Aristotle's Waffle on the Function Argument

In our western canon there is perhaps no stronger support for reason than Aristotle's "function argument" in Book I, Chapter 7 of the Nichomachean Ethics.  But plenty of people have challenged the throne of reason.

For instance, in the Daodejing, the Chinese challenge to the rationalism of Confucianism, the ideal is not reason but an effortless spontaneity, the Dao, the Way of life.  Everything is downhill from the Way.

When the way is lost, virtue appears;  when virtue is lost, kindness appears; when kindness is lost, justice appears.

And, one might suspect, when justice is lost, then power appears.

Something similar appears in the West with the Romantic rebellion, a reaction against the totalitarian idea that Reason is everything.

In the Ethics, Aristotle hangs his hat on reason, that "the function of man is an activity of soul [anima] which follows or implies a rational principle," and a good rational principle, well executed, at that.

[H]uman good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete.

This would add up to happiness (i.e. eudaimonia, which translates as human flourishing) and that in a complete life.

At the beginning of the Ethics, Aristotle tells us what all this is leading to: the highest good, as in managing the relations between men in the polis.  Here he establishes that the highest good is the combination of subsidiary goods, as the skill of harness-making is subsidiary to horsemanship, and horsemanship subsidiary to strategy, and strategy to politics.  And the highest good is clearly politics,

since politics uses the rest of the sciences... it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from... this end must be the good of man.

 But in Ethics X 8, Aristotle backs up a bit, and, once he has dealt with mere pleasure, and established "happiness is activity in accordance with virtue," he discovers that the highest form of happiness is found in "the man who is contemplating the truth", for he doesn't need money like the liberal man, or power like the brave man.  "[F]or deeds many things are needed" but not for the contemplative life.

Anyway, says Aristotle, the contemplative life is much like the life of the gods, for it is ridiculous to imagine them running around doing absurd things like dispensing justice, signing contracts, or confronting dangers.  No, "Happiness, therefore, must be some form of contemplation."  The gods must "delight in what was best and most akin to them (i.e. reason)" in other words, philosophers, and "the philosopher will more than any other be happy."

This is straying rather far from the simple function argument, that happiness is virtuous action according to a rational principle, and that, moreover, the highest and best form of the good is political science and legislating the good of the polis.

In fact, if you think of philosophy as getting close to the gods, then it must be getting close to some kind of ineffable, effortless spontaneity.  Which is what the non-rational Daodejing was proposing about the same time, only thousands of miles away in China.

Make Some Lemonade, Mitt

Now that Mitt Romney has put his foot in it, saying, "I like being able to fire people," the whole question of his Bain Capital years has been put in play.  As Mark Steyn says,

McDonald’s makes hamburgers, but what does Bain do? Private equity, high-yield assets . . . golly, that sounds less like Main Street lingo and more like Wall Street; less to do with the kind of business built on the virtues of making and doing, and more to do with the kind of too-clever-by-half monkey business that came close to taking out the global economy in 2008.

The fact is, of course, that finance is a critical part of capitalism, and leveraged-buyout operations like Bain are right in there too.  The whole business of turning around failing businesses is a vital part of our economy.



You could say that the LBO boys perform a similar service to the health care industry.  Company gets sick, you send in the docs to figure out what is wrong.  With diagnosis in hand you come up with a treatment plan, which may include surgery, and probably will include life-style changes and more healthy exercise.



But if you talk to an average American she just wants to "save jobs."  The machinations of the turnaround artists are offensive to her.  People would rather not admit to losses until actual bankruptcy.  And, of course, an old-established firm is usually paying above-market wages to people that are not necessarily performing above the market.



Now that the fat is in the fire, Romney's people have to come out with a good story.  They must tell us that America is in a jam and we have to take bold action to get out of the jam and get the economy moving and return to prosperity.  Where would you look for someone with those talents?  Why, someone that had experience trying to turn failing companies around.  You certainly wouldn't expect a chap from a corrupt city machine to be of any use.



To start with, the Romney folks could make a campaign video to laugh at the "I like being able to fire people" meme.  He can put his "gaffe" up and then flash a picture of President Obama.  Or Harry Reid.  Or Nancy Pelosi.  Or the Goldman Sachs building.  Or some picture that says crony capitalism or bailouts.  Because America isn't going to get better until we've done some serious surgery on the body politic.



Mitt Romney needs to turn his lemons into lemonade.

What's the Story?

I suppose the Republican candidates are all busy fighting each other.  But I sure would like to get a feel for the story they are going to tell the American people come the fall.



It's not enough to be against Obama; you need to tell the story about why he is a disaster for America and why the Republican agenda is good for America.



For instance, I don't think that this Romney retort to an Occupy protester does the job.

“You know what?” Romney said. “This president has caused a deepening recession and is responsible for 25 million Americans being out of work or stopped working or not being able to get jobs, and let me tell you, this president’s been a failure and that’s one of the reasons I’m running is to help you get a job.”

Republicans need a better story than that.  OK, genius, you say, what's your idea?



I think it must start from the basic failure of Obama's presidency, the failure to realize in the transition after the election that the game had changed.  There just wasn't going to be the money to run off all the liberal agenda items that had been kept on ice for 20 years.  Forget the porkulus stimulus to pay off supporters.  Forget the cunning step towards single-payer healthcare.  Forget the uber-regulation of environment and energy.  Forget the wasteful infrastructure plans from high-speed rail to bike paths.



Of course, that would have been impossible for him.  To brush off his liberal supporters in 2009 would have been impossible.  But he could have slipped in a few policies to help gin the economy by lowering the costs of doing business.  He didn't of course, because Democrats don't think about things like that.  They don't think about helping the goose to lay the golden eggs; they just want the eggs.



So I think that the message should hit the truth that President Obama hasn't governed as a post partisan, hasn't worked to heal the divisions.  Instead he has pushed his left-liberal agenda as hard as possible, as if time was short and if he didn't get it done today he'd never get another chance.  Here's what I would say.



"Mr. President, you have wasted your chance.  You were elected at a moment of national peril, when you could have set the US on a new direction.  And you blew it.



"We needed jobs, and you gave us handouts.  We needed energy and you gave us crony capitalists.  We needed reform and you gave your pals bailouts.



"You talked of cutting spending, and you gave us waste.  You talked transparency, and you delivered back-room deals.



"You were elected to bring us together, and you forced us apart.



"You promised hope and change, and you gave us division.



"Your moment is wasted.  Your chance is gone.  America must come together under a new leader, a leader who will heal the wounds and lead us to prosperity.



"America needs a president who will unleash the power of America's workers and businesses and bring in a new age of prosperity.



"Some wail that the Republican agenda is nothing but 'austerity,' as governments are forced to cut back on programs.  I've got news for you, Mr President.  'Austerity' is when the people get less.  'Prosperity' is when the government gets less.



"Frankly, Mr. President, I don't care about the government.  I care about the American people.  And I am going to deliver prosperity.  Not to the K Street lobbyists.  Not to the crony capitalists. To the American people.



"It is the first thing I am going to do.  It will be the second thing I do, and it will be the last thing I do.



"I only care about one thing.  Bringing this economy back, and bringing America back.



"Because America is the last best home of mankind on earth. And America's 's best days are yet to come.



"God bless America."

Let's Keep Things The Way They Are

For Aristotle, the natural order of things is the hierarchical order of city-state Greece.  Masters rule over workers, patriarchs over households of women and slaves,  and statesmen over states.  Every action aims at some good, and the arts that combine subsidiary arts are better.  Thus the highest good involves the rule of the state, for politics encompasses all the other arts as its rule encompasses the rule of all the subsidiary groups.

"Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal."  Anyone outside the state, by nature rather than accident, is like Homer's denounced "tribeless, lawless, hearthless one."  But Aristotle is taking Homer's words out of context.

When the ageing Nestor pats Diomedes on the back and tells him he's young enough to be his son, and is really a good chap, he says

Surely a tribeless, lawless, homeless man
Is he who loves to stir the strife of war
In his own people

and not a nice young man like Diomedes.  Nestor is trying to calm the Achaeans, stirred up by Diomedes' harsh words against Agamemnon.  Agamemnon has had it with the Trojan War and Diomedes, to the approval of the troops, wants to continue.  Calm down, chaps; let's put a steak on the barbie, says Nestor.

By interpreting Nestor's remarks as a put-down of all heads of rebellion, Aristotle is revealing his wider agenda.  He wants not just the natural evolution of things, but a specific order of things.   He asserts the natural evolution of separated villages to coalesce into a state, thus enabling the bare needs of life to expand into the good life.  Parts coalesce into wholes, wholes into bigger wholes and the more developed a thing, the closer it is to its nature.  But that is not enough.  He wants the old to rule the young, for the old aim at knowledge, not action.  And of course men should rule over women and slaves and the Greeks should rule over barbarians, as today we would say that the educated should rule over the bigots and the bitter clingers.

This is a view of social life that experiences the good as an eternal hierarchy, a return to a golden age after the humiliation of the Peloponnesian War.  It does not seem to comprehend the cycle of rise and fall, of birth and death.  We moderns believe it is precisely in the conflict between young and old, between the established order and the rebellious tribeless, lawless, hearthless ones that life is injected into a declining dynasty, and a new social order grows out of an exploitative patriarchy. Natural to us means to maintain a harmony with the growth and the cycles of Nature.

For Aristotle the "final cause and end of a thing" is the best.  For us it is the fleeting moment before the onset of "creative destruction" or the fin de siècle before the revolution.

Obama Deepens the Divide

The Gang of 14 that tried to compromise the Democratic filibustering of judges during the Bush administration had a reason for their fudge.  They knew that the "nuclear option" of demanding an up or down vote on judges would deepen the red-blue divide.  It would make Democratic supporters mad.



Politicians are famous for avoiding tough decisions; they know that people on the wrong side of a tough decision appear in force at the next election.  Politicians want their supporters to be energized and raring to vote.  They want the opposition to be divided and demoralized.



So when President Obama does a recess appointment of Richard Cordray as chief of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three recess appointments on the National Labor Relations Board when Congress technically isn't in recess he is asking for a fight.  He is sharpening the red-blue divide in America.



When Republicans do this sort of thing the mainstream media regards it as outrageously "divisive."



I'm not anxious to argue the constitutionality of the president's actions.  Clearly the Republicans are playing games and using technical gimmicks to avoid a formal "recess."



My concern is something bigger.  It comes from my definition of "government is force, and politics is talking about force."  Or you could say that politics is civil war by other means.  On this understanding of politics and government you have in your mind all the time the fact that any winner on any issue in politics is winning a fight, not persuading the losers about an argument.  That is why politicians usually try to pass big issues with a "bipartisan majority."  They want to create the atmospherics of consensus, that everybody got something to take home with them.



The great achievements of the Obama administration have mostly been raw partisan victories: stimulus, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank.  In addition the Obama victories have been expressions of the pure liberal approach to politics, that almost everything could and should be a bureaucratically administered program of regulation.  Thus there is almost nothing in the Obama achievements that conservatives have participated in and have supported.  Conservatives believe that government programs and regulations are wasteful at best and usually end up as a corrupt banquet of the special interests.



There was another time in our history when the nation was profoundly divided about its future and when each side used every trick in the book to get one-up on the opposition.  It was the 1850s in the run-up to the Civil War.

Can Romney Beat the Mark of Bain?

Candidate Mitt Romney advertises his private sector experience as a qualification for the presidency.  Democrats say that Romney at Bain Capital put "profits over people."



Here's Randy Johnson, a worker laid off when Bain Capital decided to close a plant during a labor dispute.  "I really think [Romney] didn’t care about the workers. It was all about profit over people."



It's interesting how union members, whose unions work through intimidation, are outraged when other people do the power play.



But there are many Americans that long for a lifetime job and bridle at the fluctuations in the capitalist market place.  They take personally the decisions of business leaders and blame them for the failures that hurt them personally.



Or, like a Seattle supermarket checker told me a year ago, they don't want to close the state liquor stores because they don't want to lose the jobs.



They are asking for something that they cannot have except under communism.  And that, we remember, was a system where the government pretended to pay the workers and the workers pretended to work.



One fine day, conservatives are going to have to persuade Americans that we are all better off if we let the market do its work, accept that businesses rise and fall, and that people suffer when once proud titans of industry fall to earth.



Because the future is uncertain, and many magnificent plans shrivel up in the cold light of day.



Meanwhile, Mitt Romney needs to do something about the mark of Bain, and persuade us that he can  move the economy off its Obama dead center.

Decline of Violence and Guns

In his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker documents the extraordinary decline of violence, from 500 deaths per 100,000 per year in the non-state hunter-gatherer era, to about one tenth of that number in the agricultural state era to the present 1 to 5 deaths per 100,000 per year in the industrial democracies?



What did it?  Well, first of all, it was states with police and courts that put a stop to the private justice of feud and revenge.  And also the Humanitarian Revolution of the 18th century and the Rights Revolution of the 20th century.  And "gentle commerce."



So what about the conservative line of More Guns Less Crime?  Pinker notes that violence is higher in the South and the gun culture.



But it is also higher, he admits, in the inner city, where the peace of the Leviathan state doesn't extend.  That's because the police don't bother to enforce the law for the poor in the inner city.  The police "seem to vacillate between indifference and hostility,... reluctant to become involved in their affairs but heavy handed when they do so."  A Harlem police sergeant describes how this works.

Last weekend, a known neighborhood knucklehead hit a kid.  In retaliation, the kid's whole family shows up at the perp's apartment... The victim's family was looking for a fight... But all of them were street shit, garbage.  They will get justice in their own way.

The police and the district attorney could have prosecuted, but "none of them would ever show up in court."



This, of course, is why the conservative argument about guns and concealed carry works.  It's because liberals have so bollixed up the policing of the poor that the writ of the government of a monopoly on violence doesn't extend to the inner city.  Policing of the poor is a battle royal between liberals who say that violence is due to "root causes" like poverty and conservatives calling for law and order.  In that no-mansland, justice and policing have collapsed, and private justice obtains.



Fortunately, in some places, policing has been restored to the inner city.  There is Bill Bratton's work in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, based on the "broken windows" theory of James Q. Wilson to prosecute minor disorders, and implemented through a system called CompStat that tracks crimes and measures the effectiveness of police in following up.



But the Bratton system is hard work.  The CompStat system requires leaders at the top to work hard pushing the neighborhood officers to perform.  You can't expect too much out of that when you consider that police are, after all, uniformed unionized bureaucrats.  And there are always liberal social justice groups looking for a way to accuse officers of "police brutality."  The default position for the police is just to show up and let the activists fight it out.



Steven Pinker has to tread carefully.  He can't rubbish his liberal friends too much, or they will trash his book.  But he wouldn't want to give conservatives too much credit.  That might encourage the fascists.  That makes his book into a work of Straussian esoterics.  For the street liberal, the book is OK because it mouths all the liberal shibboleths.  But if you know where to look, it tells a different story.



In my view, the whole thing comes down to commerce.  Business needs peace, and business encourages trust in strangers.  Fierce local and tribal rivalries are bad for business, and so, wherever business grows, violence declines.  It takes a lot of work by liberal and lefty agitators to keep the people enraged at greedy businessmen and corporations.



And wherever liberals have destroyed the peace with their destructive politics, people will need guns to defend themselves against liberal anarchy.