The Warp and the Woof

Because of other pursuits - with consequent erosion of my blogging time - I've seriously contemplated "packing it in," as they say. But I am sufficiently saddened at the thought of abandoning this modest endeavor that I have resolved to keep plugging away, as time and my mercurial interest permit.

As often is the case, a recent zinger from Roger got me thinking about things ... Regulars here will have noticed that Right Reason (RR) is the latest addition to my de facto blogroll. Despite, to my taste, some unevenness in the quality of output - understandable enough for a new undertaking; the writing here evidently suffers from the same, without the excuse - I recommend the site. I conceive of it as a sort of conservative Crooked Timber - a team effort by advised academics and other writers.

I was initially drawn to RR because of the participation of another new discovery for me, the "maverick philosopher" (Bill Valicella), as well as some other "names" - Wallace Matson and Roger Scruton amongst them.

Scruton is a very interesting thinker, who first got my attention with his piece on Godless Conservatism some years back (available here). I have profited from his insightful work, Modern Philosophy, which (forgive the cliché) contains both much to agree and disagree with. I'm not happy with major aspects of his treatment of Nietzsche - he seems to concede far too much to the vogue postmodernist interpretation (in contradistinction to which, see this charming piece). But he separates himself mightily from the herd in a footnote concerning "virtue ethics" wherein he adverts to various selections from Plotinus' Enneads.

In the same note, he explicitly exempts himself from the circle of admirers of MacIntyre's After Virtue; and as I see it, the esteem for Plotinus, and the disdain of MacIntyre, are very much of a piece. Although with, e.g., Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre circled back to an ethical view  with a quasi-Aristotelian entelechy at its center, in After Virtue he famously repudiated The Philosopher's "metaphysical biology." But that is exactly what we get from Plotinus. For example, treatise 1.4 begins thus:

"Are we to make True Happiness one and the same thing with Welfare or Prosperity and therefore within the reach of the other living beings as well as ourselves? There is certainly no reason to deny well-being to any of them as long as their lot allows them to flourish unhindered after their kind."
(from the unreliable, but beautiful, MacKenna translation).

A.H. Armstrong translates the same passage as follows:

"Suppose we assume the good life and well-being to be one and the same; shall we then have to allow a share in them to other living things as well as ourselves? If they can live in the way natural to them without impediment, what prevents us from saying that they too are in a good state of life?"

Such a notion explicitly ties the optimal modus vivendi of a thing (its "flourishing") to its inherent capacities and potentialities - its "nature"; the various brute animals and plants each have their own kind of flourishing, no less than humans. This is indeed a metaphysical biology, and recalls an (in)famous passage from Aristole's Ethica Nicomachea, where he meditates upon the "proper function" (ergon) of man:

"To call happiness the highest good is perhaps a little trite, and a clearer account of what it is, is still required. Perhaps this is best done by first ascertaining the proper function of man. For just as the goodness and performance of a flute player, a sculptor, or any kind of expert, and generally of anyone who fulfills some function or performs some actions, are thought to reside in whatever is his proper function, so the goodness of man would seem to reside in whatever is his proper function. Is it then possible that while a carpenter and shoemaker have their own proper functions and spheres of action, man as man has none, but was left by nature a good-for-nothing without a function? ... The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of the soul in conformity with a rational principle or, at least, not without it." (I.7, trans. Ostwald).

In one of the best modern commentaries on Aristotle's thought of which I'm aware, Jonathan Lear writes,

"It may at first seem odd to a modern reader to suppose that man has a function. And the inference ... looks weak. If that argument provided the only reason for thinking that man has a function, Aristotle's ethics would rest on a shoddy foundation. But, as so often with Aristotle, we must look to his overall philosophical outlook, to understand the argument in a particular passage. If we accept that Aristotle has already argued that every natural organism has a nature, and that man has a distinct nature, a unique inner principle of change and rest, it follows obviously that man's function is to live an active life which expresses his nature." (emphasis in original; Aristotle: The desire to understand, p. 163).  An excellent exegesis of those wider metaphysical-biological considerations which ground Aristotle's viewpoint may be found in "The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle's Ethics" by T.H. Irwin, in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie O. Rorty.

A more obscure work - but not on that score any less of value - is the very interesting Thomism and Aristotelianism by Harry Jaffa, in which various of St. Thomas' de facto innovations vis-a-vis Aristotelian doctrine (under the guise of elucidations) are catalogued. Of particular note here is how Thomas apparently reads "natural law" into Aristotle. That vexed locution might simply mean - I take it to mean - that there are ethical truths; to that extent, one could call Aristotle as a friendly witness in a dispute over natural law. But Thomas goes further, proposing that natural law qua law must be "promulgated" - something incompatible with the autism of the Umoved Mover. And further, Thomas wishes to make room for the theological virtues - and man's putative cosmic vocation - by imputing to Aristotle the un-Aristotelian view that "perfect happiness" is unattainable "in this life."

An upshot of exposing Thomas' innovations is the underscoring of Aristotle's ethical naturalism - in the context of which Scruton's "Godless Conservatism" is grounded (or "ground-able") in a challenging and vigorous manner. Whether the city can in fact function without gods is another, and fascinating, question ...