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Are Incontinent Fools Wise?
YOU MIGHT WONDER why Aristotle is so interested in incontinence that he devotes the whole of Book VII of his Nichomachean Ethics to it. Is that really a problem for philosophers to worry about?
Well, it is, at least the kind of incontinence that Aristotle worries about.
The continent man is one "ready to abide by the result of his calculations" while the incontinent man is "ready to abandon them." Why does the continent man abide by his calculations? Because he knows "his appetites are bad, and refuses on account of his rational principles to follow them." The incontinent man, on the other hand, abandons his rational principles "as a result of passion."
But if you chop logic like the sophists, worries Aristotle, then you might end up unraveling your rational spaghetti into believing that "folly coupled with incontinence is virtue." For if continence makes a man stand by a false opinion, then it is good if an incontinent man, that abandons "any and every opinion", abandons a false opinion.
Aristotle briskly clears away the problem of this sophistical mirage, the virtuous incontinent, for he argues that the incontinent man is in the position of someone "having knowledge in a sense and yet not having it, as in the instance of a man asleep, mad, or drunk." He is like a city that "passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but makes no use of them". He is neither good nor bad, just a muddle.
But what about the continent man with the wrong opinion? Well, Aristotle says, these are likely strong-headed people, "hard to persuade in the first instance and not easily persuaded to change". This is to suggest that an continent man can be consumed with "passion and appetite". On the contrary, the "continent man will be easy to persuade". For being a man of rational principle, he is not led by his appetites and his pleasures, but readily bows to rational persuasion.
But let us not confuse the incontinent man with the self-indulgent. The first stands by his choice, and is not apt to repent his follies, while the incontinent man means well but is led astray by his passions. The self-indulgent man is "incurable and the incontinent curable." Think of the difference between dropsy and epilepsy, says Aristotle. The "former is a permanent, the latter an intermittent badness."
So that's all right!
| perm | comment(0) | 
| 01/27/12 9:04 am ET
The Anguish of the Reactionary President
BACK IN THE old days, rulers ruled. They ruled over everything, from church, to military, to trade.
But then came the modern mechanical era. God no longer kept the planets in their orbits, and an "invisible hand" seemed to guide merchants and consumers without the constant intervention of a wise ruler.
What is a ruler to do? He worries about "inequality." Not because he's caring and compassionate, or even because he's a brilliant technocrat, but because if you want to meddle with the workings of the "invisible hand" you have to start out by saying that the "invisible hand" isn't doing the job. It's making some people too rich and leaving some people behind as too poor.
Thus Marx. Thus the British Fabians. Thus the American Progressives. Thus the New Deal. And thus our modern "progressives," university liberals, and President Obama.
It's not that the president is a socialist, but that socialism is just one phase in the serial attempts of the modern educated elite to justify its rule over the "commanding heights" of the economy, the culture, and politics.
In President Obama's recent State of the Union speech, we see the box that he and his educated elite friends are in. They want to rule. They want new programs. They want new regulations. They want to be patrons, and they want us to be adoring and grateful clients.
But the science is in. The "invisible hand" really works. And it really works better if the government isn't endlessly manipulating the economy to get out of its latest jam with money printing, debt defaults, and endless subsidies.
And now the educated elite has run out of money. But the band plays on.
In his speech the president has to walk a fine line. He must invoke the great narrative of American exceptionalism, quoting Abraham Lincoln. But he must twist it to fit his ruling-class agenda. Thus he invokes "fairness" to justify increased taxes on the rich. Here's the data from the IRS on this. The rich pay a huge chunk of federal taxes, the rest of the top 50 percent pay almost all the rest and the bottom 50 percent pay almost nothing. What the bottom 50 percent do pay goes towards payroll taxes, i.e., Social Security and Medicare.
I've been arguing with a left-wing friend recently about "inequality." He has a chart that shows that median income went up with average income in the 1950s and 1960s. But since 1980 the median income has lagged the average income, so the rich have been getting more of it.
Folks like Walter Russell Mead and Megan McArdle tell why this happened. The post-World War II economy was corporatist. The benefits were parceled out by an inside deal between the Big Units: big government, big unions, and big corporations. But this crony capitalism ran out of money in the 1970s, as the rest of the world recovered from World War II and began to compete. But then breathtaking new developments in technology and commerce poured gigantic fortunes into the laps of the entrepreneurs that took the opportunities and made them into consumer products, men like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Then there was Sam Walton who built Wal-Mart up from nothing to become the world's biggest retailer. There's nothing fancy about Wal-Mart, just hard work to buy low and sell low, and provide an emergency operations center so Wal-Mart can flood assistance into disaster areas.
But what about the salvific progressive political leader? Where does he fit in all this? He really doesn't. We really don't need him. That is why the educated elite keeps coming up with new end-the-world scenarios. That's what political leaders and religious leaders have always done to persuade us to follow them.
And that's the point. Obama ran for office as a salvific leader under whose transformative leadership the "rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." But really, global warming is a crock, and we've been working successfully on the environment for half a century, since about the time that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
The great Montesquieu imagined the modern government with its separated powers: legislative, executive and judicial. This was not an argument against tyrants, but an argument about the inevitable tyranny of a unified government.
Now we need to expand Montesquieu's ideas into a Greater Separation of Powers, between the political, the economic and moral-cultural sectors. Obviously the scope and power of salvific political leaders will be much reduced.
President Obama and his ruling class will kick and scream all the way to their eventual irrelevance. Oh well. I can handle that if you can.
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/26/12 9:45 am ET
Duck and Cover, Mr. President
I SUPPOSE THAT President Obama knows what he is doing with his class warfare strategy for reelection. His State of the Union speech was complete with Warren Buffett's secretary, the one that pays more, percentage-wise, in tax that her boss. But I'd like to warn you, Mr. President, that there is a ballistic missile en route that may well change the terms of trade in the current political...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/25/12 10:18 am ET
Obama is not a Friend of Catholics
YOU CAN UNDERSTAND that the liberal Catholics would want to find a way to support Barack Obama. After all, he believes in a lot of the same stuff they do: social justice, and solidarity. So it's not surprising that they would support Obama in 2008. But now they are finding out that Obama isn't returning the compliment. William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal: Now, suddenly, we have...
| perm | comment(1) | | 01/24/12 10:50 am ET
Educrats Chase Teenaged Sailor Round World
HOW ABOUT THAT 16-year-old Laura Dekker from Holland, who just finished a round-the-world solo cruise in her 38 foot ketch Guppy? How about those child-welfare authorities that were hounding her and her parents? Miss Dekker fled abroad in 2010 when Dutch child welfare authorities took legal action to try to stop her making the voyage. She later won a 10-month court battle, promising judges she...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/23/12 1:48 pm ET
What About That Mean?
EVERY VIRTUE, says Aristotle, brings things into good condition. Therefore virtue is also "the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well." Does that mean that the harder you work at virtue, the better? Not exactly, for virtue is not found in extremes, writes Aristotle, but at the mean between two extremes. It is "an intermediate between excess and...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/20/12 12:34 pm ET
The Green "Fight Against Big Oil"
WHEN ACTOR Robert Redford writes that the Keystone XL decision is an historic victory against Big Oil. He writes: President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us. His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for people from throughout the pipeline...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/19/12 12:48 pm ET
How Many Divisions Has the Soul?
STALIN FAMOUSLY inquired in 1944 how many divisions the pope had. Reportedly, Pope Pius XII replied that “You can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven”. Almost as confusing is Aristotle's explanation of the elements of the soul in Nicomachean Ethics I 13. OK, chaps, he says, there are, first of all, the rational and the irrational, although they are not quite as obviously...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/18/12 1:33 pm ET
Who Gets to Judge?
IF WE SAY, as we did yesterday, that we in western society are dealing with the Two Great Crimes of Modernity, then what do we do about it? The two great crimes are really quite simple. Capitalism's great crime is plantation slavery, when business owners got to own the people that worked their sugar plantations, first in Cyprus, then in the West Indian sugar islands and Brazil. And then there...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/17/12 12:31 pm ET
Two Great Crimes of Modernity
LET'S TELL it like it is. Instrumental reason, the Enlightenment, write Horkheimer and Adorno, is a dance of domination, domination over nature and domination over man. "What men want to learn from nature is how to dominate it and other men." Oh, gee, we already did. in Modernity's Original Sin. But let us do it again in a slightly different way. The Original Sin of modernity, the application...
| perm | comment(0) | | 01/16/12 12:23 pm ET
Happiness: Is Virtue Sufficient |
| 01/13/12 12:58 pm ETBarack Obama, "Vulture Capitalist" |
| 01/12/12 1:16 pm ETAristotle's Waffle on the Function Argument |
| 01/11/12 1:47 pm ETMake Some Lemonade, Mitt(1) |
| 01/10/12 1:08 pm ETWhat's the Story? |
| 01/09/12 1:58 pm ETLet's Keep Things The Way They Are |
| 01/06/12 12:33 pm ETObama Deepens the Divide |
| 01/05/12 12:08 pm ETCan Romney Beat the Mark of Bain? |
| 01/04/12 1:16 pm ETDecline of Violence and Guns |
| 01/03/12 1:31 pm ETPinker's Better Angels |
| 01/02/12 1:24 pm ET| January blogs | December blogs |
A New Manifesto
A spectre is haunting the liberal elite—the spectre of conservatism.
The Crisis of the Administrative State
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Beyond Mere Blame
What led our liberal friends into the blind alley of the administrative welfare state?
Government and the Technology of Power
If you scratch a social reformer, you will likely discover a plan for more government.
Business and the Web of Trust
Business is all about trust and relationship.
The Bonds of Faith
No society known to anthropology or history lacked religion.
All of the Above
Society is differentiated into three sectors.
Springtime for Freeloaders
The modern welfare state encourages freeloaders.
The Curse of Compulsion
The larger the government, the smaller the society.
The Real Meaning of Society
Broadening the horizon of cooperation in the “last best hope of man on earth.”
The Greater Separation of Powers
If you want to limit power then you must limit power.
AAM Book of the Day
Cross, Whitney, The Burned-over District
AAM Books on Education
Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education
Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system
James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor
James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls
E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in
AAM Books on Law
Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century
F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law
Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract
John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present
AAM Books on Mutual Aid
James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.
David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century
David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state
Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again
David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland
AAM Books on Religion
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China
Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation
Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state
David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world
Just How Dangerous Is Talking and Driving
texting raises risk by factor of 20.
The Once and Future Liberalism
Walter Russell Mead: there is no going back to blue.
Obama Offends the Catholic Left
no religious exemption on ObamaCare
Gingrich's Secret Weapon: Incredibly Innovate Campaign
Clark Judge says the flaky Newt is smarter than he looks.
Teenage sailor Laura Dekker becomes youngest to sail world
but the educrats are after her for truancy...
> archive
cruel . corrupt . wasteful unjust . deluded
After a year of President Obama most Americans understand that the nation is on the wrong track. But how do we find the right track? Americans knew thirty years ago that liberalism was a busted flush. Yet Reaganism and Bushism seemed to be less than the best answer.
But where can we turn? Where are the thinkers and activists of the old days? Where do we find the best ideas? And how do we persuade our present ruling class to loosen its grip on power so that we can move the locomotive of state back onto the right track?
With all of our problems it seems like the worst of times.
In fact, this is the best of times. Under the radar a generation of great thinkers have been figuring out what went wrong and conjuring up visions of a better future. This book, "An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism" is an introduction to their ideas, and to the great future that awaits an America willing to respond to their call.
Although this book is addressed to all Americans, conservative, moderate, and liberal, and looks to a nation that transcends our present partisan divide, I must tell you that liberals will have the most difficulty with the book. The reason is simple. I am asking liberals to give up a lot of the power they have amassed in the last century. But we are all Americans, and we must all give up something for the sake of the greater good.
I am Christopher Chantrill and I am writing this book in full view. I'll be blogging on the process and the ideas, and I'll be asking you, dear readers, to help. Read the blog. Read the articles as they come out on American Thinker and ponder over the draft chapters here on this site.
Then send me your reactions, your thoughts, and your comments. You will help more than you know.
Action
The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness...
But to make a man act [he must have]
the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove
or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
Chappies
“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie
that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”
—Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
China and Christianity
At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
Churches
[In the] higher Christian churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
Civil Society
“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust
Class War
In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”
Conservatism
Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity
