Nicomachean Ethics – Aristotle (Friendship)

January 7, 2013

Devon Sampson Human Psychology, Philosophy, Social Dynamics , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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“In poverty as well as in other misfortunes, people suppose that friends are their only refuge.” (1155a11)

“When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they do need friendship in addition” (1155a26)

“Friendship is not only necessary but also noble, for we praise those who love their friends, and an abundance of friends is held to be a noble thing. Further, people suppose good men and their friends to be one and the same.” (1155a29)

“Those who swiftly make proofs of friendship to each other wish to be friends but are not such unless they are also lovable and know this about each other. For a wish for friendship arises swiftly, but friendship itself does not.” (1156b30)
 

Friendship based on utility belongs to those who frequent the marketplace. And although the blessed have no need of useful people, they do of pleasant ones (1158a22)

 
“He who would accuse the other of not pleasing him would appear laughable, since it is possible for him not to spend his days together with him. But friendship based on utility is prone to accusations.” (1162b17)

“Goodwill seems, therefore, to be the beginning of friendship, just as the pleasure stemming from sight is the beginning of erotic love.” (1167a3)

“To be like-minded is not for each to have the same thing in mind, whatever it may be, but to have it in mind in the same way” (1167a34)

“For him who has produced it [a benefaction], then, the work endures (for what is noble is long-lasting), whereas for the recipient, its usefulness passes away.” (1168a16)
 

The serious person, insofar as he is serious, delights in actions that accord with virtue and is disgusted by those that stem from vice, just as the musical person is pleased by beautiful melodies and pained by bad ones. And a certain training in virtue would arise from living with those who are good (1170a9)

 
“Having more friends than is sufficient for one’s own life…is superfluous and an impediment to living nobly.” (1170b26)

“And with a view to pleasure too, a few friends are enough, just as with seasoning in food.” (1170b28)

“One’s friends ought to be friends with one another, if all are going to spend their days with one another, but it is a task for this to happen among numerous people. It is also difficult for many to share intimately in both joys and sufferings, for it is likely to happen that one shares simultaneously the pleasure of one person and the grief of another.” (1171a7)

“It is not possible to be a friend to many if the friendship is based on virtue and on what the people involved are in themselves, and it is desirable enough to find even a few people of this sort.” (1171a19)

“Seeing friends is itself pleasant, especially for someone suffering misfortune, and is some aid in not feeling pain: both the sight of a friend and his speech are apt to console one, if he is tactful, since he knows his friend’s character and in what ways he is pleased and pained.” (1171b3)

The Hidden Price of the Unearned

January 16, 2012

Devon Sampson Ayn Rand, Original Content, Politics , , , , , Leave a comment

Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.

-Malcolm S. Forbes

Like most people, I do not enjoy losing.

But that is just what I experienced some hours ago. Since I like to multitask while listening to audiobooks (I’m a voracious listener as well as a voracious reader), I played EA Sports’ NHL 12. A week ago, I had started a playoff run with the Boston Bruins (with a fantasy draft before the season, so the team was an eclectic mix of players), and now I was in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Detroit Red Wings. It was a dramatic, far-too-intense-for-a-video-game series that had reached a 7th and deciding game. My team, however, was down by a goal with 50 seconds left, but then my Bruins beared down and tied the game! My euphoria continued well after the ensuing face-off at centre ice – but it ended abruptly seconds later when Detroit came back and immediately took the lead again! This time, their lead would hold up and I lost the (virtual) Stanley Cup.

I was devastated.

This may seem like an overreaction, but I had a lot of time invested with this (virtual) team and it was a bitter feeling to come up short. I thought to myself, “If only the result could be different…”

But then I stopped myself. For at that exact moment, a particularly relevant Ayn Rand quote came to mind:

There is no conflict of the interests among men who do not desire the unearned.

Now, it is one thing to read that quote in a neutral emotional state, with no immediate conflict facing you. It is quite another to hear that quote in the midst of a torrent of melancholy and frustration. However, the quote still struck me as profoundly true.

Since, however, emotions are not tools of cognition (but rather, a sort of adviser for what your conscious mind should focus on) I decided to divert my attention away from my broken heart and consider why that particular quote struck me as true.

This led to me to the following thought experiment: what if the players in my virtual Stanley Cup Finals were real? And what if my team still lost to Detroit? If I could reverse the NHL’s verdict to award the Stanley Cup to Detroit rather than my Bruins, without changing the scores of any of the games or the fact that Detroit had technically earned it, would I?

This is actually an extremely complex thought experiment because there are many factors to consider that are not immediately obvious. I’ll summarize my thinking below:

  • If I reverse the decision, I win the Stanley Cup and feel good, but not as good as if I had earned it.
  • In addition, Detroit, the team that did earn it, would not be able to reap the rewards of their effort.
  • Through my own actions, I have given my fullest consent to a world (or social system) in which those who earn values may not get to keep those values.
  • Therefore, if I ever earn something myself it is unlikely that I will be able to reap the rewards of my success.

A mere desire for the unearned is contradictory to a desire to be able to keep that which you earn. It is not just an act of resistance against a free and just society, it is a rebellion against the Law of Causality itself. Since I do not desire an irrational world, I would therefore refuse to accept the Stanley Cup that I did not earn and congratulate the Detroit Red Wings on their hard-fought victory.

Those of you who are particularly astute may have already realized that this concept is applicable to any other situation where there is a “conflict of interest”, from job searches to love triangles.

There is a difference between someone who has lost and someone who is a loser. The purpose of this article was to further illuminate this distinction.

But it’s still going to take me a few days to get over this loss…

The Virtue of Selfishness – Ayn Rand (Introduction)

December 1, 2011

Devon Sampson Ayn Rand, Human Psychology , , , , , Leave a comment

 

The Virtue of Selfishness is a collection of essays regarding the topic of individual rights, ethics, values, and the subtly corrosive effect that altruism and collectivism have. What is especially remarkable about this book is her superior use of logic. The Virtue of Selfishness is not an emotional appeal to get you to believe in her cause; it is a thoroughly argued, brilliantly reasoned argument for liberty and individual rights. Although Rand has been received an equal amount of criticism as she has received praise, it is rare to find one such detractor who dares challenge her logic.

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“In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.

This concept does not include a moral evaluation” (vii)

A common fallacy is substituting a particular concrete – the ethics of altruism – for the wider abstract class to which it belongs – the entire field of ethics. Not only is this confusing for those who practice ethics, but even worse, it discourages many others from having any standard of ethics. Rand states this the best:

The first thing (man) learns is that morality is his enemy; he has nothing to gain from it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the gray, debilitating pall of an incomprehensible duty is all that he can expect. (viii-ix)

Altruist ethics imply that there is no moral difference between an industrialist who makes a fortune for himself and a common robber. Rand explains the “fundamental moral difference”:

The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as his own interests; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value (ix)

The pervasive influence of altruism also has profound psychological consequences, as Rand illustrates:

If you wonder about the reasons behind the ugly mixture of cynicism and guilt which most (people) spend their lives, these are the reasons: cynicism, because they neither practice nor accept the altruist morality – guilt, because they dare not reject it. (x)

However, the other side of the coin is not right either. “Nietzschean egoists”, as Rand refers to them, believe that regardless of nature, any action intended for one’s own benefit is good. What they fail to recognize is that morality is not defined by the beneficiary of one’s actions, but rather, the rationality of one’s actions.

Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy is about rational self-interest, not simply one’s self-interest.

Altruism, however, makes no distinction between the man who is primarily concerned with his rational self-interest and the hedonistic brute.