Justification, iParody, Proceedings of the Belmont Aristotelians

Check out my friend's site here for something like the best justification I can agree with for why someone would blog at all. Still, I keep the title, because it still must be true to some extent that, without knowing who my audience is, or even that I have one, writing to "the web" becomes somewhat comic. If I write, it is at some level in hopes that I may be, if nothing else, incidentally wise, like one of Shakespeare's fools.

Last night was the fourth or fifth meeting of the Belmont Aristotelians (I just made that title up; we don't really call ourselves anything, but everyone in Portland who calls themselves anything makes reference to a street or landmark or mountain, it seems), a group of five or six guys who are reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Last year three of us read Plato's Republic and had many fine late-night discussions about the nature of justice, the soul, and the political order. Aristotle is taking up a similar subject in his Ethics, but explicitly disagreeing with Plato.

The basic questions for ethics are, of course, (a) 'why be good?' and (b) 'what is the good?' Even today these questions are not definitively answered, and they merit consideration by anyone who makes claims to thoughtfulness. Briefly, Plato believes justice ('being good') is good for its own sake and for the sake of its benefits as well. It is intrinsically good because it requires the most ordered state of the soul, such that our reason, spirit, and drives are all related to one another to promote the most health to the soul. It is extrinsically good because it promotes a just order of society analogous to the order of the soul, so that all the members have their roles and responsibilities.

One consequence of this that bothers people is that it means society's most wise and moral members are granted the most power, while the masses have comparatively little. Plato is explicitly antidemocratic because democracy illogically (if implicitly) assumes that the majority opinion will be just, good and true, i.e. the right one. Rather, since reason is our human tool for discerning the good and right, political power ought to be given to those most capable of using reason.

This may rub you the wrong way, but I would challenge the thoughtful reader (I hope, if I have only one reader, s/he is a thoughtful reader) to consider: while the majority will always vote according to its perception of its best interest, where is the logical necessity that the majority's perception of its best interest will in fact be in its best interest? Plato believed the wise could perceive what was true and real and share it with the city. In our secular age, when we do not believe in any transcendent truth, must we then believe in the majority?