Aristotle and the Seven Immortals Walk Into A Bar

The Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: 

To satisfy this common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space outside and the extremities of imaginable space within, searching for a relationship between the one and the all; the grand effect and the cause; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and that which we may effectively label as the reality. 

Regarding reality a little closer to home, Plato wrote: "He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men." 

Essentially our role in the natural world is determined by the quality of the thoughts we consider. If our minds are enslaved to bestial instincts we are on par with the brute. Those whose rational faculties ponder domestic human affairs belong to the category of common man or common woman (i.e., ordinary, average); but those whose intellects are elevated to the consideration of higher realities is already a demigod, for this individual's mind is in proximity to the luminosity his or her reason has considered. 

In other words, the grander our thoughts, the closer our minds to the grandeur we call existence. In his encomium of "the science of the sciences" Cicero exclaims: "O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou has produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life." 

In other words, we would be lost without the ability to philosophize, organize, categorize, rationalize, consider, and then act in relation to those summations. But unless you're speaking with a professor of philosophy, the word philosophy has little meaning in modern society. Even among philosophers it has little meaning unless accompanied by some other qualifying term. 

Philosophy is the proverbial elephant one must eat one bite at a time. (Creighton William Abrams, Jr.), which means: Start small. 

The whole of philosophy is broken up into numerous isms; each more concerned with disproving each other's fallacies than considering the sublimer issues of cosmic order and humanity's role (or, lack thereof) in it. Ideally philosophy is to serve as the stabilizing influence in human thought. By virtue of its intrinsic nature philosophy should prevent the mind from establishing unreasonable codes of life. 

Philographics

Genis Carreras

Philosophers and philosophy students delve headfirst into narrow paths which are supposed to illuminate the straight path of rational thinking, but really most just get lost in a Wonderland of their own making, without understanding the overall map and its outstanding systems of philosophic discipline which have kept philosophers questioning since ancient times (some twenty-seven centuries). 

So, Avatar Alice, where do we begin? 

Aristotle &

The Seven Immortals

Walk into a Bar

Or, so the story goes, according to the Greek busybody Diogenes Laertius: 

Feeling parched, Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander decided to go to a local tavern in Turkey. Wet-blanket Thales wanted a glass of water, served in a tall glass with a little floating boat umbrella: "To replicate the primal principle or element, upon which the earth itself floats like a ship. Look ... If I shake my glass, the little quakes hitting the edges of my glass are the result of this universal sea."  

"Oh, Thales, give it a rest, already!" exclaims Anaximander, the first of the last Ionian philosophers (Anaximenes, Anaxogoras, and Archelaus). That joke was dead in the water when the Ionic school ended. 

Reminder: 

The Greek school of philosophy had its inception when upon the seven immortalized thinkers the appellation of Sophos, "the wise" was first conferred. 

"Soph?" asked Avatar Alice, "Are you named after the Sophos?" 

"The Sophos had an empty spot on their bench, I just sat down," said Soph. "I guess you could say that my mind is in proximity to the luminosity their reason has considered." 

And with that, Soph laughed, and is still Laughing. 

The Positive Effects of Ambitious Trick O Treating

How many people consider ambition a virtue? Ambition fits within the Aristotelian model of virtue. Recall that a virtue is a midpoint between an excess and a deficiency in terms of one's emotions, abilities, and circumstances. If this is the case then we ought to be able to provide an account of the excess and deficiency that lie on either side of ambition. 

Let's begin with the desire to get more candy...

This is an emotion that is common to those who achieve great things, to those Trick O Treaters who return home with pillow cases full of candy. In Trick o Treating, those at the forefront of candy gathering are those who have the will to be there, to set the new record for Butterfingers and Milky Ways, or to win the largest share of candy on the block. In such competitive endeavors (such as Trick O Treating with friends and siblings), it is a truism that those without the will to perservere to the end seldom get the best candy. 

The drive to excel, to get the most Halloween candy is the emotional context for the virtue of ambition. Comparison with cases of excess and deficiency with respect to this emotion will help us better understand those kids who take off running the moment they're released to go Trick O Treating in the neighborhood, rain or shine. 

NO CANDY FOR YOU

Consider first the deficiency. The person whose desire to excel is deficient would fit under the heading of that suggestive neologism of Marty McFly's parents' time, "slacker." 

This word is typically used to describe individuals who have absolutely no desire to do anything. It could also be applied to someone who lets their desire for achievement be compromised by preferences for comfort and freedom from struggle. 

In order for slacking to be a vice in the world of Trick O Treating, it has to be the case that the emotions of the individual who is insufficiently desirous of excellence and large quantities of candy is out of step with what he or she could gain in his or her Trick O Treating circumstances. Consider, for example, two kids with HUGE pillow case Trick O Treat bags that only go Trick O Treating two or three houses down. Just because their little legs can only carry them so far is no excuse for failing to do better, for failing to roam the entire neighborhood (and a few neighborhoods over) in search of the motherload of candy. 

These little Trick O Treaters know they could do better, but instead they opt for going home early to have milk and cookies and watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

These kids might have other virtues, to be sure, but there is no doubt that they lack the virtue of ambition, of going out for Trick O Treat. An ambitious kid like Sally would only give up Trick O Treating for love, but if she didn't get that, if she doesn't get to see the Great Pumpkin, she'd feel ROBBED! 

THE MOTHERLOAD OF CANDY

Excess is easy to describe, as it is typically what other parents think when they see one kid toting a huge pillow case filled with candy down the street as compared to their kid's measly little plastic pumpkin half-way filled with candy. 

This is the image (above) of the ultimate, self-seeking Trick O Treater who allows his or her desire for M&Ms, Skittles, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to override all of his or her other virtues. This Trick O Treater is single minded in the desire for gobs of candy, for achievement, and doesn't tolerate competition. With no sense of personal limitation coupled with the will to use cute little brothers and sisters as a means to get more candy, this Trick O Treater is the polar opposite of the Slacker who won't bother getting dressed up to go Trick O Treating, this ambitious older sibling won't act on anything but his or her own ambitions. 

Both types of Trick O Treaters are defective from Aristotle's point of view, which is from the moral point of view. The virtuously ambitious Trick O Treater falls in between their extremes. 

THE VIRTUOUS 

TRICK O' TREATER

The virtuous Trick O Treater wants to do great things, and seeks out his canine companions to help him, but is not mastered by his desire for candy. This virtuous little Trick O Treater keeps things in perspective, as it were, and maintains his other moral qualities, never letting his love for Snickers overpower his reason, but certainly not relinquishing his enjoyment for this nutty, chocolately carmel wonder. 

He and other virtuous Trick O Treaters like him are reasonable and emotionally aware of their love for candy. They choose good candy goals for their own Trick O Treating purposes and pursue them diligently, all the while maintaining awareness that the little ones always come first. 

Virtuous Trick O Treaters have high expectations, but not unreasonable ones, and barring torrential rains on Halloween night, can be happy in the broad sense of enjoying Halloween with friends and family. This is the picture of the virtuously ambitious Trick O Treater Aristotle would paint. 

A Defense of Goofing Off

A defense of goofing off can take the same form as the defense of theatre in ancient Greek philosophy. Aristotle thought that the altered states that comprise the theatre were actually a vital forum for the development of our moral identity. 

Essentially, we can become better people by entertaining 'possibilities'... insofar as they allow us to contemplate the dangers of things such as attempting to quit coffee on a Monday morning. When we goof off, we lay our cards out on the table. Our vulnerability to fortune or chance, and the value of integrity (as well as good hair days) play out before our eyes. 

Aristotle also prized goofing off and the liberal arts because both involve some sort of escape or departure from history. While history deals with actualities the theatre show us what we might do differently were we to have been born into different life circumstances. In this respect, we can think morally about instructive possible fates or destinies.

Aristotle's theory essentially turns goofing off into an enema thesis, an opportunity for us to let off steam. Here the experience of allowing ourselves to just totally "be" in a moment provides us with a psychological relief from boredom. 

Goofing off induces an altered state (narrative) that can be used as a tool which can assist us in enlarging our moral as well as creative imaginings. 

That's A Good One, Plato

Even wit is educated insolence, thought Aristotle, Plato's student. During Aristotle's time, comedy was less vulgar and obscene than the comedy which disgusted Plato. 

Aristotle considered this comedy play or amusement. "Life includes rest as well as activity," he said in the Nicomachean Ethics, "and in this included leisure and amusement." 

Aristotle believed that we needed leisure and amusement because we cannot devote ourselves entirely to work and seriousness. The value of humor for Plato, in his Poetics, was such: 

Comedy...is in imitation of people who are worse than average. Their badness, however, is not of every kind. The ridiculous, rather, is a species of the ugly; it may be defined as a mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or destructive. The comic mask, for example, is unseemly and distorted but does not cause pain. 

Aristotle considered an overindulgence in humor, as well as the inability to engage in it, as a vice: 

Those who carry humor to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons, striving after humor at all costs, and aiming more at raising a laugh than at saying what is becoming and at avoiding pain to the object of their fun; while those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do are thought to be boorish and unpolished. 

According to aristotle, you have eutrapelia or ready-wittedness, if you engage in humor to the right degree, and at the right time and place. You don't have to be a comedian to know that timing is everything.