacity to develop the highest potential and participate meaningfully in a political community. We mostly reject this (e.g. we believe it largely of the mentally handicapped, pathological criminals, mental patients, etc.). But some people for Aristotle and us are deprived of this opportunity contingently, through bad luck or injustice (thus social democrats at least believe in using the power of the state to expand such opportunities). But the gap between those human beings who do in a sense ‘bear fruit’ and those who don’t or can’t remains.

   Dante and Thomas apply this aspect of Aristotelianism to religion, to eternity. What the polis (political community) was for Aristotle, the Church was for Thomas, is for Catholics. In the Church you develop in the most perfect, most human way those virtues Aristotle prized: self-restraint (or moderation), courage, justice, and wisdom. But to fully become a living soul, not just a human being who bears fruit in a community, three other virtues, the so-called theological virtues, are necessary: faith, hope, love (of which love is the highest, as God’s essence is ‘Being-and-Love.’ The idea is that only in the community of the Church, the community of the saints, can a person fully activate his full humanity, can become a living soul.

    And this set up the same dichotomy for all eternity between those who are in the community of the Church on their way to becoming saints (almost all of us fall short in this life, in spite of the community life of the Church, and thus need Purgatory, which is the second part of the Divine Comedy) – and those who are not. (A saint is for the Church was the "great-souled man" was for Aristotle: the ideal type of human being brought forth by the best kind of community.) In contrast to Aristotle’s purely worldly beliefs, when those deprived of actualizing their humanity were dead, their suffering was over. In Dante’s Christian universe, that pain is just beginning and it goes on for eternity.

    I cannot accept that. In our human world we have the possibility – by shifting away from an Aristotelian belief system – of keeping those who by nature or bad luck are deprived of living rich, virtuous, meaningful lives with us: through compassion, pity, understanding. Jesus taught us not to judge anyone in some final sense: “He belongs in Hell; may he be punished in Hell forever” is a profoundly sinful thought, one that separates the person thinking it from his soul, other people, the Creation, and his Creator. He taught us that we are all (metaphorically) “God’s children,” that God is our “father.” He must forgive each other. That defines the community of those who want to follow his teachings. Call that “the Church.”

   That goes against a powerful human tendency. Those who do not practice it, those outside the Church, as I said, are cut off from the community, from nature, and from God. In Christian-Aristotelian terms, they fail to realize the point of their existence, to become what they were intended to be. They were created as fruit trees but through. . . what? Their own actions and choices made in radical freedom? Or were they deprived by nature or society? Were they just unlucky to have been born in a world like Aristotle’s where such beliefs were not even thinkable by the wisest? I believe this was the reason Jesus taught us not to “cast the first stone.” We are not angels choosing between good and evil in perfect knowledge, perfect freedom. If any of us becomes halfway good, there is a lot of luck involved. If you understand the biography of most people who fail to be good, who fail to love, who end up violating love, violating nature, you will find grounds to pity them unless they have hurt you so bad your reason is clouded by pain and hate. That is at least part of the reason for “Let he who is without sin or guilt cast the first stone.”

   Some of the Pharisees (as described in the New Testament) rejected that. They cast the followers of Jesus outside of their community, and the followers of Jesus cast them out of theirs. There is always an implicit criterion: group x belongs to the saving or fully human community because of a set of beliefs and virtues; group y doesn’t. Humanity depends on belonging to the right community. Only thus can we acquire the right beliefs and virtues. Only thus can we become fully human. Belonging, whether in Aristotle or Dantean Christianity, is more essential than our common humanity; more essential than what we abstractly call “human dignity.” Christianized Aristotelianism. Every church presupposes an (all-too-human) in-group and an out-group, and this distinction goes deeper than common humanity. This is the toxic thought at the root of Christianity, Islam, and at least some forms of Judaism (and all forms of nationalism).

    Thus you get Hell – one sin at least of which pre-Christian Judaism seems to be free – an idea that transcends in evil anything Aristotle could think. I think Aristotle would be appalled were he to read The Inferno. You get a Christian saint (Thomas) arguing that it affronts God to pity the souls in Hell. Aquinas asserted that God's justice is perfect and infallible. The souls in Hell are there as a result of their own choices and actions, having freely chosen to reject God's grace and commit mortal sins without repentance – no more of ‘there but for the grace of God go you or I.’ Since the punishment of the souls in Hell is a just consequence of their sins, pitying them would imply questioning or opposing God's perfect justice. To pity them would be to suggest that God's judgment is somehow unfair or excessive, which contradicts the belief in God's perfect justice and righteousness. If you feel that the chamber of horrors Dante imagines for the sinners in Hell is positively “medieval”, is why a more humane generation of human beings wanted to outlaw torture and “cruel and unusual punishment,” then St. Thomas would reply that God's wisdom surpasses human understanding. The eternal damnation of souls is part of the divine plan, which is ultimately good and just, even if it is beyond human comprehension. Pitying the damned – even your own parents or children – is a failure to trust in God's wisdom and plan. That implies that those more human people of the Enlightenment had a better understanding of justice and mercy than God Himself.

    I don’t believe Hell is only a result of applying this Aristotelian dichotomy between full humanity in the best kinds of community versus those who don’t have that option, whether self-chosen or not. Hell was a thing before Aquinas wove Aristotelian thought into Christian thought. Jesus himself used Aristotelian-type metaphors for it:

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:12)

 

Jesus does teach that we should not attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff; it is not our job. Judging others is the task of Jesus, and when we try to take this responsibility upon ourselves, we are practicing a form of idolatry by putting ourselves in the place of Jesus. Besides, we are notoriously bad judges. But perfect love, justice, and wisdom judge us, and we end up with Dante’s Inferno.

    I would want to believe that God’s love is greater than ours, not less. Would any father send his child to Dante’s Inferno, any of its circles? Is not our common humanity a gift of the idea that we have a common source, a common Creator, conceived as a loving father? This is what I think Tolstoy understood. I heard Pope Francis comfort a boy whose father - not a Christian -  had died with similar words.

   In the history of Christian churches, two sources of blindness exist that have hidden this from view: importing the attitude of the Pharisees into the Christian church – God gives commands, you are righteous is you obey the commands, hell-bound if you don’t. (Again, this is much worse than the Pharisees – again, as depicted in the gospels – who at least didn’t imagine the adulteresses that got stoned to death would suffer eternally in Hell after the temporary earthly Hell was over.) And the second source was bring Aristotelian worldly thought into Christianity.

 

 [Did Jesus really teach burning the chaff? I don’t know. I hope not. Much of the Gospels – written decades after Jesus lived and died – is church-building. Scholars assume that some of the teachings – the Sermon on the Mound, for example – are genuine. Some words are obviously put in Jesus’ mouth. I think the consensus is that Jesus really did teach that Hell is real and perhaps is much like Dante depicts it. I cannot reconcile Hell with the reality of God as Jesus otherwise reveals that reality.]

     [I take Hell seriously as a possibility of myself, in a spiritual, metaphorical sense: i.e. I believe life can cut a person off from their own body and soul, from other people and community, from nature-as-Creation, from God. I believe we can more or less choose those things, though I doubt choice is the dominant cause of them. I believe I could do things that would result in despair. I have done and thought things that have brought me to the brink of that abyss. But I know that none of us are perfectly free and knowing, like an angel. We shouldn’t cast the first stone because we don’t know what it is like to be the adulteress. Our lives are so much luck, starting with whether we had wise and loving parents, lived in a time of peace and plenty, were not born into a system that oppressed us, etc. We can pity the worst of us. A mother can cry when her son is executed for terrible crimes. Thomas says we can’t pity the damned, no more than Aristotle could pity the slave by nature. We can't be both intelligible objects of love, and therefore pity, and at the same time devils. If God is real and if God is love and if there is a life after death, then there is hope for us all and we need not believe that anyone is in Hell. But the possibility of losing ourselves is probably necessary for us to appreciate the seriousness of how we live. I am not denying that we can and do for all kinds of reasons lose ourselves. They a human being can curse the day they were born. That a human being can find existence a horrible mistake. What I do deny is that we cannot and should not have compassion for them, and ourselves to the extent we feel like that. I deny that a loving father - or mother - real or metaphorical would make Dante's Inferno to eternally torture and punish such souls, any soul.]

 (Aristotle 5) Limits of Aristotle, continued.

If anyone were to read this, I feel the need to apologize. It's just a journal, hurriedly written. Not writing really fit for a public. My main teachers for this line of thinking: Alasdair MacIntyre, Raimond Gaita, Christopher Cordner, Hannah Arendt - and of course Aristotle, whose Ethics I have been re-reading with great pleasure)

The Greeks in general and Aristotle in particular had no concept of ‘human dignity’: an abstract idea meaning that every human being, as human being, regardless of achievement, virtue, community standing or anything that has its source in our social being, has a kind of dignity, intrinsic worth, is somehow precious – and therefore deserves respect, recognized as morally our equal.

     In Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, Lear, having been cast out, encounters on the heath in a storm “Poor Tom”, a naked, barely clothed, obviously insane beggar (in reality Lear’s ‘good son’, Edgar, who is a fugitive, in disguise), and is moved to pity: “Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ‘s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art (III, iv).” Being homeless now himself, Lear shows some compassion for the vulnerability of the homeless and poor in the terrible storm. Prior to this he had never really thought about their plight. But in the storm he is learning to empathize with those at the bottom of society. He acknowledges that as King when he had the power and authority to effect social change he could have done more for them. Men who live in luxury should expose themselves to what the poor and homeless feel, he declares, so they can give their surplus wealth to them and make the world a more just place.

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou may’st shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just.

Mere humanity for Aristotle is like a fruit tree that was diseased or damaged by weather and never comes to bear fruit. Such a tree is worthless as a fruit tree whatever other uses can be devised for it. Mere humanity is not natural, as Lear almost suggests, who contrasts “unaccommodated” man with “pomp.” Let me just read “pomp” as Lear’s new understanding of everything society can give. For Aristotle, only a certain social-political form provides fertile soil for humanity to blossom into what it truly is. (I still remember my first football coach teaching us that we were the “real men” of the school. I learned to think of all the boys who didn’t play football as somehow inferior to us. They would never blossom into “real men.” Aristotle is not free of that kind of mentality.) True, it would be shameful for a virtuous man to belittle or harm a character like Poor Tom. But it wouldn’t be morally wrong in our sense. It wouldn’t have violated Poor Tom’s reality had Lear passed him by without even acknowledging he was there (for Aristotle).

     But like mine pity for the beggar, Lear’s pity seems laced with condescension. He can only see Poor Tom as a King sees a beggar, albeit a fallen King. He pities someone outside of an honor community from the perspective of someone in it. It is not that his pity includes the thought-feeling that, in essence, stripped of all the artificial add-ons of society, Lear is nothing but Poor Tom. When he says he should have “shown the heavens more just” he is partly saying that as King he should have taken measures to ensure no one end up like Poor Tom. The implication is that a life such as Poor Tom’s – the life of a mere human being not enriched by human society – is not worth living, is without inherent dignity. Such people are to be pitied precisely because they have been deprived of what Lear calls “pomp” incapable of developing their full human potential.

       We tend to emphasize compassion for those on the lowest end of the social scale much more than did the Greeks, but the attitude is basically Aristotle’s: it would have been better never to have been born; having been born, it is better to die soon. Despite our official commitment to human dignity, this attitude is very much with us. Consider this preface to a debate in the European Parliament:

 

Since the introduction of prenatal screening in Iceland, for instance, the vast majority of women (close to 99%) whose foetus tested positive for Down syndrome have terminated their pregnancy. Some EU Member States are not very far behind. In France, it is estimated that the proportion of women who have terminated their pregnancy due to Down's syndrome is around 77%, while in Denmark the rate is 97%. In Italy, Germany, the UK and Belgium, the rate exceeds 90% (from Parliamentary question - E-003055/2020, European Parliament).

 

What this reveals is the distinction between human life considered valuable and human life considered better not to exist.

   Or consider this description of a psych ward (from the book A Common Humanity, 2000) in which philosopher Raimond Gaita (a teacher of mine through his books) worked in a psychiatric hospital (his motivation coming from the mental illnesses suffered by both his parents as recounted in his autobiographical Romulus, My Father):

 

  In the early 1960s when I was seventeen years old, I worked as a ward assistant in a psychiatric hospital … It reminded me of some of the enclosures at Melbourne zoo. When patients soiled themselves, as some did often, they were ordered to undress and to step under a shower. The distance of a mop handle from them, we then mopped them down as zoo-keepers wash down elephants.

     The patients were judged to be incurable and they appeared to have irretrievably lost everything which gives meaning to our lives. They had no grounds for self-respect insofar as we connect that with self-esteem; or, none which could be based on qualities or achievements for which we could admire or congratulate them without condescension. Friends, wives, children and even parents, if they were alive, had long ceased to visit them. Often they were treated brutishly by the psychiatrists and nurses.

    A small number of psychiatrists did, however, work devotedly to improve their conditions. They spoke, against all appearances, of the inalienable dignity of even those patients. I admired them enormously. Most of their colleagues believed these doctors to be naive, even fools. Some of the nurses despised them with a vehemence that was astonishing …

      In contrast to Aristotle’s time – and Nazi Germany whose attitude towards such incurables shocked us but would not have shocked Aristotle, pity or compassion can barely keep such human beings among us. We couldn’t stomach the idea of “euthanasia.” We come up with institutions, sometimes, to deal with people in a “humane” way while separating them from everyday life. Arendt’s emphasis on the “right to have rights” I would translate as the need to live in a meaning-community. That is pure Aristotle. It is just another, more contemporary and less robust way of putting Aristotle’s core idea: that the full realization of human nature and the attainment of a good and virtuous life (eudaimonia) are possible only within the context of a political community (polis). I say less robust because to belong to a political community and enjoy the rights of being a citizen might be a necessary condition for humanity for Aristotle but it is not yet a sufficient condition. In addition, active participation is required.

     I could of course multiply such examples but will offer one more discussed by Hannah Arendt: the stateless. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt examines the plight of stateless people and how their situation challenges the notion of inalienable human dignity (she discusses human rights but the thinking works even better for dignity). Arendt argues that human dignity, supposedly inalienable and universal, is effectively meaningless when individuals are stripped of citizenship and the protection of a state. Stateless people, who lack any national affiliation, find themselves without the legal and political framework necessary to exercise and protect their dignity. Human dignity is thus compromised when individuals are deprived of a community that recognizes it.

        Stateless people do possess full human capacities. But although they may be highly educated and competent, they are still mere human beings without a community, having been expelled from theirs. As Arendt put it, they can say whatever they want but it doesn’t matter to anyone. Their actions may be unconstrained but they are not free because they don’t matter to anyone. This reveals an even deeper level of Aristotelian thought. It is not just developing virtues, as though the community is nothing but a means to becoming individually a full human being with a rich life. Being in a common life – with common projects – makes possible speech and action that reveals not only what we are (the dimension Aristotle focuses on) but who we are (the dimension that Arendt focuses on). It is only through mutual recognition as belonging that our words and actions matter. It is only through mutual recognition that our isolated ego can be transformed into something richer. It is through words and actions that stories can be told about it. It is through those possible stories that human plurality becomes actualized: that fact that we are (in potential at least) different in a qualitative sense that any person who has ever lived, who is alive today, and who will ever live. No two biographies would ever be the same for people who have the chance to reveal who they are through speaking and acting in meaningful ways. The fact that multiple biographies could be written of anyone is also a sign of a meaningful life. (Like anything meaningful – a poem – interpretation is needed.) The world is where this happens. To conceive of communities as belonging to a world is how Arendt deepens Aristotle without departing from him. We not only need a polis but a world.

     The beggar, the severely handicapped, the severely mentally ill, the statement, the pathological narcissist (i.e. the purely private self), the hedge fund manager, etc. are all in a sense outside the world looking in, in very different ways acting on or at least impinging on the world (and the community) from a position outside of it. It is only through pity or compassion that we can keep them among us. But pity is a conviction that – for whatever reason – a person has been contingently deprived of the possibility of living a fully valuable human life. And that is not a conviction that the lives of those we keep among us through pity are our moral equals or valuable as they are.

(Capitalism or whatever you want to call this economic-technological mechanism that determines the lives of people all over the earth is other-worldly. It is slowly but surely draining the world – the possibility of worlds – from human life. It is draining the possibility of meaning. The best metaphor for it is from Michael Ende’s Neverending Story: “the Nothing.” "The Nothing” is a multifaceted metaphor representing the dangers of losing imagination, creativity, hope, cultural heritage, and spiritual values – which are the source of meaning and which can only exist in the world, in a particular community in the world. In a way, we are all faced with the threat of becoming world-less beings for whom nothing outside the private, pre-worldly self can matter.)

    Is there a philosophical or religious attitude that allows us to see those who have fallen through the net of the world as fully our equals, a morally “one of us”? There is, and I am slowly and painfully working my way toward it. Before I get there I need to talk about how Aristotle was just as toxic for Christianity as Pharisaism (not as it was perhaps but as represented in the gospels).  I see this toxicity in two of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages: Dante and Aquinas. I see the way toward a non-condescending love or respect for those who fall through the cracks of Aristotle’s world in Tolstoy, Primo Levi, and Raimond Gaita. And yet Aristotle is also necessary, which my discomfort with aspects of Socrates and even Jesus teach me.

 (Aristotle 4) Limits of Aristotelian Virtue (and Reason)

It’s like I have two souls, one Aristotelian and one Platonic-Christian. I think Aristotle was right in the big picture (though not on all his details, which are bound to his place and time). I think life would be a poor thing with no opportunities to develop the qualities of mind and spirit necessary to master any genuine discipline (i.e. become the kind of person that can thrive in a community practice). I even believe him when he tells us that a person who is not a part of an active political community – and MAGA is a Satanic parody of a genuine political community – falls short of living the best kind of human life. In capitalist mass societies, real politics – where your words and deeds matter, where you are taken seriously for what you say and do – are not really possible for the vast majority of people. (If I were a German citizen, I might join a party and see whether something like political life happens in such a party.) We can at best experience a kind of attenuated political life – for example, my department at the university is largely self-governing and in principle we all have a say in how the department is run. Disagreements are part of this. I am also mistrustful of a self that is nothing but a private self, unacquainted with the life of a real practice or discipline that includes some need to share a community with others.

     At the same time, I am moved by a picture of human life that doesn’t necessarily contradict this Aristotelian picture but is just very different and is often in tension with it. I will try to illustrate what I mean first.

   Ever since the boys started school I have occasionally encountered a particular beggar, sitting on the ground with his cup out. When I give him a little something, he always says “Merci” and “Alles Gute der Familie.” Now he is outside all those practices with their communities that enrich human life, which from Aristotle’s perspective makes human life worth living in the sense that we can only become fully human as part of them. [You can be a better or worse beggar, more or less effective. There is perhaps some skill and knowledge involved. But it is not a practice or a community in the relevant sense.] So for Aristotle the ground for respecting – honoring – that man does not exist. In justice I owe him nothing, not even the most basic form of acknowledgement. He belongs to the species homo sapiens but is not fully human – as for Aristotle neither were slaves, women, or children – or anybody else who was either deprived through no fault of their own or not capable of community, competence, or reason (which you develop within a practice or above all in a political community: recall for Aristotle you become courageous by doing courageous things, honest by telling the truth over and over, just by practicing justice, etc.; you need the political community for that). Aristotle could justify slavery and assigning women and children subordinate social roles for this reason without violating justice.

     It is easy for us to condemn Aristotle for these attitudes. But that is too shallow. The truth is that I cannot eliminate a residue of condescension in my charity to the beggar, and I don’t think I am alone. At my best I can pity him, can say to myself “there but for the grace of God go I.” But I don’t believe it. Part of me says: rather kill myself than humiliate myself like that. At best I can see the man as a person deprived by accidents of fate from becoming the kind of person who can lead a kind of life worth living. I cannot in my heart of hearts consider him my moral equal. A sign of this is that were I to learn that he died I might be sad but I would not feel like I felt when I heard this week that Bill Walton died of cancer at age 71, not just a great basketball player and someone who cared greatly about social justice, but a man with a zest for life that was always infectious. I didn’t even know Walton personally, but his death occasioned a kind of grief, like part of my world had also died. Because, as I am here just assuming that because I consider his life unworthy, thus consider him unworthy, I cannot consider his death an occasion for grief. So a bit of Aristotle is in me, in most of us perhaps. But the difference is: I don’t like it. I consider it a fault. Aristotle could only think that attitude was sentimental.

   Why do I feel like this? I will go on with this later.