Category Archives: History of Philosophy

Codes in Aristotle’s Moral Reasoning

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“As Aristotle consistently says, the best generalizations about how one should behave hold only for the most part.  If one attempted to reduce one’s conception of what virtue requires to a set of rules, then, however subtle and thoughtful one was in drawing up the code, cases would inevitably turn up in which a mechanical application of the rules would strike one as wrong— and not necessarily because one had changed one’s mind; rather, one’s mind on the matter was not susceptible of capture in any universal formula”  -John McDowell (1)

The above viewpoint articulated by McDowell is also called by him “non-codifiability.”  That is, knowledge of ethical reasoning is non-discursive, it is irreducible to rules, precepts or other, linguistic or not, ways of conceptualization.

However, someone may object that such a view cannot be sustained, that in fact when ethical generalizations are made correctly, they are exemplars of codifiability.  In order to see why this is so, let us distinguish between two kinds of moral generalizations.

  1. Simple Generalization:
    In situation X, do Y.
  1. Sophisticated Generalization:
    In situation X, do Y most of the time.

It would be granted, I think, that moral reasoning involving type A would be problematic, for the reason that McDowell, merely echoing Aristotle, points out above.  There would be too many exceptions to this kind of rule to be productively reliable.  Furthermore, perhaps, such indeterminate applicability even undermines its status as a rule. 

Thus the Sophisticated Generalization is an improved version of the Simple Generalization, for it accommodates the “what if” scenarios implied in the Simple Generalization.  However, the Sophisticated Generalization, to return to the original objection, seems (problematically for the non-codifiabilist) to both explain moral reasoning and articulate it in a codifiable way.

However, let us see if the Sophisticated Generalization is actual codifiable.  Any statement allowing for variation or accommodation of an exception such as  “In situation X, do Y most of the time,” is really another way of saying that, “In situation X, do Y, except in case X1 do Y1, except in case X2 do Y2, etc.”  If this is the case though, this shows that the Sophisticated Generalization is not a general rule, but a set of particular rules collected into a dictum.  And if this collective of rules cannot allow for the nuance necessary in moral reasoning, for it will be hard to see at which point the exceptions will cease, then the Sophisticated Generalization falls prey to the same fault as the Simple Generalization.  Both are unable to parallel exhaustively, via a set of codes, the complexity or adaptive variation one encounters in day to day moral reasoning.    

(1) John McDowell, pg. 58, Virtue and Reason, in “Mind, Value and Reality”

Fear and Trembling in Hades

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As Socrates transitions from the proper praise for both men and gods, he then also introduces some guidance for how poetic depictions in his ideal city are to represent the afterlife, with particular consideration for how this will affect the guardian class. 

“And what if the men are to be courageous? So then should not one say such things so to make them fear death least of all?  Or do you think that someone with this fear in him would ever become courageous?”

“By Zeus,” he said, “I do not.”

“What, then?  Do you think anyone who believes in Hades and that it is terrible would be without fear and during battle would choose death before defeat and slavery?”

“Not at all.”
(Republic, 386a6-b7).

The problem Socrates identifies is that we understandably want to have courageous guardians.  Yet the tales traditionally told of Hades (the afterlife), at least some of them, tell us that the dead are gibbering, incorporeal wisps of humanity, mere shades who, even at their best, are worse than the worst estate of any living human.  If this is the case, there are few, if any, guardians who, although preserving the city by their own death, would willingly sacrifice themselves for a dismal and horrid afterlife.  Socrates’ solution is to ban poetry which relates this type of undesirable afterlife from his republic. 

On the other hand, if the poets only rhapsodized about the delights of the paradise yet to come, the guardians would not only be willing to die for their city, but they would positively jump at the opportunity to die in battle and consequently enter into heavenly bliss. 

There are some intriguing considerations that this scenario raises. It is obviously jarring that Socrates is not interested here in whether the tales these poets are raising are true, in either a literal or metaphorical sense.  It may be the case that there really is a hell, to use our term, and that some actually go there.(2)  But Socrates’ concern is more calculatingly practical, fixating on the overarching political need to have soldiers whose courage will not be blunted by a fearful avoidance of death.   

Furthermore there appears to be a tension between the incentives of good citizens and those good guardian-soldiers.  It seemed that in the first book of the Republic the worries of being unjust and base prompt one to behave in a just way, lest one die, be judged and depart into the hopeless abyss of Hades.  In the case of the guardians, however, the edifying influence of the fear of Hades is banished, at least by poets and poetry. 

REFERENCES:

(1)
Τί δὲ δὴ εἰ μέλλουσιν εἶναι ἀνδρεῖοι; ἆρα οὐ ταῦτά τε
λεκτέον καὶ οἷα αὐτοὺς ποιῆσαι ἥκιστα τὸν θάνατον δεδιέναι;
(b.) ἢ ἡγῇ τινά ποτ’ ἂν γενέσθαι ἀνδρεῖον ἔχοντα ἐν αὑτῷ τοῦτο
τὸ δεῖμα;
Μὰ Δία, ἦ δ’ ὅς, οὐκ ἔγωγε.
Τί δέ; τἀν Ἅιδου ἡγούμενον εἶναί τε καὶ δεινὰ εἶναι οἴει
τινὰ θανάτου ἀδεῆ ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἐν ταῖς μάχαις αἱρήσεσθαι
πρὸ ἥττης τε καὶ δουλείας θάνατον;
Οὐδαμῶς.

(2)
Contrast this with the myth of Er at the end of the Republic, which indeed does posit a hellish afterlife for the wicked.

   

Banishing “Laughter Loving” from the Republic

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Near the beginning of Book 3 of the Republic, Plato, through Socrates, tells us that the guardians, the soldier-police force of his ideal state, should not be lovers of laughter (φιλογέλως).  Why should this be?

First we must get a sense of what this term means, since some might mistakenly take laughter-loving to be, quite loosely, engaging in laughter at all.  But this is clearly an extreme construal of the term; rather, it is clarified by similar terms used in Book 6 where Socrates invokes “lover,” “wine-lover,” and “honor-lover” and others to hone in on what we mean by “love” in such words (474e-475b).  Socrates explains that the “love” in common between these uses of the term mean that,

whatever we say someone loves, it is necessary to say of him, if this is said correctly, that it is not the case he loves one part of it and does not love another part, but he loves all of it”  (Republic, 474c9-11) (1)

This is to say that the true lover of X does not love discriminately. As he later says of a lover of learning, he is not “annoyed at learning” (475b11). (2)  The lover of X is neither finicky nor does he refuse any appearance of X, but he cannot get enough of it, as we might say.  This lover of learning, the true philosopher, tastes of all learning and learns with delight (475c6-8). 

So we learn from this that a “lover” of X, pursues X to the extreme, has a mania for it, a certifiable obsession for finding and cherishing, say, wine, in all its forms.  This is one reason, then, why we do not want our military force of guardians to be lovers of laughter.  We do not want them to be pursuing laughter at the expense of the bodily and mental training necessary for a disciplined military.

But there is another reason to be wary of letting our soldiers indulge in loving laughter.  Mimesis is an overarching theme in Book 3 and it touches on laughter here as well.  At 395b-c Socrates says that we want our guardians to attend to one thing, the freedom of the city.  To this end they should be educated to imitate men who are, “courageous, moderate, pious, free and all such traits” (395c4-5). (3)  Not explicitly mentioned here, but obviously in mind, are the comedic plays of authors such as Aristophanes.  The characters in these plays are crude and buffoonish. As Aristotle characterizes comedy, these people are perceived to be beneath our station in life.  We have also been told that we need poets to compose characters who are worthy of emulation, unlike the sordid tales of adultery among the gods or unmoderated rage we find in Homer, for example.  Combining the above ideas, we do not want our guardians to have the disposition of laughter-loving, nor do we want to provide material which would encourage and develop the baser elements of character, which would distract guardians from their singular goal of ensuring the safety of the city.  We do not wish of our guardians buffoons, nor do we wish our city to be a haven of fools. 

REFERENCES:

(1)
ὃν ἂν φῶμεν φιλεῖν τι, δεῖ φανῆναι αὐτόν, ἐὰν ὀρθῶς
λέγηται, οὐ τὸ μὲν φιλοῦντα ἐκείνου, τὸ δὲ μή, ἀλλὰ πᾶν
στέργοντα

(2)
περὶ τὰ μαθήματα δυσχεραίνοντα 

(3)
ἀνδρείους, σώφρονας, ὁσίους, ἐλευθέρους, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα