Hrm.

Congratulations to IHE Fellow Michael Pakaluk, who released his new translation of the Gospel of John yesterday! It's presently the #1 release in New Testament Criticism & Interpretation on Amazon: https://t.co/iPxRJI4XvM.#GospelofJohn #FellowFeature pic.twitter.com/iykgIv32bc

— IHE (@HumanEcologyCUA) February 17, 2021

Michael Pakaluk Reviews Snead's What It Means to Be Human

“What It Means To Be Human”: A Review | Michael Pakaluk https://t.co/rEKwhrarpo pic.twitter.com/EOla4DwOi6

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) October 27, 2020

Michael Pakaluk on Fratelli Tutti

The Purpose of Fratelli Tutti | Michael Pakaluk https://t.co/VHoApybjr5 pic.twitter.com/j5SqG1UZlm

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) October 13, 2020

A a Roman Catholic, Pakaluk accepts Latin claims about Roman primacy. As for brotherhood, Pope Francis is addressing not only Christians but all of his brothers, those who are his brothers merely by being human and have some sort of affinity by nature and origin.

Michael Pakaluk on Social Origin

Unfortunately he writes under the influence of liberalism and statism, and distorts Aristotle accordingly.

The Original Basis of Social Unity | Michael Pakaluk https://t.co/Bvfyq54yYx pic.twitter.com/j4TDVbIEHf

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) September 29, 2020

The Catholic Thing

David Bentley Hart Responds to Michael Pakaluk

First Things: A Pakaluk of Lies by David Bentley Hart

(see also Eclectic Orthodoxy: St Basil and the Hoi Poloi: Side Note on the Hart–Pakaluk Quarrel)

Tollefsen and Pakaluk on Capital Punishment

Here and here.

Scandalous?

First Things: The Pontifical Academies’ Mess of Pottage by Michael Pakaluk

CRUX: Ethicist says ghostwriter’s role in ‘Amoris’ is troubling by Michael Pakaluk SPECIAL TO CRUX

More on the Justice Scalia Funeral

Michael Pakaluk

(first post on the topic)

Michael Pakaluk's English Translation of Dignitatis Humanae

via Thomistica: here

Michael Pakaluk – First Comes Friendship?

Two on Natural Law

Thomistica.net: de lege naturae by Michael Pakaluk
Natural Law Ain’t About Falling Apples by Andrew Haines

Thomistica.net: Some Simple Mistakes about Formal Cooperation by Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk is now at Ave Maria.

Related:
Center for the Renewal of Catholic Theology

Tyranny and consent of the governed

Thomistica.net notes that some articles have become available at Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, including one by Michael Pakaluk (Aristotle, Natural Law, and the Founders) and Christopher Tollefsen (New Natural Law Theory). The last appears to be an abridged version of his essay for Lyceum. There is also this piece by Paul Sigmund, Ockham to Hooker: Late Medieval Transformations of Natural Law.

Ah, the Liberal innovations in natural law... something I still need to study further.

Sigmund writes:

Hooker argues that human reason can discover the existence of God and our moral obligations to others, who are “our equals in nature.” “In those times wherein there were no civil societies,” (when Locke quotes this passage, he adds “i.e, in the state of nature”), men were bound by the natural and divine law “even as they are men.” In order to resolve the conflicts that result from self-interest and partiality, men agree to establish government, and because they are all equal this requires the consent of all. This consent, once given by the community, is binding on subsequent generations, a striking difference from the individual consent to majority rule given by the participants in the social contract in Locke’s Second Treatise. Hooker also argues that, in the English case, consent was given to an established church, an institution that Locke rejects in his Letter on Toleration (1685). Therein he argues that true religion must be based on the individual conscience rather than governmental coercion.

Does it make sense for liberal democrats to talk of consent, rather than acquiescence? If one's forefathers made the decision and one has duties to the community one is born into, as well as affection, then one shouldn't have much of a choice about the community. If a government is tyrannical but cannot be overthrown, then do those who suffer under its rule and reject it consent? Or acquiesce? Is a tyrannical government legitimate? Does it have the "right" to rule (as opposed to having power or coercive force)? Should an illegitimate government be obeyed? (Does the virtue of obedience come into play rather than prudence?)

If someone is unjustly deprived of political power or citizenship, what recourse does he have, should he nonetheless obey the government? Is his aspiration to change the government or constitution wrong in itself (as opposed to being wrong because it is against prudence)? Is respect for custom/law a sufficient reason to prevent a polity from changing from one constitution to another (as might seem justified when more and more members of succeeding generations are virtuous and deigned worthy of citizenship)?

Hooker's theory on the origin of government is echoed later by someone else -- the first name that popped up in my head was Calhoun, but that's not quite right. Of whom am I thinking? It's actually John Finnis, and I'll have to double-check to see if this is common among liberal theorists.

There is so much more to investigate...

More from Dr. Pakaluk on the Free Rider problem

The Free Rider and the Dumb Ass

Michael Pakaluk responds to some objections

The objections:

The following difficulties were sent by a friend. I'll reply later.

"(1) Your parenthetical reference to 1114b27 suggests you think the definition in II.6 only states the genos of virtue. This is problematic. At the end of II.5 Aristotle claims to have stated what virtue is in respect of its genos, namely that it is a hexis. Then, at the beginning of II.6, he claims that this isn’t enough: we also, he insists, need to say what sort of hexis virtue is, and he then proceeds to discuss the Milo example, etc. Then, notably, shortly after the definition in II.6, he claims that the definition provides virtue’s substance (ousia), i.e. (epexegetic kai) the account that states the essence (ton logon ton to ti ên einai legonta) (1107a6-7). He certainly seems to think he has given a definition that supplies the essence, not merely the genos.

"(2) I don’t agree that ‘what counts as too much or too little?’ has not been raised (as you claim in the previous post). That seems to me to be the force of the Milo example. When read as Lesley Brown wisely guides us to read it, i.e. that it is the trainer who aims at the mean, not Milo, we can see that there has already been a tacit reference to the phronimos: just as how much Milo should eat would be determined by the trainer who follows right reason, so too what is intermediate for us (as human beings) is determined by the moral expert (sc. the phronimos) who follows right reason. But, on your account, the phronimos determines the definition of virtue, not anything about what is intermediate.

"(3) In fact, the account of virtue that is given at 1114b26ff is prima facie problematic for you, since Aristotle there claims that part of the account he has already provided is that virtue is ‘as right reason states’ (29-30). But, on your account of the definition, he hasn’t mentioned this at all, since you take the ROT’s ‘this being determined by reason’ to mean: ‘when virtue is marked out by its formal definition’."

And the response:

My replies to the three difficulties sent by a friend.

A couple of general points. First, I don’t claim that interpretations of the passage offered in the past are impossible; I claim simply that my alternative is more elegant, makes sense of everything, and 'clicks'.

If what I have proposed is correct, then the earlier interpretations of the bracketed words should be put aside, then, on the precise grounds that they are based on a complete misunderstanding of what those words are meant to say. --A misunderstanding is not a less preferable interpretation.

(By the way, this is not to say that other texts in NE, apart from the 'definition', aren’t relevant for figuring out the role of reason or phronēsis in moral virtues.)

Second, of course orthos logos gets mentioned before the definition, and I overstated the point if I suggested that this was not so. However, I would count the definition’s reference to virtue as an ‘intermediate trait’ (mesotēs) as sufficiently capturing this, i.e. insofar as virtue is being defined as a trait and not with respect to particular actions.

Some specific points.

1. My mention of genos was in reply to an anticipated objection. Someone might have said that if the bracketed bits are interpreted as being about the definition, rather than within it, this would make the definition too general, and perhaps, then, not serviceable as definition at all. I simply wanted to point out that later Aristotle, when he restates just these elements of this 'general' definition, calls it a definition of a genos, suggests that it needs greater determination, and then proceeds to do so through an examination of the particular virtues. (The two uses of genos wouldn't be inconsistent, because that is a relative term.)

2. As regards the use of the term phronimos, note that it costs Aristotle much labor in book VI to get clear about what this term means. One might wonder, then, whether he thought himself in a position to employ it in a somewhat technical sense ('a man who possesses the virtues of practical reason of phronesis') in book II. On the other hand, in its only other occurrence before book VI (I.5.1095b28), it is used in a non-technical sense ('someone with good insight into character and virtue').

3. See my point above about my appearing to overstate something. As regards 1114b27-30: note that there orthos logos is assigned a role only in relation to actions, not traits of character (consistent with Gomez-Lobo's observation about that it is said to 'state' or 'order' or 'dictate' the meson of an action, not the mesotes which is a virtue). So that later passage is actually consistent with my interpretation of the II.6 definition and tends to support it, rather that count against it.

(Something else that might be mentioned is Aristotle’s consistent use elsewhere of terms such as legei and keleuei for the activity of logos or orthos logos. That it play a role of defining the mean seems not to be acknowledged elsewhere. Admittedly ‘determine’ may in English be used in the sense of ‘discover’—but I take it that that is not the natural or obvious sense in the II.6 definition.)

Dr. Pakaluk's Solution

The Solution to the Well-Defined Problem

My advice for how to interpret that difficult passage in Nic. Eth. II.6? Simply continue reading beyond the passage-- since then it becomes clear, I think, that the words which I place in brackets below are not meant to be part of the definition at all, but rather a comment upon the definition:

Ἔστιν ἄρα ἡ ἀρετὴ ἕξις προαιρετική, ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς [ὡρισμένη λόγῳ καὶ ὡς ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν].

If we bracket those words for the moment, then the definition of virtue given here (which is said, btw, to state the genos only, at 1114b27), is of a trait (ἕξις) which disposes someone to choose in a certain way (προαιρετική), and which is intermediate (ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα) as between two other states, in a manner relative to us (τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς). As Taylor points out in his commentary, that and precisely that is what Aristotle had established in his discussion which precedes the definition.

But what is the reason for the bracketed words? They comment upon the definition, and Aristotle gives the sense of that comment in the lines that immediately follow.

First Aristotle clarifies his definition with a couple of glosses:

μεσότης δὲ δύο κακιῶν, τῆς μὲν καθ' ὑπερβολὴν τῆς δὲ κατ' ἔλλειψιν· καὶ ἔτι τῷ τὰς μὲν ἐλλείπειν τὰς δ' ὑπερβάλλειν τοῦ δέοντος ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι, τὴν δ' ἀρετὴν τὸ μέσον καὶ εὑρίσκειν καὶ αἱρεῖσθαι.

It is a trait intermediate between two vices one of which is so by excess and the other by defect. And they are so because they either fall short of or exceed what they should, in emotions or in actions, whereas virtue identifies and chooses the intermediate mark.

The sentence which next follows is, I think, a gloss as well on the bracketed words:

διὸ κατὰ μὲν τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸν λόγον τὸν τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι λέγοντα μεσότης ἐστὶν ἡ ἀρετή, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἄριστον καὶ τὸ εὖ ἀκρότης.

That is why, with respect to its nature and the definition that states its essence, virtue is an intermediate trait, whereas with respect to what is best and what is excellent, it is a high point.

The reason for this last gloss is that Aristotle is perfectly well aware that, to anyone who has actually striven to be virtuous, it will seem strange and even paradoxical to say that virtue is something intermediate. Rather, from the point of view of someone striving to be good (κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἄριστον καὶ τὸ εὖ), virtue looks like a nearly unattainable pinnacle. (Think, e.g. of the Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded it is said to "the bravest of the brave", for those who distinguish themselves "…conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty...". Nothing intermediate about that! And there are lots of other examples.)

So Aristotle thinks that he has to defend his definition. He therefore says that, in fact, as regards the nature of a virtue, and considering it formally (i.e. with a view to its logos), each virtue, it turns out, falls between two opposing vices. Someone immersed in the task of trying to act well might not notice this; yet this will be how a discerning person will define it.

And this is exactly what he had said in the bracketed words, and so the text should be translated:

Virtue is a trait (ἕξις) which disposes someone to choose in a certain way (προαιρετική), and which is intermediate (ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα) as between two other states, in a manner relative to us (τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς)-- that is, when virtue is marked out by its formal definition (ὡρισμένη λόγῳ ), and in the way that a person with insight into practical matters would mark it out (ὡς ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν).

This explains perfectly the reading of the codices -- the key is to see that the problematic words are not in the definition but about the definition--

-- and it also shows why all of those dozens of articles on the passage should quietly be pushed aside and forgotten.

Michael Pakaluk, More on the Problem

More on the Problem

Michael Pakaluk introduces the problem of virtue and the mean

A Well-Defined Problem