The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.
Eric J. Herboso
10 February, 2004
The Republic: Book III: The Education Of The Guardians
In Book III of Plato’s Republic, Socrates talks about the guardians of the fictional city that they are building in mind and speech. These guardians would serve two functions: to protect the city from outside invaders by preventing them from harming its inhabitants, and to protect the city from insiders by preventing them from wishing (or otherwise accidentally causing) harm to its inhabitants.
It is in gymanstic and in music that Socrates points out they must be taught. He goes on to mention music (as learning for the soul) specifically, and deals with it in length, as opposed to gymnastic, which he glosses over as not pertinent with the discussion.
In regards to music, Socrates says that the poetry which smaller guardians hear must be of the type which causes them to fear slavery over death, as that is the optimal belief for a guardian to have, seeing as how being cowardly in battle would severely limit their usefulness. Socrates also says that the guardians should be taught by their own kind, just as the other two classes (that of gold, for rulers, and iron/bronze, for farmers and craftsmen) should be taught by their own kind.
It is in these distinctions (among others) that Socrates says the guardians should be taught. It will be very interesting to see in what other ways the city will be constructed in the following books.
Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato. Au. Plato.
Basic Books: United States of America, 1968
10 February, 2004
27 January, 2004
The Republic: Book II: On Modern Poets
The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.
Eric J. Herboso
27 January, 2004
The Republic: Book II: On Modern Poets
In Book II of Plato’s Republic, Socrates brings up the issue of the Republic, deciding to create a fictional society from its base pieces one by one, and finding where justice (or injustice) arises during the thought experiment, and thereby determining more easily as to what justice might be. In the course of the discussion between Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, poets are brought up, and it becomes clear to them that only by restricting what the poets say can a Good society be made: “When someone says [bad] things about gods, we’ll be harsh and not provide a chorus” (383c, p. 61).
In today’s terms, the three of them would advocate censure of our modern poets: those people that do or say things publicly with the intent to please an audience. Many such entertainers in current times say many public things about society: from Jane Fonda to Tom Hanks, and Rage Against The Machine to System of a Down. It seems that in the view of these three ancients, at least, freedom is best left only to philosophers, and only then in a very limited way. It is clear that in many ways, Socrates is an elitist, and believes in equality much more than freedom – and they are, in fact, contrasting ideas, as pointed out by Tocqueville some two thousand years later.
It is unclear as to where Plato is taking the narrative of the Republic from the end of Book II, save for the fact that it will clearly be a construction of a regimé that is being paid very close attention to in order to find exactly when justice arises within. But from what is written about the poets, it is quite clear that whatever the society may become, it will definitely be built with concepts in mind that have very little to do with freedom at all.
Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato. Au. Plato.
Basic Books: United States of America, 1968
Eric J. Herboso
27 January, 2004
The Republic: Book II: On Modern Poets
In Book II of Plato’s Republic, Socrates brings up the issue of the Republic, deciding to create a fictional society from its base pieces one by one, and finding where justice (or injustice) arises during the thought experiment, and thereby determining more easily as to what justice might be. In the course of the discussion between Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, poets are brought up, and it becomes clear to them that only by restricting what the poets say can a Good society be made: “When someone says [bad] things about gods, we’ll be harsh and not provide a chorus” (383c, p. 61).
In today’s terms, the three of them would advocate censure of our modern poets: those people that do or say things publicly with the intent to please an audience. Many such entertainers in current times say many public things about society: from Jane Fonda to Tom Hanks, and Rage Against The Machine to System of a Down. It seems that in the view of these three ancients, at least, freedom is best left only to philosophers, and only then in a very limited way. It is clear that in many ways, Socrates is an elitist, and believes in equality much more than freedom – and they are, in fact, contrasting ideas, as pointed out by Tocqueville some two thousand years later.
It is unclear as to where Plato is taking the narrative of the Republic from the end of Book II, save for the fact that it will clearly be a construction of a regimé that is being paid very close attention to in order to find exactly when justice arises within. But from what is written about the poets, it is quite clear that whatever the society may become, it will definitely be built with concepts in mind that have very little to do with freedom at all.
Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato. Au. Plato.
Basic Books: United States of America, 1968
25 November, 2003
Marx's Communist Manifesto: What Happened to the End of History?
The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.
Eric J. Herboso
Fr. Williams
English 243
Tuesday, November 25, 2003.
Marx’s Communist Manifesto:
What Happened To The End Of History?
The world has progressed a long way since the first publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Many ideas that started with Marx have disseminated throughout the global society, and many minds have been influenced by his predictive rhetoric. But even after all of these years, no country has yet done what Marx called inevitable. Where is the classless society today? Where is the universal brotherhood that Marx promised?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx put out a call to arms, using powerful emotive content to bring about a change to revolution. But as Marx makes very clear in his Das Kapital, the idea of universal brotherhood is not due merely to his imposition of will upon the public, but it is instead the necessary future society: “[T]he fall [of the bourgeoisie] and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (Marx §1). It, as Gus Tyler remarks in Marx’s Manifesto Revisited: 150 Years Later, is “not because Marx wanted it but because natural factors at work in the world preordained it” (Tyler 1). One must remember Marx’s criticism of Hegel: that yes, the history of society follows strict logical rules (“In his eyes, to credit [Marx] with fathering the numerous movements that have claimed his name would be equivalent to crediting Darwin with inventing the process whereby the ape became man, or crediting Copernicus with inducing the earth to revolve around the sun instead of vice versa” (Tyler 1) ), but that what exists today is definitely not the ‘end of history’. Marx very much disagreed with Hegel on the issue of the economic system in place in his day: capitalism. (Though to be fair, Hegel did not say anything specifically about economic systems; he was merely making a generalization about history having ‘run its course’.) But Marx did agree with Hegel on the idea of history being scientifically predictable, and it is in this vein that he shows clearly that capitalism will eventually be replaced with the ‘universal brotherhood’.
But the universal brotherhood as predicted by Marx has not yet come to pass, despite numerous attempts. The questions begs to be asked: Why not?
As Tyler states quite aptly, “during the past 150 years there has not been one country where the economy has been collectively owned and democratically controlled. In a number of Western industrial nations Socialists, Social Democrats or Laborites have been in power over extended periods of time, but they have never fully socialized the economy. In the USSR and Communist China there have been forms of collective ownership sans democracy. Why has the inevitable been so evitable” (Tyler 2)?
Jeremy Smith cuts right to the heart of the matter: “Before capitalism, incomes doubled every 630 years. From the advent of the first industrialized nation until today [1999], incomes have multiplied 10 times in Great Britain, 18 in the United States, and an astonishing 25 in Japan” (Smith 1). He goes on to mention the growth of life expectancies, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Of course, these items would not go away if a universal brotherhood ever did come to pass, but it is clear that once such a society comes into existence, capitalism will cease to be able to encourage growth in so many varied areas.
But this is merely an evasion of the question – just because capitalism encourages growth should not change the logic of Marx’s masterpiece, Das Kapital. Capitalism should grow and grow until “[s]ociety as a whole is more and more [split up] into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat” (Marx §1). Once this happens, the eventuality of a revolution seems quite inevitable, indeed – but then here is the answer to the aforementioned question: obviously society was never split up into those “two great hostile camps”. The following is from Aijaz Ahmad’s “Problem of Universality”: “It can be argued that in the actual history of the past one hundred and fifty years capitalism has not ‘simplified’ class antagonisms but created a very intricate system of differentiations based on scales of property, salaries, and wages, both nationally and transnationally, while this global class structure is further complicated by the feminization of certain labor regimes as well as racialisms and ethnicizations of various sorts” (Ahmad 5).
Marx foresaw “the entire middle class being wiped out, leaving only a small number of bourgeois exploiters on the one hand and, on the other hand, the rest of humanity, the proletariat, sinking ever deeper into a mire of misery” (Tyler 2). But in industrial societies, this never happened. Instead, we got the The New Deal, shortened the workweek, and “won job security, workmen’s compensation, unemployment insurance, occupational safety and health legislation, Social Security, better housing, and medical care” (Tyler 2). A delicate balance was contrived between outright laissez faire capitalism and radical socialism. As Smith puts it, “society [has] atomized into a hundred contending subcultures and occupations, each of its members identifying with a consumer niche instead of a ‘class’ (Smith 3).
But that is only the beginning. Of the ills plaguing the proletariat, the Manifesto proclaimed, none was more devastating than “the commercial crises that by their periodic returns put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. … In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction” (Marx §1). Marx assumed “they would grow increasingly menacing as long as capitalism existed, because the state was nothing more than ‘the executive committee of the ruling class’ and would give the bourgeoisie a free hand to do whatever it pleased” (Tyler 4). But Marx was wrong. Instead, the “worldwide crisis of the 1930s…provoked a political response. … [Governments] developed what the Swedes called the ‘middle way’, what some called ‘social democracy’, or the ‘social market’, and what the United States called the ‘New Deal’ ” (Tyler 4).
But what of those countries who did turn toward the more progressive socialism hailed as inevitable by Marx? Why have they not flourished as Marx predicted?
Marx said that once the soviets came into power, oppression would end on a governmental scale. And yet: “under the thumb of Lenin and his successors the soviets became probably the most oppressive state in all previous history” (Tyler 6). The abolition of the state became the absolutism of the state. As Lord Acton put it, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Tyler goes further in depth: “As the Communist experiment evolved in the Soviet Union, it became evident that instead of shifting from a brief interim dictatorship to an ultimate democracy, it was going in quite the opposite direction” (Tyler 6). Everything was falling apart. Marx decried: “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”; and yet although everything was taken according to ability, things were only given based on whether or not you were part of their communist party. Marx had: “a chiliastic view of life that is most commonly held by religious seers who prophesy a Judgment Day when the evil will be tossed into Hell and the virtuous will live happily ever after” (Tyler 3).
Thankfully, those Socialist governments that come into power today have learned from the lessons of history. They “do not rush to put an immediate end to capitalism by socializing the economy. They prefer a ‘synthesis’ in which the economic advantages of capitalist production are countered and balanced by the ethical imperatives of a socialistic distribution of income and wealth” (Tyler 6).
It is obvious that Marx was wrong when he called the revolution of the proletariat eminently inevitable. But his critique of capitalism is certainly right on the money. And because of his voice, the world is changed, whether he would want to credit himself for it or not.
Ahmad, Aijaz. “The ‘Communist Manifesto’ and the Problem of Universality”.
1998, Monthly Review June v50 n2 p12(12).
Marx, Karl & Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Trans. Samuel Moore.
1888, first English edition.
Smith, Jeremy. “Manifesto Destiny: The Enduring Sexiness of Karl Marx”.
1999, Dollars & Sense, March-April i222 p7(2).
Tyler, Gus. “Marx’ Manifesto Revisited: 150 Years Later”.
1998, The New Leader, Oct. 5 v81 n11 p11(4).
Eric J. Herboso
Fr. Williams
English 243
Tuesday, November 25, 2003.
Marx’s Communist Manifesto:
What Happened To The End Of History?
The world has progressed a long way since the first publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Many ideas that started with Marx have disseminated throughout the global society, and many minds have been influenced by his predictive rhetoric. But even after all of these years, no country has yet done what Marx called inevitable. Where is the classless society today? Where is the universal brotherhood that Marx promised?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx put out a call to arms, using powerful emotive content to bring about a change to revolution. But as Marx makes very clear in his Das Kapital, the idea of universal brotherhood is not due merely to his imposition of will upon the public, but it is instead the necessary future society: “[T]he fall [of the bourgeoisie] and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (Marx §1). It, as Gus Tyler remarks in Marx’s Manifesto Revisited: 150 Years Later, is “not because Marx wanted it but because natural factors at work in the world preordained it” (Tyler 1). One must remember Marx’s criticism of Hegel: that yes, the history of society follows strict logical rules (“In his eyes, to credit [Marx] with fathering the numerous movements that have claimed his name would be equivalent to crediting Darwin with inventing the process whereby the ape became man, or crediting Copernicus with inducing the earth to revolve around the sun instead of vice versa” (Tyler 1) ), but that what exists today is definitely not the ‘end of history’. Marx very much disagreed with Hegel on the issue of the economic system in place in his day: capitalism. (Though to be fair, Hegel did not say anything specifically about economic systems; he was merely making a generalization about history having ‘run its course’.) But Marx did agree with Hegel on the idea of history being scientifically predictable, and it is in this vein that he shows clearly that capitalism will eventually be replaced with the ‘universal brotherhood’.
But the universal brotherhood as predicted by Marx has not yet come to pass, despite numerous attempts. The questions begs to be asked: Why not?
As Tyler states quite aptly, “during the past 150 years there has not been one country where the economy has been collectively owned and democratically controlled. In a number of Western industrial nations Socialists, Social Democrats or Laborites have been in power over extended periods of time, but they have never fully socialized the economy. In the USSR and Communist China there have been forms of collective ownership sans democracy. Why has the inevitable been so evitable” (Tyler 2)?
Jeremy Smith cuts right to the heart of the matter: “Before capitalism, incomes doubled every 630 years. From the advent of the first industrialized nation until today [1999], incomes have multiplied 10 times in Great Britain, 18 in the United States, and an astonishing 25 in Japan” (Smith 1). He goes on to mention the growth of life expectancies, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Of course, these items would not go away if a universal brotherhood ever did come to pass, but it is clear that once such a society comes into existence, capitalism will cease to be able to encourage growth in so many varied areas.
But this is merely an evasion of the question – just because capitalism encourages growth should not change the logic of Marx’s masterpiece, Das Kapital. Capitalism should grow and grow until “[s]ociety as a whole is more and more [split up] into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat” (Marx §1). Once this happens, the eventuality of a revolution seems quite inevitable, indeed – but then here is the answer to the aforementioned question: obviously society was never split up into those “two great hostile camps”. The following is from Aijaz Ahmad’s “Problem of Universality”: “It can be argued that in the actual history of the past one hundred and fifty years capitalism has not ‘simplified’ class antagonisms but created a very intricate system of differentiations based on scales of property, salaries, and wages, both nationally and transnationally, while this global class structure is further complicated by the feminization of certain labor regimes as well as racialisms and ethnicizations of various sorts” (Ahmad 5).
Marx foresaw “the entire middle class being wiped out, leaving only a small number of bourgeois exploiters on the one hand and, on the other hand, the rest of humanity, the proletariat, sinking ever deeper into a mire of misery” (Tyler 2). But in industrial societies, this never happened. Instead, we got the The New Deal, shortened the workweek, and “won job security, workmen’s compensation, unemployment insurance, occupational safety and health legislation, Social Security, better housing, and medical care” (Tyler 2). A delicate balance was contrived between outright laissez faire capitalism and radical socialism. As Smith puts it, “society [has] atomized into a hundred contending subcultures and occupations, each of its members identifying with a consumer niche instead of a ‘class’ (Smith 3).
But that is only the beginning. Of the ills plaguing the proletariat, the Manifesto proclaimed, none was more devastating than “the commercial crises that by their periodic returns put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. … In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction” (Marx §1). Marx assumed “they would grow increasingly menacing as long as capitalism existed, because the state was nothing more than ‘the executive committee of the ruling class’ and would give the bourgeoisie a free hand to do whatever it pleased” (Tyler 4). But Marx was wrong. Instead, the “worldwide crisis of the 1930s…provoked a political response. … [Governments] developed what the Swedes called the ‘middle way’, what some called ‘social democracy’, or the ‘social market’, and what the United States called the ‘New Deal’ ” (Tyler 4).
But what of those countries who did turn toward the more progressive socialism hailed as inevitable by Marx? Why have they not flourished as Marx predicted?
Marx said that once the soviets came into power, oppression would end on a governmental scale. And yet: “under the thumb of Lenin and his successors the soviets became probably the most oppressive state in all previous history” (Tyler 6). The abolition of the state became the absolutism of the state. As Lord Acton put it, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Tyler goes further in depth: “As the Communist experiment evolved in the Soviet Union, it became evident that instead of shifting from a brief interim dictatorship to an ultimate democracy, it was going in quite the opposite direction” (Tyler 6). Everything was falling apart. Marx decried: “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”; and yet although everything was taken according to ability, things were only given based on whether or not you were part of their communist party. Marx had: “a chiliastic view of life that is most commonly held by religious seers who prophesy a Judgment Day when the evil will be tossed into Hell and the virtuous will live happily ever after” (Tyler 3).
Thankfully, those Socialist governments that come into power today have learned from the lessons of history. They “do not rush to put an immediate end to capitalism by socializing the economy. They prefer a ‘synthesis’ in which the economic advantages of capitalist production are countered and balanced by the ethical imperatives of a socialistic distribution of income and wealth” (Tyler 6).
It is obvious that Marx was wrong when he called the revolution of the proletariat eminently inevitable. But his critique of capitalism is certainly right on the money. And because of his voice, the world is changed, whether he would want to credit himself for it or not.
Ahmad, Aijaz. “The ‘Communist Manifesto’ and the Problem of Universality”.
1998, Monthly Review June v50 n2 p12(12).
Marx, Karl & Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Trans. Samuel Moore.
1888, first English edition.
Smith, Jeremy. “Manifesto Destiny: The Enduring Sexiness of Karl Marx”.
1999, Dollars & Sense, March-April i222 p7(2).
Tyler, Gus. “Marx’ Manifesto Revisited: 150 Years Later”.
1998, The New Leader, Oct. 5 v81 n11 p11(4).
22 October, 2003
Niccolò Machiavelli: Morality Via Human Nature
The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.
Eric J. Herboso
ENG 243
Father Williams
22 October, 2003
Niccolò Machiavelli:
Morality Via Human Nature
Machiavelli. The very name brings up an image of harshness at its basest, of hatred of “true” ethics, and of a man that would rather a ruler be contrary to morality than give up the position of his rulership. But are these accusations valid? Is Machiavelli truly as horrible as so many people make him out to be?
It must be granted that his advice does seem to contradict what traditional morality might have a ruler do. Consider that, according to Machiavelli, a ruler should not allow freedom of speech: “if anyone may speak frankly to you, respect for you will soon disappear” (Machiavelli 81); should deceive his subjects: “a prudent ruler cannot keep his word, nor should he” (61); and should be cruel: “it is much safer to be feared than loved” (59). No wonder, then, that Machiavelli is considered so immoral.
Yet despite these things, could an argument be made that, in fact, Machiavelli was doing his best to create the most perfect world that he can? And if so, then wouldn’t that necessitate his being more moral than even those that would be considered more moral by the public?
Consider what Machiavelli says about Scipio, a general in the Spanish army: “Scipio [was] considered a most remarkable man not only in his own times but in al others… [yet his] armies rebelled against him in Spain. The…reason for this was that he was over-indulgent, and permitted his soldiers more freedom than was consistent with maintaining proper military discipline” (60). Here, Machiavelli is trying to show that what is generally considered to be kind is not always necessarily so. Notice how he ends his description of Scipio: “when Locri [, a Greek city in Calabria,] was ravaged by one of Scipio’s Legates, the inhabitants were not avenged by him, and the legate was not punished for its arrogance, all because Scipio was too easy-going…. [B]ut since he was controlled by the senate, this harmful quality was not only concealed but contributed to his glory” (60). It is clear that Machiavelli has an interest in what is good, but he does not think that the path to that good lies in what is commonly thought of as good.
In the dedicatory letter to The Prince, Machiavelli makes clear his intention to avoid any usage of metaphor: “I have not embellished this work by filling it with rounded periods, with high-sounding words or phrases, or with any of the other beguiling artifices of apparent beauty which most writers employ to describe and embellish their subject-matter” (3). Because of this, his incorrect usage of grammar and sometimes vague way of explaining more complicated terms takes on a whole new meaning: what if he writes in the way he writes, not because he wants what he says to be true, but that he writes over the Prince’s head, with the full intention of coercing that Prince to do as he commands?
Early on, Machiavelli writes that: “men are very ready to change their ruler when they believe that they can better their condition…. But they are mistaken, because they later realise [British translation] through hard experience that they have made their condition worse” (7). What if, contrary to what he intends the Prince (his reader) to believe, he is writing things that he does not think could ever be justified, except in the name of maintaining a stable government? It is clear that Machiavelli does not think that revolution could ever be justified, since revolution involves death, pain, and displeasure: “a new ruler is always forced to injure his new subjects, both through his troops and countless other injuries that are involved in conquering a state” (7). He is, after all, a well read man – perhaps it is in Plato’s Republic that he first understood the idea that no matter how wonderful a state may be made to be, it will never be perfect. But it really does not matter where Machiavelli first understood this principle, so long as he understood it; for once understood, the move to the realization that revolution is inherently unjustified becomes more and more obvious. Machiavelli, it seems, is not really grounded in reality for reality’s sake, but is instead insistent upon reality in the face of abstract theory for the sole reason that Machiavelli wants to make a difference.
Machiavelli realizes that many of the states that exist in his time are governed stupidly, and their citizens are: “unjustly oppressed by great and cruel misfortune” (4). To combat this, he writes The Prince, with the idea that a ruler who reads it will be more inclined to make a more favorable state for all to live in. In this way, Machiavelli is increasing the good for all, by relieving the populace of strife through pointless rebellion and wasted lives. Certainly, it is clear that Machiavelli is very much concerned with what is good; consider what he says about Agathocles’ abuse of power: “[I]t cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow-citizens, to betray one’s friends, to be treacherous, merciless and irreligious; power may be gained by acting in such ways, but not glory” (31). Note also, that he very clearly distinguishes between what is necessary in order for a ruler to maintain a kingdom best, with the least discomfort to its citizens; nearly every quote from The Prince has a reference to what is best, and then to what is necessary. Some would call Machiavelli unidealistic; but how much more of an idealist could he possibly be, than to want so badly for the impossible perfect state that he refuses to allow revolution to get there?
The very qualities that make people call Machiavelli immoral are those qualities which make him most moral. All systems are bad; no one form of government surpasses all the others. Even a fictional government specifically created to be perfect in every way (The Republic) has huge problems inherent to its core. Why, then, would revolution ever be justified? Machiavelli is tired of dealing with stupidity in charge; note how he urges Italy to be brought under one governor, and that governor is the one that has his book, and hence, his ideas in mind: “It seems to me that so many things are propitious for a new ruler that I am not aware that there has ever been a more appropriate time than this” (87).
Machiavelli is the start of a huge change in philosophy. From him stem all the rest of the modern philosophers. He said it first, though in a very obscure way. That revolution is only justified when it can (A) be easily accomplished, to the good of the people, or (B) be in response to a governmental structure that has no idea how to govern effectively within its own system. The within-its-own-system part is important; Machiavelli does believe that ideal systems would be perfect, but he does not believe that they could ever exist – hence his predilection for working within the system.
Why bother moving from capitalism to communism when both are flawed? Isn’t it far better to improve capitalism from within, rather than to forcefully move to communism? It is true that Machiavelli says harsh things: “A ruler should…always be concerned with military maters, and in peacetime he should be even more taken up with them than in war” (52); but he says these things because of the world he lives in. It is obvious that he would not approve of such ideas unless they were necessary in the world that he lived in. Machiavelli is very concerned with making the best possible world for him to live in; but where does he get all his assumptions?
It should be obvious, from the quoted statements above, that everything Machiavelli says is based on fundamental assumptions about human nature. How could any of Machiavelli’s methods work, unless all men were committing actions and thoughts based upon some ‘thing’ that is called human nature. Thus, Machiavelli is attempting to approach morality via human nature. Whereas others try approaching morality by creating the most perfect system, Machiavelli feels that attempts that fail are not worth attempting; thus he uses his knowledge of human nature to create the best possible system in his world. His method may not apply in another world, but for the world that he lived in (, and perhaps we do, too), it was the most moral way of accomplishing the existence of a better world.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, ed.
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988
Eric J. Herboso
ENG 243
Father Williams
22 October, 2003
Niccolò Machiavelli:
Morality Via Human Nature
Machiavelli. The very name brings up an image of harshness at its basest, of hatred of “true” ethics, and of a man that would rather a ruler be contrary to morality than give up the position of his rulership. But are these accusations valid? Is Machiavelli truly as horrible as so many people make him out to be?
It must be granted that his advice does seem to contradict what traditional morality might have a ruler do. Consider that, according to Machiavelli, a ruler should not allow freedom of speech: “if anyone may speak frankly to you, respect for you will soon disappear” (Machiavelli 81); should deceive his subjects: “a prudent ruler cannot keep his word, nor should he” (61); and should be cruel: “it is much safer to be feared than loved” (59). No wonder, then, that Machiavelli is considered so immoral.
Yet despite these things, could an argument be made that, in fact, Machiavelli was doing his best to create the most perfect world that he can? And if so, then wouldn’t that necessitate his being more moral than even those that would be considered more moral by the public?
Consider what Machiavelli says about Scipio, a general in the Spanish army: “Scipio [was] considered a most remarkable man not only in his own times but in al others… [yet his] armies rebelled against him in Spain. The…reason for this was that he was over-indulgent, and permitted his soldiers more freedom than was consistent with maintaining proper military discipline” (60). Here, Machiavelli is trying to show that what is generally considered to be kind is not always necessarily so. Notice how he ends his description of Scipio: “when Locri [, a Greek city in Calabria,] was ravaged by one of Scipio’s Legates, the inhabitants were not avenged by him, and the legate was not punished for its arrogance, all because Scipio was too easy-going…. [B]ut since he was controlled by the senate, this harmful quality was not only concealed but contributed to his glory” (60). It is clear that Machiavelli has an interest in what is good, but he does not think that the path to that good lies in what is commonly thought of as good.
In the dedicatory letter to The Prince, Machiavelli makes clear his intention to avoid any usage of metaphor: “I have not embellished this work by filling it with rounded periods, with high-sounding words or phrases, or with any of the other beguiling artifices of apparent beauty which most writers employ to describe and embellish their subject-matter” (3). Because of this, his incorrect usage of grammar and sometimes vague way of explaining more complicated terms takes on a whole new meaning: what if he writes in the way he writes, not because he wants what he says to be true, but that he writes over the Prince’s head, with the full intention of coercing that Prince to do as he commands?
Early on, Machiavelli writes that: “men are very ready to change their ruler when they believe that they can better their condition…. But they are mistaken, because they later realise [British translation] through hard experience that they have made their condition worse” (7). What if, contrary to what he intends the Prince (his reader) to believe, he is writing things that he does not think could ever be justified, except in the name of maintaining a stable government? It is clear that Machiavelli does not think that revolution could ever be justified, since revolution involves death, pain, and displeasure: “a new ruler is always forced to injure his new subjects, both through his troops and countless other injuries that are involved in conquering a state” (7). He is, after all, a well read man – perhaps it is in Plato’s Republic that he first understood the idea that no matter how wonderful a state may be made to be, it will never be perfect. But it really does not matter where Machiavelli first understood this principle, so long as he understood it; for once understood, the move to the realization that revolution is inherently unjustified becomes more and more obvious. Machiavelli, it seems, is not really grounded in reality for reality’s sake, but is instead insistent upon reality in the face of abstract theory for the sole reason that Machiavelli wants to make a difference.
Machiavelli realizes that many of the states that exist in his time are governed stupidly, and their citizens are: “unjustly oppressed by great and cruel misfortune” (4). To combat this, he writes The Prince, with the idea that a ruler who reads it will be more inclined to make a more favorable state for all to live in. In this way, Machiavelli is increasing the good for all, by relieving the populace of strife through pointless rebellion and wasted lives. Certainly, it is clear that Machiavelli is very much concerned with what is good; consider what he says about Agathocles’ abuse of power: “[I]t cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow-citizens, to betray one’s friends, to be treacherous, merciless and irreligious; power may be gained by acting in such ways, but not glory” (31). Note also, that he very clearly distinguishes between what is necessary in order for a ruler to maintain a kingdom best, with the least discomfort to its citizens; nearly every quote from The Prince has a reference to what is best, and then to what is necessary. Some would call Machiavelli unidealistic; but how much more of an idealist could he possibly be, than to want so badly for the impossible perfect state that he refuses to allow revolution to get there?
The very qualities that make people call Machiavelli immoral are those qualities which make him most moral. All systems are bad; no one form of government surpasses all the others. Even a fictional government specifically created to be perfect in every way (The Republic) has huge problems inherent to its core. Why, then, would revolution ever be justified? Machiavelli is tired of dealing with stupidity in charge; note how he urges Italy to be brought under one governor, and that governor is the one that has his book, and hence, his ideas in mind: “It seems to me that so many things are propitious for a new ruler that I am not aware that there has ever been a more appropriate time than this” (87).
Machiavelli is the start of a huge change in philosophy. From him stem all the rest of the modern philosophers. He said it first, though in a very obscure way. That revolution is only justified when it can (A) be easily accomplished, to the good of the people, or (B) be in response to a governmental structure that has no idea how to govern effectively within its own system. The within-its-own-system part is important; Machiavelli does believe that ideal systems would be perfect, but he does not believe that they could ever exist – hence his predilection for working within the system.
Why bother moving from capitalism to communism when both are flawed? Isn’t it far better to improve capitalism from within, rather than to forcefully move to communism? It is true that Machiavelli says harsh things: “A ruler should…always be concerned with military maters, and in peacetime he should be even more taken up with them than in war” (52); but he says these things because of the world he lives in. It is obvious that he would not approve of such ideas unless they were necessary in the world that he lived in. Machiavelli is very concerned with making the best possible world for him to live in; but where does he get all his assumptions?
It should be obvious, from the quoted statements above, that everything Machiavelli says is based on fundamental assumptions about human nature. How could any of Machiavelli’s methods work, unless all men were committing actions and thoughts based upon some ‘thing’ that is called human nature. Thus, Machiavelli is attempting to approach morality via human nature. Whereas others try approaching morality by creating the most perfect system, Machiavelli feels that attempts that fail are not worth attempting; thus he uses his knowledge of human nature to create the best possible system in his world. His method may not apply in another world, but for the world that he lived in (, and perhaps we do, too), it was the most moral way of accomplishing the existence of a better world.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, ed.
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988
30 September, 2003
Plato, Boethius, & Marcus Aurelius: Happiness Through Logic & Ockham’s Razor
The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.
Eric J. Herboso
ENG 243
Father Williams
30 September, 2003
Plato, Boethius, & Marcus Aurelius:
Happiness Through Logic & Ockham’s Razor
The concept of logic has consistently been used throughout history by most of the cherished thinkers of the Western world, starting with the ancients themselves. It is this ideal of logical consistency combined with the space-saver of Ockham’s Razor that has served as the foundation for the arguments toward happiness given by three of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition: Plato, Boethius, and Marcus Aurelius. Unfortunately, whether due to biases of their time, or perhaps misunderstandings of the limits of logical thought itself, all three of these thinkers made grave errors in their logical arguments, not quite living up to the ideal that they themselves put up for themselves.
Plato wrote most of his dialogues just before and during the birth of Aristotlean logic. Because of this, one might expect his logical arguments to be the most consistently valid of all three of the writers commented upon in the previous paragraph; however, because Plato used common sense in order to go through his logic (this was, of course, the accepted form of using logic before Aristotle formalized the language), it is not always clear that his logic holds consistently. Indeed, at some points during his tougher dialogues, it becomes unclear as to exactly what he himself means in his questioning, which is not exactly the best way to go about when composing a logical argument. However, instead of focusing on such parts of his writings, which could after all be nothing more than the limitations of the understanding of Plato by the author of this paper, it seems more worthwhile to focus upon those parts of Plato’s writings that most clearly illustrate his skilled use of logic and also those few parts that most clearly illustrate his worst failures in logical thought.
In “Euthyphro”, Socrates goes into the question of where morality arises from; it is his intention to be able to define “piety” (though it must be pointed out that in the Greek use of this word, much more is meant from the word than is connotated by its English translation) – and through this definition, Socrates hopes to be able to more accurately determine in what way he may be helped in his upcoming trial. However, it can be easily seen that if this definition were truly arrived at, then it could serve Socrates in that of his explanation of happiness, and in how it may be arrived.
During Socrates’ interrogation of Euthyphro, an attempt is made by Euthyphro to define what “all the gods love [as] pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious” (9 Plato). However, Socrates questions in this further in his usual dialectic way: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (9). What Socrates is asking here is whether a thing is good because the gods deem it to be good, or whether the gods deem it good because it is already good for some other reason. Because, Socrates says, if it is good merely because the gods deem it to be good, then it does not matter what it is that the gods deem good, for whatever they so choose as the good will necessarily be the good, and there is no higher authority to which one could appeal. If a thing is neither good nor bad until the gods either deem it good or bad, then what they choose as good or bad is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand; if the gods say that murder or stealing is good, then it is good – and there is no getting around that, because we are defining whatever they love as what happens to be good in and of itself. This viewpoint makes all the things that we consider good to be completely and utterly arbitrary, for they had no value or preference toward good or evil until the gods deemed it good or evil. This is a completely reprehensible view to take on the matter, and so it must be (by disjunctive syllogism, to use Aristotlean logic terminology) that what is good is good before the gods deem it to be good; and so the gods are not making a thing good by considering it good – rather, that thing is good by the existence of some other attribute that the gods can somehow discern, and they relay the fact of it being good in the act of deeming it good. The parallel that Plato uses is that: “a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the state of being carried, but the converse of this” (10). Therefore what is good is not good because the gods say it is; rather, those things are good in and of themselves, and the gods must observe that they are good before they are able to deem (in other words: inform others) that they are good.
Socrates’ logic here is impeccable, though difficult to comprehend at first. He used the Aristotlean logical forms of disjunctive syllogism, modus ponens, and modus tollens to systematically prove that whatever the good may in fact be is not good because of any gods’ existence. Whatever makes a thing good is some attribute of it that is not placed there by any deity saying it is so. This, of course, does not deny the idea that whatever a god may say is good may in fact be quite good; but it does deny the idea that it is good merely because the god considered it good.
But Socrates’ logic is not always impeccably valid. Consider Plato’s “Phaedo”, for example. In it, Socrates is awaiting the end to come, and is talking with his friends before he is to end his life. During the conversation, Socrates considers the question: “Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites” (68)? Socrates wants “to show that this [generation from opposites] holds universally of all opposites” (68). He goes on, giving specific examples from which to compound his data, asking whether what is greater must have once been lesser, and whether what is worse must have once been better, and whether what is swifter must have once been slower. In each of these examples, his criterion holds true; however, he then goes on to ask: “is this true of all opposites? And are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites” (68)? His implication here and the answer which is given to him is that of all things coming from their opposites, regardless of what they are. He is employing the method of Ockham’s (also known as Occam’s) Razor here, taking numerous examples from thought-experiment data, and constructing a general rule about everything from these numerous examples. There is no facet of logic which necessitates Ockham’s Razor to be true; instead, it is a maxim that is generally accepted to be true without any actual logical necessity of it, and this is a concept that Socrates himself either did not entirely grasp, or else ignored during his last day of life, perhaps to help himself feel better. It seems more likely that he was just unaware of Ockham’s Razor not being a necessary condition, since Aristotlean logic does not go into detail on the subject, and Aristotle was Plato’s greatest disciple.
The reason why it is clear that Socrates did not understand this point is because he misuses Ockham’s Razor: “is there not an opposite of life, [death,]… [a]nd these then are generated, if they are opposites, the one from the other, and have there their two intermediate processes also” (69)? He continues, further down: “What is generated from life? / Death. / And what from death? / I can only say in answer—life” (69). It is clear here that Socrates is taking the specific principle illustrated in his earlier examples with what is stronger, swifter, or better; and he is now applying that same precept to a basic generality which does not necessarily have to hold true. In “Phaedo”, then, Socrates uses logic only up to a certain point, and then veers off into speculation – educated speculation, of course – but still just speculation. (In Plato’s defense, it must be mentioned here that this same misuse of Ockham’s Razor is prevalent even in scientific circles, whenever a finding is made that bases its presuppositions upon ideas which do not necessarily have to be true. Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are two of the biggest examples of this.)
Boethius, too, uses logic to arrive at the route to happiness. In his book, The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy helps Boethius to understand as to how happiness may be achieved. One of the best examples of Lady Philosophy’s use of logical argument is when she reminds Boethius of the nature of the goddess Fortune: “You are wrong if you think that Fortune has changed toward you. This is…the way she always behaves. She is changeable, and so in her relations with you she has merely done what she always does” (21 Boethius). Lady Philosophy continues on, explaining why Boethius should not be saddened by his new position: “[T]he misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune” (22). She then attacks the same argument from another perspective: “If you cannot keep [the goddess Fortune], and if it makes you miserable to lose her, what is fickle Fortune but a promise of future distress” (22)? Her attitude toward logic here is as impeccable as Socrates’ logic was in his argument for the causation of the good being separate from the gods deeming it so, though it must be noted that Lady Philosophy tends to use many more rhetorical and psychological ploys than Socrates did. Still, even if you strip away the emotional rhetoric, repetition, and psychological arguments, Lady Philosophy’s logic remains intact and immovable (though sparse).
However, Boethius did not always write with complete logical clarity. Like Plato before him, he neglected the limitations of Ockham’s Razor. Consider Lady Philosophy’s treatise upon the Good as being what she maintains it to be: “[N]othing which can be lost can be a supreme good…because it is obviously less good than that which cannot be lost” (29). She asserts here that the supreme good must not have anything better than it; this, of course, holds perfectly true. But then she states that that which can be lost can never be considered a supreme good, since that which cannot be lost is necessarily better than that which can. However, this only holds true if you presuppose that there will always be a thing that is wholly identical to a thing that can be lost, except in that it cannot be lost. In other words, the logic only holds if for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there exists a thing which is just as good in every detail, plus it has the additional attribute of not being able to be lost. Now, it could be the case that for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there really does exist a thing which is just as good, but cannot be lost. If so, then Lady Philosophy is correct by concurrence; but the method by which she reaches this true conclusion is still just as invalid as before. The reason why it is necessarily invalid is because it is not necessarily the case that for every instance, there exists its counterpart. The assumption that it is the case is an assumption by Ockham’s Razor. Again, it must be stressed that this says nothing against Ockham’s Razor per se; after all, Ockham’s Razor is not an actual logical principle, but rather a useful device for cutting away what is generally considered to be unnecessary information. This is fine when one is constructing general forms of rules for the physical laws of the universe or for predicting whether the stock market will rise or fall on the long term – but because Ockham’s Razor is not a purely logical instance of modus ponens, the laws of the universe are still not distinct in their entirety with each individual interaction, and the particular ups and downs of the stock market on any given day are not accurately predicted using the methods of Ockham’s Razor. It is not wise to rely on Ockham’s Razor in rigorous mathematical proofs, and it is this lack of rigor that Lady Philosophy suffers from in her attempt to define the supreme good as that which cannot be lost. Again, it may be true that the supreme good is that which cannot be lost; but it is not necessarily true that this is the case.
In Marcus Aurelius’ “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, a similar search for the path to happiness is attempted. He, too, tries to use logic to arrive at his conclusions, but generally relies more upon reason and common sense to clarify his approach to the ideal of happiness. Aurelius observes the world around him, and uses that observation to influence his outlook upon life: “Nobody is surprised when a fig-tree brings forth figs. Similarly, we ought to be ashamed of our surprise when the world produces its normal crop of happenings” (537 Aurelius). He also goes into logical thought later in his Meditations, when he says that: “No event can happen to a man but what is properly incidental to man’s condition…. Then if all things experience only what is customary and natural to them, why complain? The same nature which is yours as well as theirs brings you nothing you canot bear” (542).
However, in each of these instances, his logic is not that of sound or unsound valid forms, but rather of strong or weak invalid forms. This type of logic is not conducive to complete proof, but rather to merely an attempt at convincing others of what proof (or lack thereof) there is. It is clear that he fails in the category of absolutely proving what he has to say; but it is not clear that he has the intention of doing so, anyway. After all, he does not have the same amount of time to write a well-polished essay as the previous authors mentioned did.
With each of the above examples, logic was used in the pursuit of happiness; but in no such case was that logic used one-hundred percent effectively. But the question remains: does an argument have to be completely necessarily true in order to be worthwhile to write or even to read? Certainly not, for each of these authors has done extremely well in their pursuit of the true way of approaching happiness, and that is all that truly matters.
Aurelius, Marcus. “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, Meditations. Maxwell Staniforth, trans.
Class Handout; unknown citation.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Richard Green, trans.
Library of Liberal Arts: New York, 1962.
Plato. “The Apology”. Weller, Shane, trans.
Dover Thrift: Toronto, 1992.
Eric J. Herboso
ENG 243
Father Williams
30 September, 2003
Plato, Boethius, & Marcus Aurelius:
Happiness Through Logic & Ockham’s Razor
The concept of logic has consistently been used throughout history by most of the cherished thinkers of the Western world, starting with the ancients themselves. It is this ideal of logical consistency combined with the space-saver of Ockham’s Razor that has served as the foundation for the arguments toward happiness given by three of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition: Plato, Boethius, and Marcus Aurelius. Unfortunately, whether due to biases of their time, or perhaps misunderstandings of the limits of logical thought itself, all three of these thinkers made grave errors in their logical arguments, not quite living up to the ideal that they themselves put up for themselves.
Plato wrote most of his dialogues just before and during the birth of Aristotlean logic. Because of this, one might expect his logical arguments to be the most consistently valid of all three of the writers commented upon in the previous paragraph; however, because Plato used common sense in order to go through his logic (this was, of course, the accepted form of using logic before Aristotle formalized the language), it is not always clear that his logic holds consistently. Indeed, at some points during his tougher dialogues, it becomes unclear as to exactly what he himself means in his questioning, which is not exactly the best way to go about when composing a logical argument. However, instead of focusing on such parts of his writings, which could after all be nothing more than the limitations of the understanding of Plato by the author of this paper, it seems more worthwhile to focus upon those parts of Plato’s writings that most clearly illustrate his skilled use of logic and also those few parts that most clearly illustrate his worst failures in logical thought.
In “Euthyphro”, Socrates goes into the question of where morality arises from; it is his intention to be able to define “piety” (though it must be pointed out that in the Greek use of this word, much more is meant from the word than is connotated by its English translation) – and through this definition, Socrates hopes to be able to more accurately determine in what way he may be helped in his upcoming trial. However, it can be easily seen that if this definition were truly arrived at, then it could serve Socrates in that of his explanation of happiness, and in how it may be arrived.
During Socrates’ interrogation of Euthyphro, an attempt is made by Euthyphro to define what “all the gods love [as] pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious” (9 Plato). However, Socrates questions in this further in his usual dialectic way: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (9). What Socrates is asking here is whether a thing is good because the gods deem it to be good, or whether the gods deem it good because it is already good for some other reason. Because, Socrates says, if it is good merely because the gods deem it to be good, then it does not matter what it is that the gods deem good, for whatever they so choose as the good will necessarily be the good, and there is no higher authority to which one could appeal. If a thing is neither good nor bad until the gods either deem it good or bad, then what they choose as good or bad is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand; if the gods say that murder or stealing is good, then it is good – and there is no getting around that, because we are defining whatever they love as what happens to be good in and of itself. This viewpoint makes all the things that we consider good to be completely and utterly arbitrary, for they had no value or preference toward good or evil until the gods deemed it good or evil. This is a completely reprehensible view to take on the matter, and so it must be (by disjunctive syllogism, to use Aristotlean logic terminology) that what is good is good before the gods deem it to be good; and so the gods are not making a thing good by considering it good – rather, that thing is good by the existence of some other attribute that the gods can somehow discern, and they relay the fact of it being good in the act of deeming it good. The parallel that Plato uses is that: “a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the state of being carried, but the converse of this” (10). Therefore what is good is not good because the gods say it is; rather, those things are good in and of themselves, and the gods must observe that they are good before they are able to deem (in other words: inform others) that they are good.
Socrates’ logic here is impeccable, though difficult to comprehend at first. He used the Aristotlean logical forms of disjunctive syllogism, modus ponens, and modus tollens to systematically prove that whatever the good may in fact be is not good because of any gods’ existence. Whatever makes a thing good is some attribute of it that is not placed there by any deity saying it is so. This, of course, does not deny the idea that whatever a god may say is good may in fact be quite good; but it does deny the idea that it is good merely because the god considered it good.
But Socrates’ logic is not always impeccably valid. Consider Plato’s “Phaedo”, for example. In it, Socrates is awaiting the end to come, and is talking with his friends before he is to end his life. During the conversation, Socrates considers the question: “Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites” (68)? Socrates wants “to show that this [generation from opposites] holds universally of all opposites” (68). He goes on, giving specific examples from which to compound his data, asking whether what is greater must have once been lesser, and whether what is worse must have once been better, and whether what is swifter must have once been slower. In each of these examples, his criterion holds true; however, he then goes on to ask: “is this true of all opposites? And are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites” (68)? His implication here and the answer which is given to him is that of all things coming from their opposites, regardless of what they are. He is employing the method of Ockham’s (also known as Occam’s) Razor here, taking numerous examples from thought-experiment data, and constructing a general rule about everything from these numerous examples. There is no facet of logic which necessitates Ockham’s Razor to be true; instead, it is a maxim that is generally accepted to be true without any actual logical necessity of it, and this is a concept that Socrates himself either did not entirely grasp, or else ignored during his last day of life, perhaps to help himself feel better. It seems more likely that he was just unaware of Ockham’s Razor not being a necessary condition, since Aristotlean logic does not go into detail on the subject, and Aristotle was Plato’s greatest disciple.
The reason why it is clear that Socrates did not understand this point is because he misuses Ockham’s Razor: “is there not an opposite of life, [death,]… [a]nd these then are generated, if they are opposites, the one from the other, and have there their two intermediate processes also” (69)? He continues, further down: “What is generated from life? / Death. / And what from death? / I can only say in answer—life” (69). It is clear here that Socrates is taking the specific principle illustrated in his earlier examples with what is stronger, swifter, or better; and he is now applying that same precept to a basic generality which does not necessarily have to hold true. In “Phaedo”, then, Socrates uses logic only up to a certain point, and then veers off into speculation – educated speculation, of course – but still just speculation. (In Plato’s defense, it must be mentioned here that this same misuse of Ockham’s Razor is prevalent even in scientific circles, whenever a finding is made that bases its presuppositions upon ideas which do not necessarily have to be true. Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are two of the biggest examples of this.)
Boethius, too, uses logic to arrive at the route to happiness. In his book, The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy helps Boethius to understand as to how happiness may be achieved. One of the best examples of Lady Philosophy’s use of logical argument is when she reminds Boethius of the nature of the goddess Fortune: “You are wrong if you think that Fortune has changed toward you. This is…the way she always behaves. She is changeable, and so in her relations with you she has merely done what she always does” (21 Boethius). Lady Philosophy continues on, explaining why Boethius should not be saddened by his new position: “[T]he misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune” (22). She then attacks the same argument from another perspective: “If you cannot keep [the goddess Fortune], and if it makes you miserable to lose her, what is fickle Fortune but a promise of future distress” (22)? Her attitude toward logic here is as impeccable as Socrates’ logic was in his argument for the causation of the good being separate from the gods deeming it so, though it must be noted that Lady Philosophy tends to use many more rhetorical and psychological ploys than Socrates did. Still, even if you strip away the emotional rhetoric, repetition, and psychological arguments, Lady Philosophy’s logic remains intact and immovable (though sparse).
However, Boethius did not always write with complete logical clarity. Like Plato before him, he neglected the limitations of Ockham’s Razor. Consider Lady Philosophy’s treatise upon the Good as being what she maintains it to be: “[N]othing which can be lost can be a supreme good…because it is obviously less good than that which cannot be lost” (29). She asserts here that the supreme good must not have anything better than it; this, of course, holds perfectly true. But then she states that that which can be lost can never be considered a supreme good, since that which cannot be lost is necessarily better than that which can. However, this only holds true if you presuppose that there will always be a thing that is wholly identical to a thing that can be lost, except in that it cannot be lost. In other words, the logic only holds if for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there exists a thing which is just as good in every detail, plus it has the additional attribute of not being able to be lost. Now, it could be the case that for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there really does exist a thing which is just as good, but cannot be lost. If so, then Lady Philosophy is correct by concurrence; but the method by which she reaches this true conclusion is still just as invalid as before. The reason why it is necessarily invalid is because it is not necessarily the case that for every instance, there exists its counterpart. The assumption that it is the case is an assumption by Ockham’s Razor. Again, it must be stressed that this says nothing against Ockham’s Razor per se; after all, Ockham’s Razor is not an actual logical principle, but rather a useful device for cutting away what is generally considered to be unnecessary information. This is fine when one is constructing general forms of rules for the physical laws of the universe or for predicting whether the stock market will rise or fall on the long term – but because Ockham’s Razor is not a purely logical instance of modus ponens, the laws of the universe are still not distinct in their entirety with each individual interaction, and the particular ups and downs of the stock market on any given day are not accurately predicted using the methods of Ockham’s Razor. It is not wise to rely on Ockham’s Razor in rigorous mathematical proofs, and it is this lack of rigor that Lady Philosophy suffers from in her attempt to define the supreme good as that which cannot be lost. Again, it may be true that the supreme good is that which cannot be lost; but it is not necessarily true that this is the case.
In Marcus Aurelius’ “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, a similar search for the path to happiness is attempted. He, too, tries to use logic to arrive at his conclusions, but generally relies more upon reason and common sense to clarify his approach to the ideal of happiness. Aurelius observes the world around him, and uses that observation to influence his outlook upon life: “Nobody is surprised when a fig-tree brings forth figs. Similarly, we ought to be ashamed of our surprise when the world produces its normal crop of happenings” (537 Aurelius). He also goes into logical thought later in his Meditations, when he says that: “No event can happen to a man but what is properly incidental to man’s condition…. Then if all things experience only what is customary and natural to them, why complain? The same nature which is yours as well as theirs brings you nothing you canot bear” (542).
However, in each of these instances, his logic is not that of sound or unsound valid forms, but rather of strong or weak invalid forms. This type of logic is not conducive to complete proof, but rather to merely an attempt at convincing others of what proof (or lack thereof) there is. It is clear that he fails in the category of absolutely proving what he has to say; but it is not clear that he has the intention of doing so, anyway. After all, he does not have the same amount of time to write a well-polished essay as the previous authors mentioned did.
With each of the above examples, logic was used in the pursuit of happiness; but in no such case was that logic used one-hundred percent effectively. But the question remains: does an argument have to be completely necessarily true in order to be worthwhile to write or even to read? Certainly not, for each of these authors has done extremely well in their pursuit of the true way of approaching happiness, and that is all that truly matters.
Aurelius, Marcus. “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, Meditations. Maxwell Staniforth, trans.
Class Handout; unknown citation.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Richard Green, trans.
Library of Liberal Arts: New York, 1962.
Plato. “The Apology”. Weller, Shane, trans.
Dover Thrift: Toronto, 1992.
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