The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) (8 page)
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Authors: Anthony Esolen
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Plato’s pupil Aristotle learned from that critique, and adjusted it to suit his understanding of physical nature and of man. Aristotle was not a mathematician by hobby, but a biologist. The difference is intriguing. He could not conceive of immaterial objects existing separate from their embodiment in actual things. But he was not a materialist. Ultimately, the materialist can only talk sensibly about underlying matter, and not about discrete objects, what Aristotle called “substances,” made up of that matter. For Aristotle, the genuinely real are neither the forms shimmering somewhere above or beyond this world,
nor
the unseen atoms whose combinations make flint or oil, but the things around us: trees, rocks, birds, man. This flatfooted insistence upon seeing the obvious, before we talk of contemplating the good, characterizes Aristotle’s views of individual morality and the State.
nor
the unseen atoms whose combinations make flint or oil, but the things around us: trees, rocks, birds, man. This flatfooted insistence upon seeing the obvious, before we talk of contemplating the good, characterizes Aristotle’s views of individual morality and the State.
Aristotle notices that of all things natural and man-made, we can predicate four “causes,” or characteristics, essential to its being:
The
material
cause: what it is made of
The
efficient
cause: who or what made it
The
formal
cause: what kind of thing it is
The
final
cause: what it is for, to what end or perfection it inclines
22
An oak tree is made of wood, its material cause. It has germinated from an acorn produced by the parent tree, its efficient cause. It is an oak tree, with a certain identifiable structure, including shape of limbs and leaves and pattern of growth. It is not simply “something it pleases us to call, for our convenience, an oak tree,” but really that kind of thing and not another. That is its formal cause. And it has found good soil and matured to a grand height, producing acorns of its own. That is its final cause.
What about man? Aristotle knew that some philosophers, like Democritus, reduced man to his constituent atoms, but such reductive materialism evades the question. It identifies the material cause, but that alone cannot describe what the fullness of our experience suggests when we meet the thing called man. The efficient cause we all know, and our public schools seem itchily driven to reveal it these days to little children. The formal cause includes not only the physical shape or structure, but the encoded instructions regulating our growth and development. What about our final cause? What are we
for
? In what state do we attain perfection as man?
for
? In what state do we attain perfection as man?
Again Aristotle reasoned by beginning from experience. For us, an “empiricist” is one who will admit as evidence only what can be quantified or measured, but Aristotle saw that in most cases quantification is beside the point. So with the final cause of man. If we are talking about man, not dog, not maple, not quartz, we must ask what distinguishes him from all other things. If he is no more than certain combinations of carbon and other elements, then his perfection might be simply to
exist
, to take up space, to be heavy, like a lump of quartz, or a senator. If all he does is grow, he might find his perfection in taking in nutrition and expelling waste, as the oak tree does without moving or sensing, or as the dog does, hunting down its quarry.
exist
, to take up space, to be heavy, like a lump of quartz, or a senator. If all he does is grow, he might find his perfection in taking in nutrition and expelling waste, as the oak tree does without moving or sensing, or as the dog does, hunting down its quarry.
But man possesses an intellect. Therefore man’s final cause, his perfected state, must lie in the perfection of that intellect which distinguishes him from all other substances. But we also notice that man pursues many objects because he believes they are good. He wants food, riches, sex, honor. What do these pursuits have to do with his final cause? Again Aristotle begins from experience. Why do I want money? So that I can buy a raccoon coat. Why do I want a raccoon coat? So that I can look debonair on campus. Why do I want to look debonair? So that Suzy will marry me. Why do I want Suzy to marry me? So that I will be happy. Why do I want to be happy?
The last question makes no sense. Happiness has no purpose beyond itself. Many people will say, “I want money, because money will make me happy,” but no one says, “If only I were happier, then I might be rich!”
Happiness is the end we pursue: it is the intended goal of all our action. But our perfection must reside in the perfection of the intellect. Therefore,
happiness is the enjoyment of the good of the intellect
. It consists in contemplating what is good, and developing the habit of action in accordance with it. This is a conclusion of tremendous significance for medieval Christianity, as we shall see. And of all the good things we can behold with the mind, the intellect’s highest object of contemplation is what does not change. It is what Aristotle calls the Prime Mover, the (impersonal) unmoved mover or uncaused cause of the world, without which there could be neither motion nor cause. This too is a conclusion of tremendous significance.
23
happiness is the enjoyment of the good of the intellect
. It consists in contemplating what is good, and developing the habit of action in accordance with it. This is a conclusion of tremendous significance for medieval Christianity, as we shall see. And of all the good things we can behold with the mind, the intellect’s highest object of contemplation is what does not change. It is what Aristotle calls the Prime Mover, the (impersonal) unmoved mover or uncaused cause of the world, without which there could be neither motion nor cause. This too is a conclusion of tremendous significance.
23
Both Plato and Aristotle, then, are deeply theological thinkers. Aristotle’s ideal State must be one wherein man stands at least a fair chance of achieving the fullness of his intellectual growth, both contemplatively and practically. Those who are capable of contemplation must have some opportunity for calm reflection, while everyone else, capable of exercising the practical good, must have a free field for developing and displaying the moral virtues of temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom.
Note what such a State cannot be. It cannot be an empire, because empires steal from men the opportunity to govern themselves. It cannot be anarchy, because lawlessness makes one’s life too uncertain for the leisure to pursue the good of the intellect. It must somehow take into account human nature as we find it. The
family
, that schoolhouse of virtues, cannot be abolished, says Aristotle.
24
The State cannot be so vast that we fall into anonymity, and government is imposed upon us rather than created by us and for our purposes. Thus the modern “democracy,” neither republican nor democratic but bureaucratic, distant, imperial in its all-encompassing demands, leaving little for the common people of a Colonus or Corinth to determine, is poor soil too for man’s thriving. That is, unless we believe in the
Oliver Twist
model of citizenship, wherein each of us must timidly approach the great fat beadle the State, and mumble, “Please, sir, I want some more.”
family
, that schoolhouse of virtues, cannot be abolished, says Aristotle.
24
The State cannot be so vast that we fall into anonymity, and government is imposed upon us rather than created by us and for our purposes. Thus the modern “democracy,” neither republican nor democratic but bureaucratic, distant, imperial in its all-encompassing demands, leaving little for the common people of a Colonus or Corinth to determine, is poor soil too for man’s thriving. That is, unless we believe in the
Oliver Twist
model of citizenship, wherein each of us must timidly approach the great fat beadle the State, and mumble, “Please, sir, I want some more.”
Human NatureT
he very first sentence of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics
would earn him an instant F from a college professor today: “All men, by nature, yearn for knowledge.” Positing a human nature would make him closed-minded today—but it also made possible some of the best philosophy the world has ever seen.
What then? “Man is a political animal,” says Aristotle. He thrives in a community of families and clans who govern themselves freely and well, providing for more than a basic subsistence. What they mainly provide is
freedom
: free time, leisure for conversation, an arena for debate, for struggles that have consequences, for reading and arguing, for sport, for contemplation, for honing all the practical and intellectual virtues. True civility has more to do with a well-ordered fight than with the bonds of niceness.
freedom
: free time, leisure for conversation, an arena for debate, for struggles that have consequences, for reading and arguing, for sport, for contemplation, for honing all the practical and intellectual virtues. True civility has more to do with a well-ordered fight than with the bonds of niceness.
Both philosophers saw that if freedom means “being free to take what you like, within the law,” then no nobler faculty of the soul beyond the appetite will be developed. People whose votes are bought by enticements of appetite are not free, regardless of how often they throng the assemblies, or the academies. For man in a corrupted democracy, says Plato,
goes in for politics and bounces up and says whatever enters his head. And if military men excite his emulation, thither he rushes, and if moneyed men, to that he turns, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his the life of pleasure and freedom and happiness and cleaves to it to the end. (
Republic
, 8.561d)
The disorder penetrates into the family:
The father habitually tries to resemble the child and is afraid of his sons, and the son likens himself to the father and feels no awe or fear of his parents, so that he may be forsooth a free man. And the resident alien feels himself equal to the citizen and the citizen to him, and the foreigner likewise. (8.562e)
Teachers fawn upon their students; students ignore their teachers. A lawless egalitarianism descends upon all, along with a great touchiness, an inability to bear any restraint, until finally, slaves to their appetites and plunged in chaos, the people choose to be slaves to a “protector” who can rein them in. Hence tyranny—welcomed!—puts an end to corrupt democracy. Napoleon cleans the blood from the streets of Paris.
But at their healthiest and noblest, the Greeks retained their confidence that somehow the good and the beautiful were one—
to kalon
, the greatest of all things in that splendid, lawful, and harmonious world they called
cosmos
. Somehow man’s reason played a part in it, but then too there were truths accessible to the inspired madness of poets and lovers and those greatest lovers of all, the lovers of wisdom, the philosophers. Such truths might call upon Plato’s breathless dialogues of love, the
Phaedrus
and the
Symposium
, but they might well be rooted in what any man should know, by his own ordinary nature. We would do well to take heed. Sophocles was a democrat, but he knew that man by himself can only obey or disobey the good, not invent it:
to kalon
, the greatest of all things in that splendid, lawful, and harmonious world they called
cosmos
. Somehow man’s reason played a part in it, but then too there were truths accessible to the inspired madness of poets and lovers and those greatest lovers of all, the lovers of wisdom, the philosophers. Such truths might call upon Plato’s breathless dialogues of love, the
Phaedrus
and the
Symposium
, but they might well be rooted in what any man should know, by his own ordinary nature. We would do well to take heed. Sophocles was a democrat, but he knew that man by himself can only obey or disobey the good, not invent it:
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