The proper balance
As noted in the last post, Aristotle placed a lot of importance on good parenting. To him, the life of a philosopher was, hands down, the best one, but he clearly understood that not everyone could manage it.
Aristotle wrote that self-discipline served as a vital pre-condition to a life based on reason, and that required a lifetime of practice. When a parent forbids a child from indulging every little whim, or punishes one for throwing a temper tantrum, and carefully trains a child to think not just about immediate wants, but long-term goals, that child almost always becomes frustrated, struggles to understand, and sometimes even rebels.
Still, that form of discipline, as well as other actions that help a child learn to think beyond the moment – including games, and sports, and art, and music; anything that requires practice and perseverance to master – is a parent’s greatest gift. To Aristotle, that self-discipline played a key role in teaching a child what it means to be human.
After all, the philosopher noted, all animals have emotions, and appetites, and instincts. They sleep when they tire, they eat when they hunger, they mate when the time is right, and by all indications they seem to feel something akin to love for their offspring.
However, to Aristotle, the ability to transcend mere instinct lay at the foundation of what it meant to live as a human being. Only humans, he said, could choose to think and act beyond the immediate moment — imagine a goal, figure out the steps to achieve it, and then set aside immediate pleasantries in exchange for greater future rewards.
Even for us, though, the ability to set aside instinct, reign in temper, and forego appetites doesn’t come easily, Aristotle said, and many people never master it. For instance, he said, any number of people fail to make good choices, even when they know the difference between good choices and bad.
How many of us have met someone who knows they should save money rather than blow a bunch of bucks they can’t afford on the latest electronics, or jewelry, or a hot car, or a nice outfit, but then do it, anyway? We all know someone who understands that drinking or smoking or drugs will kill them – they know it – but when the time comes to refuse, they never do. We’ve all met someone so filled with frustration and anger they lash out at everyone around them, even though they know it only destroys their relationships – and maybe even threatens the health and well-being of those who love them.
Whereas Socrates and Plato tried to say that all human weakness was, at its heart, a manifestation of ignorance, Aristotle bluntly stated that some people just lack the discipline – the strength of will, the character – to make the right choices and to live according to the dictates of reason. He described this weakness using the Greek word, “akrasia,” and it translates to “incontinence.
An “akraitic” person acts in defiance of reason as a result of ill-disciplined emotions – feelings that overwhelm inadequate self-discipline. While still fundamentally and uniquely human (after all, no animal can imagine what might be, so they only ever live in the moment), the uncontrolled passions of akraitic individuals prevent them from achieving real happiness.
By comparison, Aristole argued, children raised in home with loving parents who taught discipline eventually found themselves able to shed the shackles of instinct, free themselves from enslavement to appetites and uncontrolled emotions.
Not that they became emotionless statues – not at all. After all, people need to eat, and take delight in eating well. A glass or two of wine, periodically, helps keep most people healthy, and rewarding emotional relationships bring peace of mind in way nothing else can.
The point, Aristotle said, is not to deny one’s self every pleasure. Rather, the point is to find a balance point – to remain stable and not let whims and tempers blow one hither and yon, as strong winds do boats without keels. The idea, he said, is to avoid both “excess” and “deficiency,” as both result in harm to the self.
Aristotle called this state of mental balance the “Golden Mean.” One harmed one’s self and perhaps harmed others not only through the overindulgence of pleasures and giving in to passion and rage – but also through the denial of them. The point, Aristotle said, is to know how much is too much, and how much is not enough, and how to know the right times, places and circumstances to seek one’s pleasures — and also when to forego them.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to eat, drink and be merry, he noted, and there are even the right times to get angry – even correct things to fight about, and perhaps even to kill for. Those who understand that there is a right time and a right place for everything display what Aristotle called enkrateia – or “mastery” – of themselves.
(Remember, most Greek city-states required every male citizen to train in warfare, equip himself to the best of his ability, and fight when necessary.)
In addition, Aristotle wrote, the correct balance points differed, based on the individual and his (or her) personal circumstances. For instance, Aristotle wrote, a professional athlete needs to eat a lot – we understand that he or she needs 5,000 calories a day of a protein-rich, balanced diet so have the energy for sustained effort and to add muscle mass.
However, should an office-worker eat a similar diet, it would almost certainly result in grotesque obesity and all the attendant health problems.
On the other hand, for alcoholics, the proper balance point for liquor, wine or beer is “none, ever.” Anyone who has ever seen an alcoholic drink knows that booze affects him or her in a way that it simply doesn’t, for most people. They like it so much that it becomes an overwhelming addiction, and they have a tough time stopping. Really, the only way they can keep from destroying themselves is to never drink, at all.
As powerful and beneficial the Golden Mean might be, even that wasn’t the be-all and end-all of human existence. No, once one found one’s balance-points, Aristotle said, it was time for the real work – the most rewarding of efforts – to finally begin.
A person with self-discipline and a balanced mind had the capacity to not just avoid most of the pitfalls of life (and deal with the unavoidable ones as well as possible), but also had the ability to achieve the highest good of human life – to live well, to live right, to achieve what the Greeks termed, “eudaimonia.”
To Aristotle, as with most Greek philosophers, the be-all and end-all of human life was to live it “well.” That doesn’t mean “get rich,” or “have lots of attractive sexual partners,” or “never get sick,” or have fine clothes and fast horses. To the Greeks, each of those things (if not done to self-destructive excesses), are not the goal of life – they are the means by which to achieve the to goal of “doing it right” – which is to say, to do life “right.”
The way to “do life right,” to achieve eudaimonia, required that one approach life from a place of rational virtue. One didn’t deny the basic animal needs – what the philosopher called the “nutritive” part of the soul – but one disciplined it according to the dictates of reason so as to act wisely, over the course of an entire life.
That was a whole lot easier, Aristotle noted, when one had enough material security that life wasn’t a constant struggle. Only those with sufficient financial means to “not sweat the small stuff,” he said, had the time to engage in long-term thinking and consistently act in accordance with wisdom.
That’s the key – an individual who sits around navel-gazing about the nature of virtue isn’t living life as a philosopher, Aristotle said. While philosophers spend a lot of time thinking about how to “do life right,” they also get out and actually live it in a reasoned and balanced way, in accordance with temperance, courage and a sense of justice. When a challenge arises, the rational soul thinks about it carefully, weighs the options available, and then acts to deal with it in the way that results in the greatest possible good over the long term.
As time goes on, the positive consequences of wisdom consistently exercised build upon one another in an elegant way, life starts to roll along nicely, and the individual achieves eudaimonia – a life done right, a life well-lived. Such a life, Aristotle noted, is never achievable by any creatures other than ourselves. The effort to reach that state, and to enjoy the calm pleasures of a life well-lived, defines what it means to be truly “human.”
Links:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/
http://ethics.wikia.com/wiki/Aristotelian_Ethics