[HN Gopher] Aristotle - How to live a good life
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Aristotle - How to live a good life
Author : thread_id
Score : 217 points
Date : 2024-08-16 07:20 UTC (15 hours ago)
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| z3t4 wrote:
| My empirical study of happy people comes down to these three
| points: * Have low expectations * Enjoy
| simple things * Don't care too much
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| I think it's fundamentally important to care deeply about some
| things e.g. your craft. As you tend to find joy when you're
| deep in flow state.I'd also add:
|
| * Don't argue with people on the internet
|
| You'd be inherently happier, also:
|
| * Enjoy irony when you can
| somenameforme wrote:
| Arguing is enjoyable and helps build the foundation of your
| beliefs IMO. Where people go wrong is expecting the other
| person to be converted to your beliefs or swayed by your
| argument. Even given the exact same data, evidence, and
| information, people can naturally and logically come to
| different conclusions. And ultimately, people will choose to
| believe (or not) what they want.
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| There's really something quite magical when you're having a
| debate with someone with vastly different views but they're
| reasonable and you both find common ground. Probably a good
| indication of partner compatibility - I don't think it's
| healthy if you and your partner have exactly the same
| views.
| graemep wrote:
| It certainly reflects my experience. A lot of my friends
| I people I will have arguments, frequently on topics that
| make people emotional and on which we have very different
| views: politics (including Brexit!), religion, gender
| identity, and so on.
|
| On the other hand that was not true of my EX-wife.
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| You're right, but sometimes you gotta realise you're being
| trolled or the person you're arguing with is not arguing in
| good faith. Maybe that's what he meant.
| port19 wrote:
| Still. At a minimum the troll will have fun, and when you
| notice it you can troll in return
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I've found that caring deeply about one's craft leads to
| being unhappy when the craft isn't perfect, unhappy with
| teammates who don't care as much as they do, unhappy with an
| industry that doesn't focus on the craft, unhappy with the
| customer who doesn't respect the end result, etc. That leads
| to conflict, and then nobody is happy. You can still care
| without caring deeply.
| mrtransient wrote:
| Can reduce these to:
|
| - Convert your personal Needs to your Wants/Wishes.
| incognito124 wrote:
| Not caring much is such a slippery slope, because it's so easy
| to turn it to a default.
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| Apathy is the opposite of love, not hate. A life of apathy,
| is a life without love.
| ben_w wrote:
| Apathy is the opposite of both love and hate (and several
| other things), because both of the latter require caring
| about a thing.
|
| A geometric simplex, not a simple linear scale:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Indeed, if apathy is the absence of caring, and caring is
| part of both love and hate, then I don't think any of
| these are opposites of each other, they are merely things
| that can not co-exist.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I often wonder if apathy is just the _belief_ that one is
| without love, not actually being without love. I think we
| die pretty fast if we don 't have love and attachment to
| things, even at the most basic level of air, water, food,
| and shelter.
| z3t4 wrote:
| not caring as in, not caring if you get rejected. Not
| caring what others think when you peruse what makes you
| happy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm trying to find how to maintain passion, drive and fun. The
| 'low expectations' philosophy always feel gray to me.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yeah, I see a lot of what OP recommended as strategies to
| suppress and numb, which I think don't work very well for
| also having passion, drive, and fun.
| xelxebar wrote:
| Is a happy life a good life? I'm really not sure, but pursuit
| of the former is more of a modern conception of value as far as
| I can tell.
|
| Living a happy life and living a meaningful life aren't
| entirely the same thing. Not that you claimed they were, but I
| personally find it fruitful to cognate on the different
| lifestyles implied by optimizing for different values and how
| they fit together.
|
| In particular, as we get older I think we also get more
| skillful at handling our own internal and external conditions
| to create a comfortable-like happiness. However, one of those
| skills is filtering out potentials for discomfort from
| unexpected events. Well made plans and expertly crafted systems
| of comfort also function as barriers between you and the larger
| world in a sense. Is that desirable?
|
| In my experience, negative-valence emotions like non-panic
| fear, confusion, dissatisfaction, et al necessarily invoke an
| associated underlying value, providing a creative and
| productive impetus to produce said value(s). How desirable is
| that?
|
| </musings>
| defrost wrote:
| > but pursuit of the former [ happiness ] is more of a modern
| conception ..
|
| Not at all, Epicurus asserted that
| philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others
| attain happy (eudaimonic), tranquil lives characterized by
| ataraxia (peace and freedom from fear) and aponia (the
| absence of pain). He advocated that people were
| best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient
| life surrounded by friends. He taught that the
| root of all human neuroses is denial of death and the
| tendency for human beings to assume that death will be
| horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary
| anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy.
|
| ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| This is a horrible way to live a life.
| yimmothathird wrote:
| Im sure ifbits perfectly fine if you pair it with a nice lead
| based diet.
| jddj wrote:
| Unfortunately, you can fit most of the field of philosophy
| inside the nuances of item 3.
| jajko wrote:
| I would add optional 4) for those who like some improvement in
| life (and who doesn't) - recognize those few important
| moments/periods when situation comes around that can change
| rest of your life, or walk towards it and create one yourself.
| Work hard with it, achieve what you desire to, and come back to
| more, even better chill.
|
| It can have many forms - which job you take, where you decide
| to move/settle, partners, family decisions etc.
|
| One random example - I know tons of people from ie high school
| that could permanently improve their lives if they properly
| (re)learned a given foreign language. They have plenty of time.
| But they are too much in their 'comfort' zone to even try, even
| though they are rarely actually long term happy. Sometimes the
| effort would be couple of months, sometimes one long afternoon.
|
| Another personal one - moving to a better country. Few
| challenging months of looking for job on site (which also gave
| tons of personal growth and mental resilience), accommodation,
| understanding and adapting to different society etc. and riding
| the resulting improved situation for rest of my life. Nobody
| too chill is ever going to wade through that.
|
| One mistake is to start effort and just keep pushing for next
| challenges and achievements. Eventually everybody hits the
| wall, physical or mental. It may look great from outside, but
| thats about it. And a lot of damage in life can be already done
| at that point.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Forgot the most important one:
|
| * have money
| eleveriven wrote:
| These points suggest a mindset that values contentment over
| constant pursuit of more
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Almost; you're missing gratitude. It's the "one weird trick" to
| happiness.
| vasco wrote:
| > 2400 years ago Aristotle found out how to be happy.
|
| Citation needed
|
| > First of all, what makes a thing a good thing? A good thing
| fulfils its unique function.
|
| Something can be good or even the best without being unique, in
| fact we can only say things are good relatively to other things
| in a similar category, otherwise we cannot know. Good or bad only
| makes sense by comparison and uniqueness is rarely the factor.
|
| > what is unique about humans: We have a soul that thinks and
| feels
|
| Have you ever interacted with a dog for more than 30 seconds?
|
| Philosophers are very good at telling others how to be happy
| while living miserable lives.
| pavlovsgods wrote:
| May we stand judged by our own actions and words and not by SEO
| posts portraying them :p Aristotle is well worth reading for
| someone interested in philosophy, but he himself did not claim
| to have discovered how to be happy (he thought of himself as
| explicating and systematizing what everyone thinks about
| happiness), his notion of telos (poorly translated as
| 'function') is not subject to your rightly raised objection,
| and, though he did believe that humans are distinguished from
| non-human animals by possession of a rational faculty, he
| thought we shared with non-human animals the capacity to feel.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| You're splitting hairs and attacking choices of words that were
| not made by Aristotle, but the author in trying to summarize
| Aristotle. You need to put away this sort of sophistry if you
| want to engage with philosophy.
|
| Like
|
| > > what is unique about humans: We have a soul that thinks and
| feels
|
| > Have you ever interacted with a dog for more than 30 seconds?
|
| You're engaging with half a sentence. The important part is
| _thinks_.
|
| Aristotle and Plato broke down the human soul into three parts.
| A hungry part that we share with plants, animals and other
| humans, an emotional part that we share with animals, and a
| rational "thinking" part that humans alone possess (though
| later thinkers like Pico della Mirandola suggest we share it
| with the angels).
|
| https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
| vasco wrote:
| Dogs think. Someone not having this basic knowledge of the
| world is surprising.
|
| And I've read plenty of philosophy and engage with it just
| fine. I think it's perfectly fine to break apart the basic
| premises of something because you avoid wasting the time
| reading the conclusions.
|
| And in fact my criticism is to the author, not to Aristotle
| or Plato, although I don't agree with all that I've read that
| they wrote they were much smarter than me. I just have been
| able to read way more than them.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Dogs think.
|
| This is certainly an assertion, given it's hard, bordering
| on impossible to to demonstrate that other humans think.
| vasco wrote:
| If your definition of "think" doesn't directly describe
| the cognitive processes that happen when humans process
| and react from the inputs they get, then what does the
| word mean to you? If you don't agree that humans think,
| then I think we just need another word. But that other
| word, applies to both humans and dogs and many other
| living things.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| In this context I'm trying to capture something like
| reasoning, logos.
|
| Philosophy is also not about what we think is true, but
| what statements we can defend. Solipsism is a notoriously
| difficult position to attack, even if we do not subscribe
| to it.
| mannykannot wrote:
| While solipsism itself is a difficult (and arguably
| pointless) position to attack, it has been my experience
| that arguments invoking it are often vulnerable to the
| charge of doing so inconsistently.
| port19 wrote:
| I think you two are looking for the word consciousness.
| Or sense of self. For both it's debatable if dogs have it
| vasco wrote:
| Consciousness for me is a more sophisticated process than
| "simpler" thinking.
|
| When I say thinking I mean things like planning to get a
| snack by pushing a chair in front of a counter to then
| jump up and open a cabinet and then even being ingenious
| enough to pretend not to have done it, even putting the
| chair back and hiding the snack if spotted. This is
| obviously not just "see snack get snack" reactive
| operation. What I think is debatable dogs may have are
| things like metacognition which I'd put under the
| consciousness umbrella. Even that I've seen examples, but
| I agree its much rarer.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Dogs think._
|
| The fashion in which they do it is recognized by Aristotle
| in _Historia Animalium_ , as well as in _Metaphysics_ and
| _De Anima_.
|
| He also mentions it in passing in _Nicomachean Ethics_
| (III.ii)
|
| > _Choice, then, seems to be voluntary, but not the same
| thing as the voluntary; the latter extends more widely. For
| both children and the lower animals share in voluntary
| action, but not in choice, and acts done on the spur of the
| moment we describe as voluntary, but not as chosen._
|
| * https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.3.iii.html
|
| > _It seems that choosing is willing, but that the two
| terms are not identical, willing being the wider. For
| children and other animals have will, but not choice or
| purpose; and acts done upon the spur of the moment are said
| to be voluntary, but not to be done with deliberate
| purpose._
|
| * https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/aristotle/nicomachean-
| ethi...
| quonn wrote:
| > First of all, what makes a thing a good thing? A good thing
| fulfils its unique function.
|
| Like a nuclear weapon?
| pavlovsgods wrote:
| Aristotle's conception of the goodness of a thing (which is not
| convincingly conveyed by the author) is essentially normatively
| neutral; a good knife qua knife for Aristotle is one that cuts
| well as a good nuclear weapon is one which is destructive.
| Using a nuclear weapon might not be good but just as a gun
| might be well-designed without being well-used I don't think it
| is too normatively concerning to be able to identify something
| as being a good example of its kind (a well-designed nuclear
| weapon), though I could be wrong!
| johanbcn wrote:
| If blasting other nations is your thing, then sure, why not?
| quonn wrote:
| Yeah, and that's why I'm doubting this definition is very
| useful.
|
| Aristoteles should also have gotten a chicken plucked on the
| market square ...
| somenameforme wrote:
| The author was referring to good as in quality, not the
| good/evil dichotomy.
| arethuza wrote:
| The US is apparently retaining components of some large H-bomb
| designs for "potential planetary defense purposes" - wouldn't
| that be a "good" function?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Role
| throw0101d wrote:
| >> _First of all, what makes a thing a good thing? A good thing
| fulfils its unique function._
|
| > _Like a nuclear weapon?_
|
| If the device in question sets off uncontrolled nuclear chain
| reaction, then yes, it is good _for its purpose as a nuclear
| weapon_.
|
| You are asking/implying: _is the nuclear weapon 's purpose good
| (in the first place)?_
|
| Something can be good for its purpose (e.g., electric chair
| [0]), but the good/badness of that purpose is a separate
| question.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_chair
| geye1234 wrote:
| A nuke can be good considered in itself (effective at leveling
| a city), and bad considered in relation the person who presses
| the button and thereby commits mass murder.
|
| It is the latter that makes nuking a city a bad deed.
| iammrpayments wrote:
| The ultimate goal of a nuclear a weapon (as of any weapon) is
| to keep peace.
|
| As it is said in the art of war, the good general is the one
| who wins without having to draw his sword.
|
| So a good nuclear weapon is one that you will never need to
| use.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| "The ultimate goal of a nuclear a weapon (as of any weapon)
| is to keep peace."
|
| This certainly does not seem obvious to me. It seems
| eminently arguable that the ultimate goal of a weapon is to
| make someone else do what you want or eliminate them or
| punish them if they do not. Or the ultimate goal of a weapon
| is to kill something to eat it. Or other stuff. When the
| first ape-map picked up the first jaw bone with the intent of
| bashing in another person's head, I doubt he was thinking
| "I'm looking forward to keeping this peace with this."
| rubymamis wrote:
| > We cannot study rules for proper behaviour. Instead, we must
| train our character through habituation to find the right mean
| appropriate to the circumstances.
|
| > Are we born with those virtues?
|
| > No.
|
| Well, Aristotle also speaks about "starting points" and claims
| there's a great weight for "habituation" as much as those
| "starting points" (your genetics, your talents, your environment
| growing up). So that's important also to say.
|
| "People like that [with the right upbringing] either already
| have, or can easily grasp, [the right] principles. If neither of
| those applies to you... well, Hesiod says it best:
|
| Best of them all is a man who
| relies on his own understanding.
|
| Next best, someone who knows how
| to take good advice when he hears it.
|
| So, if you're clueless yourself,
| and unwilling to listen to others,
|
| taking to heart what they say -
| then, sorry, you're pretty much hopeless."
|
| - Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 4, 1095b
| GTP wrote:
| Maybe the first category needs some explanation. I have a
| realtive that relies on his own understanding... Way too much,
| to the point that he assumes to be right too often and so is
| mostly unable to listen to advice. Does he fall in the first or
| in the last category? I would put him in the last, but note
| that the heart of the problem is relying to one own
| understanding without considering the possibility of being
| wrong sometimes.
| dcre wrote:
| The key to understanding this properly is that the
| "understanding" in the first category is taken to be right,
| good understanding, which by stipulation your relative does
| not have. When Aristotle means someone's own opinion, he uses
| a different word like "doxa", how things appear to people,
| which is translated as belief or opinion.
| simonmysun wrote:
| Aristotle lives in the old versions of the Earth. The outdated
| concepts may not stand up to modern thinking, but are sufficient
| for dealing with a simple life. Unfortunately, most people's
| lives are not simple.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think in many parts most people's lives are not simple
| because they engage with them through muddled and complex
| intellectual frameworks using 16 letter words to explain 3-5
| letter word concepts. You'd be surprised how much modern life
| begins to make sense viewed through the framework of antique
| philosophy.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Ancient societies were different. A male citizen from the
| aristocracy could lead a slow leisurely life, gathering with
| like-minded citizens on the agora and talking for hours,
| enjoying the finer things in life like wine and sporadic
| sexual contacts, taking part in sports competitions.
|
| The "ancient wisdom" we consume now is coming from that
| segment of the Greek and Roman societies.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't think that invalidates their conclusions.
|
| There's also Epictetus. That man can hardly be accused of
| being a spoiled aristocrat.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| It discredits them. Imagine the modern version - a
| privileged upper-middle class person with an expensive
| upbringing and education talking about stoicism ala Ryan
| Holiday and hard work. Their version of stoicism is most
| likely about not worrying of the fluctuations of stock
| values. An economically disenfranchised man's stoicism is
| about seeing their health degrade.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't think this is a useful mindset. We judge ideas
| based on their merits, not who came up with them. You can
| throw these accusations at modern figures like Marx and
| Engels as well. They were very much coddled and wealthy,
| far removed from the workaday concerns of everyday life.
|
| Interesting ideas are disproportionately likely to come
| from people who have a lot of leisure time, as that is a
| prerequisite for having the time to think about anything.
| simonmysun wrote:
| We are forced to make our life complex. You can't deny the
| fact that the society we are living in has evolved. Of course
| one still has the oppurtunity to get rid of it and live in a
| cave, but how many people are doing this?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| In what sense is it more complex?
| bluetomcat wrote:
| You are born into a society with certain expectations and
| customs. Choosing the slow and simple path turns you into
| a social recluse with little opportunities for contacts
| and further development. You may be reading Plato and
| Aristotle and have no idea what's currently happening in
| your neighbourhood because of lack of social contacts.
|
| The path to transformation should be the collective
| consensus towards new visions of society, not some
| individual acts of virtue signalling.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > You are born into a society with certain expectations
| and customs. Choosing the slow and simple path turns you
| into a social recluse with little opportunities for
| contacts and further development. You may be reading
| Plato and Aristotle and have no idea what's currently
| happening in your neighbourhood because of lack of social
| contacts.
|
| Why do you think engaging with Plato and Aristotle will
| make you a recluse?
|
| > The path to transformation should be the collective
| consensus towards new visions of society,
|
| You use a should statement. Why should it be this way?
| Who has decided this is the way it should be? Also why
| does there need to be transformation?
|
| > not some individual acts of virtue signalling.
|
| Virtue ethics is also not the same as virtue signalling.
| Virtues in virtue ethics are for your own benefit. It's
| even a common point to do good things and _not_ tell
| other people in e.g. stoic and early christian thought,
| as doing things to raise your esteem in the eyes of
| others is prideful and not virtuous.
| simonmysun wrote:
| > In what sense is it more complex?
|
| The life is more complex because of the muddled and
| complex intellectual frameworks. This is because the 3-5
| letter word concepts need to be defined to make sure
| everybody is talking about the same thing when people
| have to interact with more people.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't think how you choose to describe the things that
| are change their nature.
| simonmysun wrote:
| Yes but it affects how other people comprehense it.
| Imagine making laws based on the idea of virtue from
| Aristotle.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'm imagining. Then what would happen?
| simonmysun wrote:
| You will need a percise definition of virtue and end up
| using the muddled complex intellectual frameworks. You
| may have no problem understanding the virtue concept with
| simple words because you grew up with it, but people with
| different environments may understand a different thing.
| svieira wrote:
| They may, but the wonderful thing about discourse is that
| in _most_ cases you don 't need to rebuild everything
| from raw signals processing on up. You just need to find
| the first common layer of agreement and build from there.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > We are forced to make our life complex.
|
| No we aren't. People choose (or not) to make their lives
| complex, it isn't forced upon them.
| simonmysun wrote:
| I'm glad you have a choice. I might also be able to
| choose not to, but there are more people who can't.
| sesm wrote:
| For example, our concept of 'work most of your time to afford
| food and place to live' for Aristotle would translate to a
| single word 'slave'. Good for him that he didn't have to do
| it and had slaves working for him instead.
| fasteo wrote:
| >>> The outdated concepts may not stand up to modern thinking
|
| Can you elaborate ? From a quick read, the concept of good ("A
| good thing fulfils its unique function") and how to be a good
| human ("to have an excellent soul. And this excellence reveals
| itself in a clear intellect and a noble character.") seems
| timeless to me
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Being noble, wise and virtuous didn't mean that much
| alienation from the general population in his era, methinks.
|
| Of course, some will try to argue by twisting these concepts
| into some modern hedonistic feelsgood version not even fit as
| a parody.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Being noble, wise and virtuous didn't mean that much
| alienation from the general population in his era,
| methinks.
|
| Ever heard of how Socrates died? haha
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| "from the general population"
|
| He was accused by poets and politicians, not the common
| man. Most probably because he rubbed some powerful people
| in the wrong way; the modern consensus makes a believable
| point about it being political, Socrates not being a
| democracy fanboy and all.
| atmosx wrote:
| One interpretation was that he choose his death wisely.
| He was old and tired and wanted to go a with a splash. In
| his society, legacy mattered a lot. If that's the case,
| he did fine.
| simonmysun wrote:
| Sorry, I typed some words but in the end found I can't do it
| better than GPT and decide not to post them. The quoted
| comment describes a fact that various other philosophers
| raised different views.
|
| Most of the arguments can be seen as overthinking. This is
| how we make our life worse.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > "A good thing fulfils its unique function" [...] seems
| timeless to me
|
| On the contrary, I think we've learned something since about
| the importance of distinguishing "good" from "effective".
| WJW wrote:
| I think Aristotle would be of the opinion that most people's
| lives could in fact be quite simple, but many choose to
| complicate because it makes them feel important, because they
| are confused about what they want out of life, or both.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| Nice Article, always good to be reminded of the fundamentals -
| Love the Graphics
| samirillian wrote:
| I just really liked this.
|
| There's a lot of wisdom in Aristotle even if you don't accept his
| entire system.
|
| For example, in his politics he says mechanics are not capable of
| practicing virtue. An interesting claim!
| HPsquared wrote:
| Mechanics?
| codegrappler wrote:
| Mechanics in Ancient Greece meant the study of mechanical
| physics. So essentially scientists. If your focus is on the
| material world (material here being 'matter' not consumer
| goods) then you necessarily see science as a higher aim than
| virtue.
| HKH2 wrote:
| > For example, in his politics he says mechanics are not
| capable of practicing virtue. An interesting claim!
|
| Well, people often find it very difficult to separate
| explanations from justifications.
| ivl wrote:
| I'm actually very much in agreement with that point.
|
| The world is what it is. A factual observation is just that!
| But I think it would be better said that while practicing
| mechanics one should not be trying to practice virtue.
|
| A moral position will push out a factually accurate one if you
| aren't willing to ignore your views when assessing something.
| geye1234 wrote:
| He may well mean a mechanic qua mechanic is not capable or
| practising virtue -- not a mechanic qua human being.
|
| The ancients tended to predicate formally where we predicate
| materially. When they said 'a mechanic can't practise virtue',
| they didn't mean every man who is a mechanic, which is what we
| would mean. They meant every mechanic in so far as he is a
| mechanic. At least this is the tendency -- I don't know if it
| applies to this particular case.
|
| In this case, it would mean he can't practise virtue, at least
| not complete virtue, through being a mechanic, but he could in
| other areas of his life.
|
| Jacques Maritain's _Introduction to Philosophy_ explains this
| helpfully.
| cauliflower99 wrote:
| Great article. Anybody know how can I make graphics like this?
| aramndrt wrote:
| The most recent article on the blog likely holds the answer to
| your question. (Disclaimer: I did not read it.)
|
| https://ralphammer.com/a-quick-beginners-guide-to-animation/
| pvinis wrote:
| OK but the animations are amazing!!
| w10-1 wrote:
| It's good to try to boil Aristotle down to some topological
| order, because it is latent there.
|
| But to get the order right, this presentation needs some
| background in the Greek terms Aristotle is using. E.g., focus on
| the first few lines of the Nichomachean Ethics, about all beings
| having a good for themselves; that pulls in his metaphysics, some
| logic, and orients you to the argument structure.
|
| (Personally, I'm not fond of the moving images.)
| loughnane wrote:
| I agree. Though the images are engaging to look at they don't
| immediately help my understanding.
| nj5rq wrote:
| This is what I love to see on Hacker News, self-help articles
| that pretend to "open my eyes" about something that humanity has
| known for literally millennia.
| Asymo wrote:
| Thank modern philosophy, which unfortunately discarded all
| previous philosophical knowledge
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Nothing new since Plato
| tim333 wrote:
| They discovered stuff but anything which gets solved is
| then called science.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It absolutely did not come on lol. Where do you get this
| stuff.
| Asymo wrote:
| Nietzsche, in his book Beyond Good and Evil, says that
| Plato is the beginning of a great decline, responding with
| his tragic view: 'And who said that man is capable of
| knowing the truth? [...a long waste of time follows...]'. I
| recommend looking into the discussion of universals, as I
| understand that much of the disagreement stems from this
| point.
| loughnane wrote:
| I think knowledge isn't something that accumulates--each
| generation discards some old things and discovers some new.
|
| The old stuff is still there of course, but it's not a part
| of the societal discourse or understanding and so is more
| inert information than knowledge.
| Eumenes wrote:
| I prefer these over the 1000th blog post about how SQLite is
| awesome (it is)
| nj5rq wrote:
| There are so many good (non-mainstream) tech articles to
| share. A lot of them are not repetitive. A lot are shared
| here every day. Yet, for some reason, people decide to share
| these self-help low effort articles on HN. Just make some
| "news.selfhelp.how2behappy.com" website.
|
| (No offense to you, I just don't get it)
| Ahmed_rza wrote:
| it feels good when reading but it's not easy when applies to real
| life
| eleveriven wrote:
| That's a common experience
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The very beginning of this post contains a critical passage.
|
| What makes a good knife? Of course, a good knife is a knife that
| cuts well.
|
| But what does it mean to cut well? Just the sharpness of the
| blade? What about grip comfort? And balancing? And stickiness?
| And weight? And what about the thing being cut? Can a knife cut
| everything well?
|
| As you can see, we are already dead in our tracks, as asking what
| makes a knife good is basically on the same level of complexity
| of asking the same thing about a human, and this is why ancient
| philosophers, many of whom didn't really explore nuance, should
| be critically studied, without falling for simplistic "this is my
| hero" behavior
| cannonpr wrote:
| While I can largely accept this criticism, I'd also like to
| point out that it might be missing the spirit of a lot of
| ancient philosophers historical context. For starters a lot of
| their books and texts have been lost so we aren't sure for
| several what nuance has been lost. Secondarily a lot of that
| nuance you describe was meant to be explored via shared
| dialogue (the Socratic method) between pupil and teacher, until
| a common and nuanced understanding of the topic was achieved,
| not just studied out of a book, which was enormously expensive
| and not at all available to most people in the first place. I'd
| largely view their teachings as a starting point upon which to
| build a dialogue and nuanced understanding with a long since
| dead teacher.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| While I can largely accept this criticism, the author of the
| blog post is not partaking in the discourse, but is instead
| reporting a summarized version of what Aristotle, maybe,
| said, presenting it as a definitive guide. This is why I
| originally said that more ancient authors need to be
| carefully studied, since they didn't have the means of
| explaining themselves and correcting their ideas through
| numerous and verbose publications.
| Asymo wrote:
| Actually, your analysis only seems to make sense because you
| ignored the beginning of the explanation. I'll rephrase it here
| in other words: "Man's good can only consist in the 'work' that
| is peculiar to him, that is, the work that he and only he knows
| how to perform, just as, in general, the good of each thing
| consists in the work that is peculiar to that thing. The work
| of the eye is to see, the work of the ear is to hear, and so
| on." So, it becomes obvious that making an analysis based on
| the universal concept of "knife" and judging it by its ability
| to literally cut anything is absurd. The more accurate approach
| would be to judge a "kitchen knife" by its ability to help in
| cooking tasks, and we can be even more specific by talking
| about knives for bread, meat, tomatoes, etc. And I find it
| quite strange to question "what does it mean to cut well?" If I
| give you a dull blade and a sharp one for a specific task,
| you'll know exactly which one cuts well
| prepend wrote:
| I thought the same thing. This seems like a rhetorical
| technique to just shove the definition down one layer. But it
| sounds right.
|
| Sometimes I wonder if Aristotle was just trying to skate by
| without being called. Or truth really is that nuanced and
| simple and can't be defined any more distinctly.
|
| All of these guidances seem true but also sort of vapid. Be
| smart, be kind, be virtuous. I'm not sure how Aristotle
| measured and confirmed his happiness and goodness of life.
|
| It seems to me to be quite easy to convince myself I'm happy
| and have others impressed enough that they assume I'm happy;
| yet not actually be happy.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _But what does it mean to cut well? Just the sharpness of the
| blade? What about grip comfort? And balancing? And stickiness?
| And weight? And what about the thing being cut? Can a knife cut
| everything well?_
|
| But what does it mean to cut? What _is_ sharpness? How does one
| define it? What _is_ a blade? What does it mean for something
| to be "comfortable"? How does one define weight: how does one
| define if something _is_ "heavy" or "light"? What does it mean
| that something "is"?
|
| Seriously: at some point the drilling down into definitions and
| saying the other person's argument does not answer everything
| can get ridiculous.
|
| In this case the knife is an analogy: don't take it literally
| and move on with the actual argument/discussion being made.
| vasco wrote:
| That is also a bit of what philosophy is and in the exercise
| of fractally dissecting everything sometimes we uncover some
| new way of looking at things or deepen our understanding a
| bit more.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > [...] _and in the exercise of fractally dissecting
| everything_ [...]
|
| Except you don't do _every time_ and on _every topic_. The
| topic now is happiness: it is not necessary to talk about
| what "is" means here.
|
| If you want to talk about ontology[0] submit an article on
| it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
| Almondsetat wrote:
| So if I don't have to take it literally I have to go with my
| own interpretation, which might be different from Aristotle's
| and voids the entire purpose of writing down his teachings.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _So if I don 't have to take it literally I have to go
| with my own interpretation_ [...]
|
| https://xkcd.com/1860/
| mbivert wrote:
| > and this is why ancient philosophers, many of whom didn't
| really explore nuance
|
| Couldn't we say that most of Plato's is about progressively
| refining from a rough starting point for example? Or, consider
| even ITT how interpreting Aristotle properly requires
| understanding the nuances of his original vocabulary.
|
| Regarding the knife example, while there's value in going
| deeper for those willing to study knife handling, it was
| probably not deemed relevant to the point being made: a tool is
| a good tool if it can perform a reasonably well-suited task,
| when used by someone reasonably skilled.
|
| This is an _abstract_ point of view, which can be appreciated
| by anyone working with tools, from cooks to programmers: in any
| domain, a good tool is one which fulfills the task for which it
| was originally conceived.
| harimau777 wrote:
| It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of
| happiness or assumes that happiness will be an inevitable
| byproduct of virtue; even if we define happiness very broadly to
| include things like "satisfaction" or a "sense of purpose".
|
| Part of me suspects that may be because Aristotle was likely
| upper class and therefore already had success and/or wealth. I'm
| not sure that I think his arguments work for people who are
| suffering or struggling to get by.
| pnut wrote:
| Happiness and sadness are emotions - inherently transient.
|
| I have actually thought that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
| happiness" was aan error, and should have been "life, liberty,
| and the pursuit of fulfilment"
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Happiness is not an emotion. That was the whole point of the
| article.
| dcre wrote:
| The article says directly: "One might even suffer greatly and
| still live a virtuous--that is: a good--life. When Aristotle
| speaks of a "happy" life, he means a fulfilled or flourishing
| life rather than a pleasurable one."
|
| Suffering certainly does make it harder to be virtuous, but you
| can interpret that not as disregarding the poor but as giving
| even more justification for orienting society toward satisfying
| everyone's basic needs.
| Xen9 wrote:
| Idea: Web page of every phrase in (Koine) greek that meant
| different thing to the ancient great philosophers than in
| English language today. This'd help to get a good picture of
| the Greeks at once for one usually stumbles upon the
| "different interpretations" slowly.
| parenthesis wrote:
| There are these books:
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Philosophical-Terms-
| Historica...
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Philosophical-Vocabulary-J-
| Ur...
|
| I have the second one, which I found useful when studying
| ancient Greek philosophy in English translation.
| Asymo wrote:
| Yes, Aristotle was born into a more privileged family, but I'm
| not sure if it's accurate to say that he was rich. However, his
| financial conditions and the fame that his life's work brought
| him seem to have had the opposite effect of what you suggested.
| There is a painting by Rembrandt that represents exactly this.
| The painting depicts Aristotle with one hand holding a chain of
| gold and the other hand resting on a bust of Homer. This
| represents his internal struggle between embracing his eternal
| legacy, like Homer, or embracing momentary pleasures and
| riches.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| It's an allegorical painting by Rembrandt, nothing more.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Statements that end in "nothing more" are almost always
| incorrect. The only way one could make such a statement
| with total certitude would be to be omniscient, as the
| phrase implies an exhaustive understanding of all possible
| facts.
| seneca wrote:
| Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher and proponent of Aristotelian
| virtue ethics, was literally a slave. Some ideas, particularly
| the best ones, aren't subject to class politics.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher and proponent of
| Aristotelian virtue ethics, was literally a slave. Some
| ideas, particularly the best ones, aren't subject to class
| politics.
|
| While correct, it should be noted that he was only a slave
| during his youth (freed around the age of 18 when Nero died)
| and was a slave to the secretary of Nero, in other words had
| a personal connection to Imperial power.
| voiceblue wrote:
| > I'm not sure that I think his arguments work for people who
| are suffering or struggling to get by. Here
| lies Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, the
| ultimate in poverty, and the favored of the gods.
|
| I see that someone has already mentioned him in this thread,
| but his epitaph is a direct address to your doubt.
| tivert wrote:
| > It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the
| importance of happiness or assumes that happiness
|
| Isn't it understood that focusing on trying to make yourself
| happy will actually make you miserable, and in any case
| "happiness" tends to revert to the mean fairly quickly?
| resource_waste wrote:
| I read nicomachean ethics, can I skip the article?
|
| My criticism of Aristotle: Living the golden mean, like a happy
| person isnt going to help when your country is invaded.
|
| This is my number 1 criticism of Temperance as a virtue. There is
| a reason we grind in college so hard, there is a reason why at
| some points in our career we work absurd hours and gain
| weight/become unhealthy.
|
| Aristotle's golden mean (or Temperance) does not account for
| this.
|
| "But Wisdom would say that this is acceptable to sacrifice health
| at points"
|
| Does it? How do you weight these virtues as one better than
| another? Calling for some perfect Platonic form that answers all
| these questions correctly is a bit of a cop-out.
| lordleft wrote:
| There's a peril in translating the Greek word that is often
| used by Aristotle and the other Virtue Ethicists -- eudaimonia
| -- into happiness. Happiness in English often maps to a
| transient & discrete emotional state, whereas eudaimonia is a
| much more expansive conception of flourishing and fulfillment
| that is not as simply as "feeling" happy or joyful all the
| time. Indeed, in virtue ethics, it is sometimes possible to
| endure hardship and feel quite negative emotions while
| experience eudaimonia (at least in the Stoic version of this
| branch of philosophy).
| hasbot wrote:
| Fully defining terms (i.e. eudaimonia) for a modern audience
| is essential. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
| geye1234 wrote:
| Prudence is the virtue that allows us to see what to do in the
| infinite and unique situations that present themselves to us
| each day. This will _always and everywhere_ mean sacrificing a
| lesser good for a greater one. This can be something as trivial
| as saying "I choose to forego the pleasure of this ice cream
| for the sake of my health", or something as life-changing as "I
| choose to give up this career because it's making me
| unhealthy." The good choice is always what leads to
| 'happiness', which is perhaps better translated as beatitude or
| fulfillment.
|
| Sometimes choice this will result in a _feeling_ of sadness.
| This is not opposed to 'happiness'/fulfillment/beatitude as
| Aristotle means it, which is not a feeling.
|
| Also, you don't weigh the virtues against each other. They work
| in harmony. You weigh one action against another.
| stryan wrote:
| > My criticism of Aristotle: Living the golden mean, like a
| happy person isnt going to help when your country is invaded.
|
| An interesting criticism considering Aristotle elevated
| soldiers at war as a prime example. Greek philosophy was
| generally done by and for noble men, who were expected to deal
| with war on a regular basis and often actively participate in
| it.
|
| > Aristotle's golden mean (or Temperance) does not account for
| this.
|
| Aristotle gives the example that soldiers should be temperate
| in their enjoyment of war, not reveling in the bloodshed or
| pushing farther than they can handle. Work and studies are the
| same way: regardless of your age the human body has limits that
| you need to account for. When you're younger you can push past
| some of the softer limits (stay up late, go without food, etc)
| but eventually you will hit hard physical limits that, if not
| respected, will cause irreversible damage and often put you in
| a worse spot than you started.
|
| > "But Wisdom would say that this is acceptable to sacrifice
| health at points" Does it? How do you weight these virtues as
| one better than another?
|
| To directly answer: Aristotle does say Practical Wisdom (or
| Prudence) is the highest of the cardinal virtues, and that the
| cardinal virtues of Prudence,Courage,Temperance, and Justice
| are more important virtues than others.
|
| But that's also sort of the whole point of his ethics, you
| don't have specific rulings of what to do, you develop the
| character to make the right decisions for the given
| circumstance. In this case, you rely on good Practical Wisdom
| to determine what the moderate amount of work is: a wise person
| wouldn't slack off at work but also wouldn't work 80 hour weeks
| at the expense of seeing their family.
|
| > Calling for some perfect Platonic form that answers all these
| questions correctly is a bit of a cop-out.
|
| You'll have to take that up with his teacher I suppose.
| atmosx wrote:
| My guess is that their interpretation of word "temperance"
| (e.g. inaction) derives from Christianity, not from ancient
| Greece.
|
| The 5th century BC Greece is a place where dying for your
| city-state is by all means, the highest honour one can
| achieve.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| this reminds me that stoicism was written by leaders in govt
| and didn't consider classism or economic disparity. Sure, they
| might have started from broke, but they were important.
| pmzy wrote:
| I've never seen anything like this article. True, simple art.
| Really well executed.
|
| I can't say that I agree fully with it, but knowing the virtues
| you want to abide to is a good idea.
| hasbot wrote:
| > Aristotle says that humans have a capacity to be good, but it
| is up to us to develop our character. This is best achieved
| through study and habit.
|
| Cool. So, then I just draw the rest of the owl? I have no idea
| where to begin to develop my character.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Stoics believe in the four cardinal virtues: courage, justice,
| wisdom, and moderation. I think they're a good starting point
| for character development, and a lifetime of work on their own.
| mbivert wrote:
| Well,
|
| > This is best achieved through study and habit.
|
| Probably the most efficient way is to study "good" authors, and
| to emulate "good" models of virtue. The second section of OP
| already gives some practical tips:
|
| > A good character can handle emotions properly.
|
| > We do that by finding the right mean between two extremes:
|
| > Courage is the right mean between cowardice and recklessness.
|
| > Temperance is the right mean between gluttony and abstinence.
|
| Different "good" models of virtue will often independently
| reach similar conclusions: handling of emotions is notoriously
| valued in Buddhism; avoiding extremes is close to Confucius's
| doctrine of the mean[0], of which Jesus's "turning the other
| cheek" could be one practical implementation.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_Mean
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| One thing you have to notice is the centrality of the _nature_ of
| a thing, which is to say its _telos_ , or end. Fulfillment is,
| after all, defined by our nature; it is a matter of proceeding
| from potential to actuality, as determined by our nature. What is
| good advances a person according to one's nature (in our case,
| human nature), what is bad acts against it. Telos, or finality,
| also gives morality its proper and objective ground: what is
| _morally_ right or wrong follows, ultimately, from one 's nature.
| Since we are humans, we are therefore _persons_ , which is to say
| animals who can _understand_ their actions and _choose_ between
| apprehended alternatives, and therefore _moral agents_. We must
| therefore choose to act in accord with our nature as free and
| rational agents, which is to say according to right reason. Our
| rationality allows us to tackle the question of what it means to
| be human and to therefore determine what is good.
|
| A tragedy of the crudeness of materialism is that it obliterates
| telos, and in doing so, destroys the _only_ possible objective
| ground for morality and the good. Married to philosophical
| liberalism, morality becomes a mystery cult rooted in desire that
| evades explanation. Yyou cannot square the _existence_ of desires
| --which can be good or bad, in accord with reason, or deviant or
| depraved--with a purely materialist universe; even Descartes had
| to tack on the disembodied ghost of the Cartesian mind to account
| for all sorts of phenomena. So you end up with an irrational
| gnosticism as a result.
|
| But the fact of the matter is that even the most mundane
| varieties of efficient causality presuppose telos, as telos is
| _not_ the same as conscious intent (which is a particular
| variety), but fundamentally, the ordering of a cause toward an
| effect. The only reason efficient causality is intelligible at
| all is because the relation between cause is ordered toward an
| effect by virtue of the nature of the thing, and not arbitrarily
| related. Striking a match predictably results in fire, not
| nothing, nor the appearance of the Titanic or whatever.
|
| We are seeing an increased, if modest interest in broadly
| Aristotelian thought (which some refer to as "Neo-Aristotelian"),
| however. As the materialist dinosaurs pass from this earth, fresh
| blood is willing to reexamine the nihilistic, dehumanizing,
| materialist dogmas of the last two or three centuries. It was
| never the case that materialism overthrew the prior intellectual
| tradition by discrediting it. Rather, it began with the perilous
| decision to "start from scratch". Putting aside the dubiousness
| of the notion, what we can expect from starting from scratch is a
| repetition of the same errors. There are eerie similarities
| between modern ideas and the pre-Socratic philosophers, for
| example, of which Aristotle was very much aware and to which he
| was responding.
| petsfed wrote:
| One of my core criticisms to Plato and later Aristotle is not a
| criticism of Aristotle qua Aristotle, but in the way people
| give this almost religious reverence to the particular words
| they use. As if by saying that
|
| _> Telos, or finality, also gives morality its proper and
| objective ground: what is morally right or wrong follows,
| ultimately, from one's nature._
|
| I have some intuitive understanding of what _telos_ is and why
| it matters. If I 'm understanding you correctly, morality is
| defined by outcome, but the "tragedy of the crudeness of
| materialism" is that we can't know the final outcome of
| _anything_. Then what good is knowing about telos anyway?
|
| I'd argue that Scholasticism, that is, the marriage of Middle-
| Ages Christianity to the truthy-sounding gobbledygook of
| Aristotle, set the case for the moral authority of the church
| back a thousand years.
| prewett wrote:
| Not the parent, but as I understand it the post is saying
| that morality is not defined by outcome, but rather by
| consistency of the object's purpose. A sentient chair
| choosing to fall apart when you sit on it is being "immoral",
| opposed to its purpose.
|
| > I'd argue that Scholasticism, that is, the marriage of
| Middle-Ages Christianity to the truthy-sounding gobbledygook
| of Aristotle, set the case for the moral authority of the
| church back a thousand years.
|
| a) maybe the _Roman_ church; I don 't think the Eastern
| Orthodox embraced that. And the Protestants more or less
| junked it, too.
|
| b) "truthy-sounding" is awful dismissive for something that
| took Europe by storm when Aristotle was re-discovered. Modern
| thought has rejected Plato and Aristotle, and especially
| Post-modern thought, but does Aristotle sound "truthy"
| because you've bought into modern/post-modernity or because
| he's poor quality? We might have reject Plato/Aristotle
| because us moderns are so much more enlightened than the
| ancients. Or we could have a serious case of hubris. Given
| that large segments of the West are espousing that gender and
| even species--previously seen as immutable--are mutable,
| we're either seriously wrong and headed for disaster, or
| we've discovered something seriously novel.
|
| c) I'm not an expert on Scholasticsm, but as far as telos
| goes, the Christian telos for humanity is to become like God
| --to love each other sacrificially as Christ loved us, and to
| participate with God in creating/stewarding the material
| world. It's the most expansive telos I'm aware of, and I
| don't think I've even properly grasped or expressed it.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I am not compelled by this. To the best of my ability to
| understand the world in which I find myself, it seems
| unfortunately to be the case that there are no human beings as
| such, no persons, no moral agents. What I see around me are
| assemblages of interacting quantum fields which share no
| fundamental nature with one another except that they happen to
| be arranged in similar (but not remotely identical or
| fundamentally related) shapes. Given that there are no human
| beings there cannot be a single human nature and thus I can say
| nothing about whether a person's behavior is good or bad in
| reference to such.
|
| I admit this is a daunting state of affairs which is not
| pleasant to contemplate, but I don't adopt beliefs on the basis
| of what is pleasant or unpleasant or easy or not easy. I adopt
| them, as far as I have the agency to do so, on the basis of
| what seems plausible and, given how I understand the universe,
| your account seems highly implausible.
| prewett wrote:
| And yet, you also have the experience of existing and the
| experience of thinking and the experience of making
| decisions. I think this is evidence that your analysis is
| missing something. (And before you just dismiss this as
| wrong, note that an incorrect model generally fails at the
| edges, so these quiet discrepancies are important hints.) If
| you focus on the components, how can you see the higher-order
| whole? If you can only see cells, it is hard to perceive the
| body. If you can only see the assembly code it is hard to
| grok the algorithm, let alone the purpose for which the
| algorithm is used.
|
| On the other hand, if you insist that there are no human
| beings, you should adopt the values/morals of Buddhism, since
| your arguments of non-existence are very similar to Buddhist
| arguments.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't really see any reason to adopt values or morals of
| any kind.
| moose44 wrote:
| This was a great read.
| tbirdny wrote:
| Just looking at the page and all the animation is fun. It looks
| nice, but trying to read it with all the distraction is very
| difficult for me.
| borski wrote:
| Fascinating. I have ADHD and the "distraction" meant I could
| read it super fast and understand it with no issues. This
| sounds fun to try side by side.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Don't read blog post that completely misrepresents Aristotle,
| just read Aristotle:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Aristotles-Nicomachean-Ethics-Philoso...
| theusus wrote:
| It's pretty congruent to Stoic principles.
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