A few thoughts below on book 1 of Nichomachaen ethics, read for a class recently.
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Very interesting thoughts going on.
I like the idea, and though I can’t prove its validity, think that it’s a good idea that things which are ends in themselves are the most valuable. For example, all the arts and sciences. In the arts, usually pleasure and the hope to create something great are the only goals. In sciences, the goal to understand is the main goal. In both cases, the purposes of the fields are not to make money, to gain advantage over your fellow citizens. The goals are to witness beauty and to know. These ends have some nice secondary effects (pleasure from the arts, practical knowledge from the sciences), but pursued in their most pure form they are a couple things that can be used to justify humanity’s efforts and existence. It would be depressing to think that the best we can do is create art that pleases us and gain knowledge so as to crush foes on the battlefield, and feel more comfortable at home. Gaining knowledge and creating great art are things worth doing in themselves – they give intrinsic pleasure. When listening to music, I almost never have ulterior motives. I just want to hear some cool stuff, and in some cases, some of the best works created by humans.
The idea that the goal of political science is to create virtuous citizens is very interesting to me, and so far off of what seems to be the norm today. The present situation seems to be that politics is a useful tool for gaining personal wealth and fame. The idea that you would go into politics with a goal to improve your fellow citizens is very noble and actually worth pursuing. This gives some more reason that law as a field could be justified. The goal of the field is to improve the behavior of everyone in your constituency, and have them exhibit virtuous behavior that we can be proud of as a species. This is the goal of the field, but I am currently caught up on the methods used to achieve this goal. The methods seem to be seriously harming (financially) a person who commits an action that we consider bad. Would it not be better to have a system that rewarded those who do well? You could argue that the people doing well do not need the extra help, which is probably true. However, incentives for normal citizens to behave better could be very valuable. For a toy example, a $5 reward to everyone who helps a person with an injury across a street. This would lead to more people getting help they need, more people acting in a virtuous way, and a small reward for the person who helps the other. The reward would allow the helper to slightly improve their financial situation, which might be a small bump that Aristotle discusses. Spread out over a whole society, this could result in net improvements to citizen and personal behavior. I wonder if/how far this idea has been taken in law. It seems like all laws are geared towards providing reprisal against negatives that people enact, but never towards guaranteeing positives for people who act well. For example, since almost everyone considers education and knowledge valuable goals for people to seek, guarantee by law a $500 reward each year a person attends a school.
This setup seems to be widespread privately, but it’s not an institution backed governmentally. For example, fields of endeavor provide rewards (medals, praise) for those who are at the top of their field. We congratulate people who achieve good things. But lawfully, there does not seem to be a mechanism in place to promote good behavior, at least not to the same extent as we punish bad behavior.
Thoughts 