Aristotle on the Purpose of Life

Tree of Life · Sep 15, 2014

Mark, I believe I've seen you post elsewhere that there is no such thing as "the common good of humanity". Yet here you seem to espouse that humanity does have a common nature.

Am I misunderstanding or misreading your position?

How can there be a common human nature but no such thing as the "common good" for humanity.

ToddNotTodd · Sep 15, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
Did you watch the video? It would be interesting to see you respond to the points made there. I was really looking for a reaction to the video.

Since I was already familiar with Aristotle's ideas, I hadn't watched the video. But I went ahead and gave it a go. And then stopped shortly into the video when the speaker made a mistake within the first minute. As anyone with half a brain knows, the ergon of a hand saw is to make music. And if the speaker couldn't get a simple fact like that correct, I had no confidence in whatever else he had to say. I was extremely embarrassed for him...

Eudaimonist · Sep 15, 2014

Tree of Life said:
Mark, I believe I've seen you post elsewhere that there is no such thing as "the common good of humanity".

Yes, and I stand by that statement.

Yet here you seem to espouse that humanity does have a common nature.

Having a nature in common with other human beings doesn't mean that one is merely part of a Borg Collective, i.e., some sort of super-organism.

What we share "in common" are features such as the capacity for rational thought, language, socialization, and the like. However, no matter how similar we are to other people, we are still particular individuals. For instance, two people may have the capacity for abstract thought, but both may have differing IQs.

So, having things in common with others doesn't mean that we cease to be individuals and have something like a "common good".

eudaimonia,

Mark

Eudaimonist · Sep 15, 2014

ToddNotTodd said:
Since I was already familiar with Aristotle's ideas, I hadn't watched the video. But I went ahead and gave it a go. And then stopped shortly into the video when the speaker made a mistake within the first minute. As anyone with half a brain knows, the ergon of a hand saw is to make music. And if the speaker couldn't get a simple fact like that correct, I had no confidence in whatever else he had to say. I was extremely embarrassed for him...

We could have had an interesting conversation, but you seem uninterested in that. It's your choice.

eudaimonia,

Mark

ToddNotTodd · Sep 15, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
We could have had an interesting conversation, but you seem uninterested in that. It's your choice.

eudaimonia,

Mark

I think you missed the point of my response. My point is that there are no objective "purposes" for anything. Are you denying that the purpose of a hand saw is to make music? What would be your reason to deny it?

Tree of Life · Sep 15, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
So, having things in common with others doesn't mean that we cease to be individuals and have something like a "common good".

Why do individuality and common good preclude one another?

Eudaimonist · Sep 15, 2014

ToddNotTodd said:
I think you missed the point of my response. My point is that there are no objective "purposes" for anything. Are you denying that the purpose of a hand saw is to make music? What would be your reason to deny it?

Okay, we'll talk more about function (ergon). I'll get back to you in a bit about that.

eudaimonia,

Mark

Eudaimonist · Sep 15, 2014

Tree of Life said:
Why do individuality and common good preclude one another?

When I criticize the concept of a common good, I am criticizing the idea that there is a "higher" good that exists separately from individual goods, because society is conceived of as a kind of super-organism that has its own special good. But society is not an organism, but is rather individuals and their dynamic relationships. It is not the sort of entity that can live or die -- only individuals live or die.

eudaimonia,

Mark

FireDragon76 · Sep 16, 2014

Deidre32 said:
When I read that Aristotle condoned slavery and was also a sexist, I lost respect for him. Goes to show one can be extraordinarily intelligent but quite ignorant, all at the same time. And I don't buy "he was a product of his time." It's sadly surprising to me when I see people like him follow the herd when it's convenient.

That seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

FireDragon76 · Sep 16, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
It is only when this life is seen merely as a preliminary to some afterlife, like an examination that one must endure, that this life is cheapened. Afterlives tend to cheapen this life.

Mark

Unless of course, a person's life has been short or miserable, in which case an afterlife can make this life seem bearable. There is also the issue of whether a short and/or miserable life is just, if there is an afterlife with a settling of accounts then that makes all the difference.

GrowingSmaller · Sep 20, 2014

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people like afterlife ideas and other do not.

In the opening of the koran it states fsome people "yuminoona bil ghayb" or believe (feel safe, secure) in the realtion to unseen. It stems from amana/iman which means belief or faith, and ghayb which means unseen. Bil means something klike via, as in via reain or bus. In Islam there are beautiful aspects to the unseen, for instance when people gather to discuss knowledge it is said that angels are there also praying for them. Even if this is regarded as a virtual world or imaginary, it has a nice poetry to it IMO.

Eudaimonist · Sep 22, 2014

ToddNotTodd said:
I think you missed the point of my response. My point is that there are no objective "purposes" for anything. Are you denying that the purpose of a hand saw is to make music? What would be your reason to deny it?

I remember some guy coming to our high school to play Star Trek's opening theme music on his hand saw. I mean, of course, for the original Star Trek, but that was the only Trek at the time. My memory is fuzzy, but the saw probably looked similar to this:

He played it as a caricature of the original music, making it an amusing performance. He did not attempt to sing. He only imitated the "twanging" aspect of the music.

Something I could not help but notice back then is how inconvenient a hand saw is as a musical instrument. The serration and sharp edge of a saw is completely unnecessary to its use as a musical instrument, and makes it dangerous to the musician. The handle was also not shaped to be held in the way that he did, but rather to be used in a back and forth cutting motion. And the bottom of the saw, against the floor, could easily slip if he wasn't careful.

While one can certainly use a hand saw as a musical instrument, it is not well-formed for that purpose.

BTW, no one, not even Aristotle, would deny that one can use a tool for a purpose that it is not well-formed. Nor would Aristotle deny that an entity could, in principle, be well-formed for a number of different sorts of work, and therefore have more than one ergon. That goes for living beings as well.

I want you to adopt a perspective more like Aristotle's for the moment. Did you see the movie AI? Do you remember the Speilberg aliens at the end of the movie?

Those aliens were archaeologists. Humanity had long since gone extinct (and the child in the photo was actually an android), and the aliens were attempting to learn about us as a species. If such an alien were to discover a saw, how do you think it would classify it? What do you think it would recognize about its defining function? Would it be more likely to classify it as a cutting tool, or as a musical instrument?

If you ask me, there is no doubt that these aliens would conclude that the saw is a cutting tool, and if they were to discover that it could also be used as a crude musical instrument, this would earn it little more than a footnote somewhere.

No one doubts that a hand saw can be used as a musical instrument, but that is not how I would understand the defining function of a saw based on its construction.

eudaimonia,

Mark

Eudaimonist · Sep 22, 2014

FireDragon76 said:
Unless of course, a person's life has been short or miserable, in which case an afterlife can make this life seem bearable.

I can see how someone could have that perspective.

There is also the issue of whether a short and/or miserable life is just, if there is an afterlife with a settling of accounts then that makes all the difference.

That's assuming that life has to be just. It doesn't.

But we are straying from the subject of meaning here. Justice is only one possible meaning out of many.

eudaimonia,

Mark

Usus Vox Tractus · Sep 22, 2014

GrowingSmaller said:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people like afterlife ideas and other do not.

In the opening of the koran it states fsome people "yuminoona bil ghayb" or believe (feel safe, secure) in the realtion to unseen. It stems from amana/iman which means belief or faith, and ghayb which means unseen. Bil means something klike via, as in via reain or bus. In Islam there are beautiful aspects to the unseen, for instance when people gather to discuss knowledge it is said that angels are there also praying for them. Even if this is regarded as a virtual world or imaginary, it has a nice poetry to it IMO.

Well, science is scratching a hole in it's head trying to figure out dark matter....an overlapping dimension/s made of real matter at a larger octave would fit the bill for both science and religion.

Usus Vox Tractus · Sep 22, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
I can see how someone could have that perspective.

That's assuming that life has to be just. It doesn't.

But we are straying from the subject of meaning here. Justice is only one possible meaning out of many.

eudaimonia,

Mark

Electromagnetism is "justice". Natural balance of charge difference. Within our bodies there is a certain amount of shielding. Upon dropping the body, that shielding is no longer there and we are exposed directly to the universe.

Deidre32 · Sep 22, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
I don't think that you realize just how much thought from hundreds of people it took to create the progressive culture of the 21st Century. What seems obvious to us today wasn't so obvious back then. What you are describing is very radical for the day. It took a while for philosophers to develop more progressive ideas.

eudaimonia,

Mark

Ironically, if the Jesus story is true, he treated women quite differently than those that came years after him. And he lived in a culture where sexism permeated it.

I hear you, but I think it's a matter of will and not a victim of the culture, that renders people to look down on a certain class of others.

Deidre32 · Sep 22, 2014

Chany said:
I take it you don't like any philosophers until the 20th century, right?

You say he is ignorant, but then go onto say you don't buy the "product of his time" notion? Which is it?

No, there are still plenty of sexist types today who are scientists, philosophers, etc... It's a choice. And mere intelligence doesn't cause me to applaud someone if they are incapable of treating everyone as equals.

If you admire those types, that's your choice, too.

Chany · Sep 22, 2014

Deidre32 said:
No, there are still plenty of sexist types today who are scientists, philosophers, etc... It's a choice. And mere intelligence doesn't cause me to applaud someone if they are incapable of treating everyone as equals.

If you admire those types, that's your choice, too.

I don't like the word "choice". It implies things that I don't think are true. I prefer "decision", as it seems more like the result of a process.

I am saying that you cannot just throw out someone's ideas on the basis that the person is sexist because almost every single thinker until very recently was sexist by today's standards.

Deidre32 · Sep 22, 2014

Chany said:
I don't like the word "choice". It implies things that I don't think are true. I prefer "decision", as it seems more like the result of a process.

I am saying that you cannot just throw out someone's ideas on the basis that the person is sexist because almost every single thinker until very recently was sexist by today's standards.

Perhaps. no worries, we shall agree to disagree on all that, then.

FireDragon76 · Sep 22, 2014

Eudaimonist said:
That's assuming that life has to be just. It doesn't.
Mark

If life doesn't have to be just, then what's the point of pursuing justice or acknowledging justice in the first place?

Kant noted that there is an apparent lack of reward for following virtuous behavior. So he believed the only way that virtue could be reconciled with wellbeing was to assume the existence of an afterlife.

I'm not sure I'd go that far... but if there is no afterlife, then what is virtuous may well turn out to be something more akin to "enlightened self interest", which may vary from individual to individual. For some people that might mean a life of crime better suits them than working a low-wage service job, for instance.

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