Word of the Day: Aristotelianism!

Well, not all of it. The whole of the man's philosophy is huge. The only part of Aristotle's philosophy I'll talk about here is whatever seems to knock Utilitarianism on the head. This is the second part of a post dealing with the shortcomings of Utilitarianism. There will be at least a third, probably after I blog on something a bit different.

Aristotle said - well lots of things. But I'll start with this one: Things have natures. Now that seems straightforward, but it means that things are the way they are because that is their nature. They need to be that way or they become - something else. And yes, so far I hear people nodding and saying "Seems obvious." But the danger of most common sense is that it has logical consequences (like the fact that men don't have ovaries... but - ahem - that's a post for later.)

But Aristotle would have meant more than the natures of birds and trees. He would have meant everything, including the nature of humanity at its core, beyond the physical. Now, John Stuart Mill called Aristotle an early Utilitarian because the Greek philosopher claimed that happiness resulted from the actions a man took in his life. But that seems a stretch. And here's why:

Mill would say that the happiness is a consequence of those actions if they make the man happy (or the group) - which is close enough to being circular that we'll ignore it. But Aristotle wasn't concerned with external consequences (though he was concerned with how the community fared.) He was concerned with how a man's actions change his essence.

And there's the main insight for this post: Aristotle and essence. Aristotle felt that a man could change his essence by immersing himself in another essence. Do a good thing, then another until it becomes habit, and keep the habit until it is so firmly ingrained in your person that you are permanently altered. "Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." he says. (Hamlet mentions it to his mother by the way: Assume a virtue if you have it not... For use almost can change the stamp of nature") That isn't to say this sort of change is easy: ask anyone trying to break a habit. But it's possible, and not just for the better.

The point here? Things are too hard for a Utilitarian to measure. For if you torture to defend freedom, you change yourself slowly into an enemy of freedom. You make yourself darker everytime you commit evil in for some mythical "greater good." And in the end, you risk becoming an enemy of the very things you are defending. How can you defend liberty by destroying it, truth by betraying it? Those bent on "results" by doing wrong for the sake of good can't understand the nature of goodness, nor the nature of their selves.

And that's a point the Utilitarians never touch, because their philosophy is too fuzzy, too simplistic to stand up to that kind of scrutiny. They only look at the greater good of the group and aren't concerned with the inner life of the individual. And that is a lovely segue into a philosophy that is immensely interested in the internal state of the person. But more on that later...