Let me come back around on this to Aristotle. A fairly good place to start. In his book “Everyday Ethics” (yes, I own a book with that title), Joshua Halberstam makes a great point about ethics: “Chemists don’t need to justify their subject, and neither do computer programmers, market researchers, or horse racing handicappers.” (Preface, p.1).
The next point that he makes – and I have been attempting to, as well – is that moral philosophy (i.e. ethics), is that “Morality is is not primarily about… following rules that say, Do this, Don’t do that. It is primarily about moral sensitivity. The pivotal moral imperative is not do the right thing, but be the right thing.” (Intro., p. xvi). If you, dear reader, have looked at anything else I’ve written here – or read any Aristotle (or Rand) – then you know that this quote is pure Aristotelian ethics.
Halberstam admits that moral philosophy has, in fact, been wallowing for a while. (The book is published in 1993).
“This focus on personal morality echoes a sea change that’s been going on recently in professional moral philosophy. For the previous two-hundred year, academic philosophers [i.e. pinheads] thought about morality in societal terms. Thousands of volumes were written explicating such theories as utilitarianism… or Kantian ethics… that’s no longer the case… academic philosophers have rediscovered the virtues.”
Let me paraphrase for him – “For a bunch of time, wonky academics have been fucking this up and steering most of society down a path of bullshit. This was the product of two bullshit philosophies – utilitarianism (which ascribes the greatest good to the greatest number of people as the basis for moral philosophy. i.e. fucking communism, by another name, denying human beings individual worth on their own) and Kantian ethics – more bullshit about “duty” – again denying any individual their worth as independent, unique (shall I even say divine?) moral beings. We now have returned to some sense of sanity by re-reading Aristotle. Whew!”
I may be misreading him, but not by much.
The essence of personal ethics is having defined values – and that requires first “knowing thyself.” Ol’ Billy Shakes said “To thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” A solid personal ethic requires, first and foremost, knowing (honestly) what values you hold. If you’re candid about the things you value, it may be that you find out some things that you might not like about yourself. Especially if you take a little time to “rank” those values. Here’s a great mental exercise to do it. Print out a list of the top 100 values you believe in: honesty, integrity (not identical, by the way), patience, steadfastness, persistence, fiscal responsibility, family loyalty, and on and on. Cut them into individual strips. Then pick the twenty that are most important to you for a trip on a boat to a deserted island. When you’ve thought about why those twenty (and not some others), dump ten overboard because the boat’s sinking. Ask yourself why those ten got chosen over the other ten. Then dump another 5 because the boat’s still sinking. Now you really start to see what you’re about. Then ask “why these five over those five?”
Now go down the three. When you’re here, now you see what you value. And you can make some choices in your life about whether these are the top three – or whether you’d like to change your mind on this. That’s the important point. We can choose our values. Some we acquire (must I really hate the Yankees as a Red Sox fan?), but we’re not bound eternally to them. In fact, it’s amazing how much Sox fans now better understand Yankees fans – because we’ve won 2 world championships and a lot of people don’t like the Red Sox or their fans now. We’ve gone from being “lovable losers” to intolerable snobs in about 3 years – what’s the difference? Two championships and new ownership. What really changed besides that? So other people’s valuation of the Sox (and the fans) has changed. Ditto for our valuation of Yankees fans. (This is a silly example, but apply it to your values on abortion, or tax rates, or democrats or republicans…)
Which brings us full circle to my guy, Aristotle. You value patience – have it in your boat for the final three? Then practice patience every day, in every choice you make, from the smallest thing to the biggest. It won’t be long until you are patient… Ditto to the values of temperance, or tact, or courage, or forgiveness – or whatever you want that list to consist of. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Or as George Bernard Shaw said: “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
A friend of mine who teaches a course on such things, tells of this quote:
“Your thoughts will become your words. Your words will become your actions. Your actions will become your habits. Your habits will become your character. Your character will define your destiny.”
Gandhi was one legit Aristotelian. 🙂