Commerce and philosophy

"I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person." -Apology

An excerpt from Ezra Klein's new book, Why We're Polarized, explains how social media (which are commercial ventures) contribute to political polarization.  They cater to people's sense of their identity.  A flavor of Klein's excerpt (which is worth reading in its whole):

To post that article on Facebook is to make a statement about who you are, who your group is, and, just as important, who is excluded.
In political media, identity is affirmed and activated with slightly more oblique headlines. But the underlying dynamic is the same: This public figure that you and everyone in your group loathe said something awful. This poll came out saying you and your group are going to win or, better yet, that your out-group is going to lose. This slashing column explains why you’re right about everything and why your opponents are wrong.
[...]
When I entered journalism, the term of art for pieces infused with perspective was “opinion journalism.” The point of the work was to convey an opinion. Nowadays, I think a lot of it is closer to “identity journalism” — the effect of the work, given the social channels through which it’s consumed, is to reinforce an identity.
But an identity, once adopted, is harder to change than an opinion. An identity that binds you into a community you care about is costly and painful to abandon, and the mind will go to great lengths to avoid abandoning it. So the more media people see that encourages them to think of themselves as part of a group, and the more they publicly proclaim — through sharing and liking and following and subscribing — that they are part of a group, the deeper that identity roots and the more resistant the underlying views become to change.

The bad online social dynamics that result from this are all well-known and widely loathed by now, but it got this way because it was profitable for the social-media companies to form their algorithms in this direction.  It is, in other words, what the market demands, and they're meeting that demand.

In an intellectually bankrupt culture, the natural result is the highly-polarized toxicity.  (For reasons I've given time and time again, a very large share of the blame for this goes to what I now term a structural dishonesty in the intellectual culture of leftism; the only question for me is whether this structural dishonesty is subtle, or whether it is blatantly obvious.)  (Other examples of structural dishonesty would be authoritarian regimes, such as those in China and Iran, that censor and punish dissenting voices.  No question in these cases how blatantly obvious the dishonesty is.)

The point I'll jump right to: Commerce is neither good nor bad, per se.  It is how well-ordered the commerce is, vis-a-vis the needs and care of the soul.  I'm not really saying anything new here, but I think social media toxicity and polarization are explained by the principle involved.  Social media algorithms are directed toward user pleasure or utility, but the dollar - the bottom line - does not discriminate between the higher and lower pleasures.  A pleasure that is triggered by having one's prejudices reaffirmed is a lower - base and ignoble - pleasure.  A pleasure related to the perfection of one's intellectual capacity is a higher pleasure.

For example: if you spend all of your cable news viewing time only on Fox News, or only on CNN, you get your political-identitarian preferences satisfied, and the companies'/advertisers' bottom lines get served, but the effects are blatantly toxic.  (I regard MSDNC as a lower level (akin to the sewer if the other two are the gutter) of 'news and opinion' presentation entirely - pleasurable to the toxic/twitterized/AOC left, and repulsive to just about anyone else.)  If, on the other hand, your interest is in dialectic - of obtaining the widest story or context or breadth of opinion or input - then you'll divide your time between these sources as well as plenty of other diversified non-cable-news sources.

J.S. Mill not only famously distinguished between the higher and lower pleasures - captured in his famous phrase "Better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied" - but (and this is part of the wider context with which this higher/lower distinction has to be dialectically integrated) he also said of opinion polarization:

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form. (On Liberty)

Not only is this essentially a formulation of the Dennett/Rapoport Rules a century-plus in advance, it's also a principle I hope over time, with thorough-enough research, to be able to exemplify in my own philosophic practice.  Tying these points together with a figure much-smeared in blatant defiance of Mill/Dennett/Rapoport, Ayn Rand, let's have a look at what Rand has to say about money (a point where she seems to be especially smeared by her enemies if not sometimes or often merely innocently misunderstood by others):

So you think that money is the root of all evil? . . . Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? [...] 

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

A strawman version of Rand - e.g., this one in "the world's most popular philosophy [sic] blog" - would excise Rand's praise for money-making from the philosophic context in which it is embedded.  The context is indicated in part by the "see also" cross-references in the "money" link I've provided and quoted from, and is contained in full in the whole of the Lexicon - the virtue of rationality most fundamentally, and the virtue of productiveness more proximately.  I once encountered an online Rand-basher who quoted from the "money speech" (excerpted above) the following one line: "The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality."  (To treat this quotation in isolation from the wider context of Rand's work is par for the course for Rand-bashers.)  The strawman version hyperlinked above (also par for that loathsome course, and which also implicitly if not explicitly recklessly smears the Ayn Rand Society scholars (e.g.) as "imbeciles") characterizes Rand's ethics as being a money-grubbing one in stark contrast to Nietzsche's evident disdain for market values.  But Rand's philosophy was consistent between Atlas Shrugged (where one finds the "money speech") and her earlier novel The Fountainhead.  John Galt and Howard Roark are each in their own way Rand's concretized-in-art ideal men.  And as is well-known to readers of The Fountainhead, Roark was committed so much to his own creative vision that he turned down a major commission, resulting (for the time being) in his firm shutting its doors.  The wealthiest character in the novel, Gail Wynand, is a foil to the heroic Roark, a man ultimately destroyed by having pandered to the mob/his "livelihood."

Put another way: Roark (and by implication her other heroic figures) regarded money-making as virtuous as long as it was virtuous, i.e., expressed the higher nature and possibilities of humans, including creative independence and integrity.  Rand's commitment to such noble ideals, as against the base, is made explicit in her discussion of that "noble soul" passage from Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil Aphorism 287) with which she originally planned to introduce The Fountainhead and then reintroduced/discussed in its 25th anniversary edition.  The Randian hero is a lover of self in the Aristotelian sense (for Aristotle, the "noble soul" is the great-souled or magnanimous man), a connection that a leading Nietzsche translator and interpreter, Walter Kaufmann, drew in his editor's footnote to Aphorism 287.

Which is to say, to neatly tie the various themes of this post together, that to combat social media toxicity in particular and commercial crassness in general, the market participants could do considerably better to aspire to the ideals espoused by Aristotle, Nietzsche and Rand - and to aspire to greater virtue/nobility/wisdom/understanding/dialectic/etc. generally (as with Socrates, Mill, Rapoport and Dennett).

Socrates/Plato/Aristotle vs. Christianity?

Or: is Original Sin plausible?

(a 'Green Friday' special lol)

Based on my exposure to Christian thinking over the course of a few decades, it strikes me that very short shrift is given in Christian thought to the message and examples set by the iconic Greek trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  It compels me now to ask such questions as: Okay, that is a highly disappointing apparent performance by Christendom on the whole, but what about the strongest examples of Christian thought, especially ones deeply conversant with the Greeks and Aristotle (the pinnacle of Greek learning/thought) in particular.  And so, my mind goes (of course?) to Aquinas.  And so I have to envision (for now) what Aquinas might have said on the topic of Original Sin in light of these three sage examples, and it might also work to research whatever he actually did say on the connection between these two topics.  (If he had said things about this connection, wouldn't we have heard a lot about it by now?)

I recently saw quoted a letter from Ben Franklin to a man who claimed to be able to self-rule just fine without traditional religious beliefs, and Franklin said that this may be fine for him (the correspondent) but a lot of people simply don't have the discipline; they're weak of will, perhaps incurably ignorant -  fallen and corrupt if you will.  Some Christian thinkers go further with their wording: "wretched and miserable."  And Aristotle even seems to say as much about a lot of biological humans who just don't seem cut out even remotely for a philosophical life.  They being oftentimes base and vicious, the best we might hope to do in such cases is to train them in nonphilosophical habits of thought that nonetheless encourage socially acceptable behaviors.  The Framers of the United States Constitution said that because of human weaknesses it is best that powers be separated so that bad judgment and appetites be kept in check (especially where the levers of coercive force/power are concerned).  Many present-day American Christians take this as part of the body of evidence of the nation's "Judeo-Christian provenance".  (I ask as I've asked before: so how come it took only until after John Locke, who formulated the most complete theory of individual rights up to that point, for there to be an America-like nation "founded on Judeo-Christian principles"?  Perhaps such Christians should make extra efforts to avoid the vice of epistemic hubris, heh heh.)

But isn't Original Sin supposed to be an unqualified and universal condition of man the species, of mankind, and not merely (say) the vast majority of men, and that all humans need Christ as redeemer?  And isn't it supposed to be eminently plausible (from overwhelming evidence in the world) according to standard Christian doctrine that there are no exceptions to this?  And so now, the obvious(?) question: How do Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fail to be exceptions?

I guess I'll leave it there for now.

[Addendum 12/12/2019: This isn't even to bring up Nietzsche's well-known antipathy to Christianity, particularly its human-weakness anthropology in contrast to his own heroic-possibilities, noble-soul one which he appears to share with Aristotle.  To him, it didn't ring true that even people like him were unavoidably weak and corrupt (without Christ).  But something is telling me that bringing up the examples of the ancient Greek trio is less triggering to Christians than bringing up Nietzsche.  Nietzsche's aphorism about the noble soul comes, after all, in a book triggeringly titled Beyond Good and Evil.  What does Nietzsche's new value system have to offer the weak and less-smart masses?  Roughly, his modus ponens looks like Christianity's modus tollens: if man is weak and corrupt, then he needs Christ for redemption or salvation.  And from what I can tell his anthropology divides humanity into the weak/dumb masses on the one hand and people such as him on the other, whereas Christianity doesn't make the division (except, I suppose, for the one human+divine person in history).  Plato and Aristotle are less triggering in this regard (how much so?...), and there's the Aquinas connection that would be a bad idea for Christians to ignore....]

Rand, the Greeks, and the ideal (kalos) man

(Image from "Kalos Kagathos: A Fine Soul in a Fine Body.")

Pursuant to my previous posting, I'll keep this brief to draw mainly one (highly important but all too neglected) connection: between Rand's conception of the ideal man and the ancient Greek concept of kalos kagathos.

In her 1963 article, "The Goal of My Writing," Rand wrote:  "The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself--to which any didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means."

Compare with this portion of the wikipedia article on kalos kagathos linked above:

The word was a term used in Greek when discussing the concept of aristocracy.^[4] It became a fixed phrase by which the Athenian aristocracy referred to itself; in the ethical philosophers, the first of whom were Athenian gentlemen, the term came to mean the ideal or perfect man.

Compare also with this encyclopedia.com entry:

Kalon : the neuter of the Greek adjective kalos, beautiful, fine, also admirable, noble; accompanied by the definite article (to kalon ), for example, the beautiful (or beauty). In Greek culture, what is kalon is typically the object of erôs, passionate or romantic love, and in (male-dominated) literature (and art), the term is predominantly applied to males around the age of puberty. Plato appropriates the kalon (along with the good and the just) as a key object for human striving and understanding in general, discovering in it, along with the good, one of the properties of the universe and of existence; erôs itself, in Plato, is transformed from a species of love into love or desire tout court, for whatever is truly desirable—and good (for the human agent). See especially his Symposium, Phaedrus (Hippias Major, possibly not by Plato, represents an unsuccessful attempt to define the kalon ). The truly beautiful, or fine, is identical with the truly good, and also with the truly pleasant, as it is for Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics I.1, 1214a1–8). The Aristotelian good man acts "for the sake of the fine (to kalon )" (Nicomachean Ethics IV.2, 1122b6–7), an idea which is sometimes used as a basis for attributing to Aristotle a quasi-Kantian view of the ideal agent as acting morally, even—if occasion arises—altruistically, as opposed to acting out of a concern for his or her own good or pleasure. Against this, we need to take account of Aristotle's treatment of his good person as a self-lover, someone who seeks a disproportionate share of the fine for himself or herself (NE IX.8, 1169a35–b1), though he or she may willingly concede his or her share to a friend (NE IX.8, 1169a32–34). This is consistent with Aristotle's wanting to treat the fine (or the admirable) as itself part—the most important part—of the human good; and indeed, he ultimately seems to recognize only two objects of desire, the good and the pleasant (NE VIII.2, 1155b18–21; cf. e.g. EE VII.2, 1235b18–23). In this context the pleasant will include only those pleasures that are not fine and good. For this move we may compare Plato's Gorgias (474C–475D), where Socrates actually reduces fine to good, pleasant, or both. Later Greek philosophy trades on, while sometimes modifying, this complex of ideas, which also forms the basis for the analysis of beauty in literature or in the visual arts.

And what is Rand's ideal of moral beauty or perfection, as it were?  Here's a major clue:

Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

(Note that very early on in my book, I identify the ideal of an (Aristotelian) end of history with a cultural norm of unbreached rationality, i.e., something well above the viral/toxic/low-effort dreck of social media as we now know it.  Getting kids on philosophy as early as possible/apprioriate would help with that problem; getting them on philosophy most expressive of the ideal of kalos would speed up the process.)

Given a fundamental agreement here between Rand and Aristotle on the human exercise of the intellectual capacity as virtuous/excellent/kalos human activity, and given the seriousness with which Aristotle is widely taken as a philosopher, it stands to reason that Rand's conception of the human good merits wider attention from philosophers.  It also follows that the culmination of 'Randian' study in the art of thinking in a course by that very name (1992) by Peikoff merits close attention from scholars in this area.  Excuses (among Rand-commentators especially) for avoiding such materials have to be rather pathetically weak (very non-kalos) at this point.

(The Aristotle-Nietzsche connection here also seems under-researched.  Also, any connection between the concepts of intellectual perfection and dialectical completeness should be duly-thoroughly researched.)

Better living through philosophy, in broad outline

In which Ultimate Philosopher addresses the question, "Is there definitive evidence, man, that better living and philosophy go together?" and then such related questions as "What if we encounter one miserable philosopher, doesn't that falsify a better-living-through-philosophy hypothesis" and then "Isn't part of wisdom learning not to be miserable (as distinct from, say, 'in physical pain'), like, ever, and isn't philosophy after all the pursuit or search for wisdom which is distinct from the having of wisdom or sagacity itself" and then such related questions about the meaning of life, etc.

So, let's begin.  What is better living?  In short, whatever it is that the ancients (Aristotle first and foremost, of course . . .) were getting at with the concept of eudaimonia.  Happiness, flourishing, comprehensive well-being, . . . a modern rendition of the concept is found in self-actualization psychology associated with Maslow and others.

Next question: are there real-world examples of self-actualized or eudaimonic philosophers, not merely philosophers who seek these things but also attain these things?  It is helpful to have real-world examples to go by.  How do we go about identifying who a philosopher is, anyway?  And surely we need to be able to distinguish between a mere philosopher and a sage, so getting the definition of 'philosopher' correct is important (for purposes of this discussion, etc.).  To best answer that question is to get into the topic of 'metaphilosophy' or philosophy (asking questions about, thinking through thoroughly, more to follow below) about philosophy.  Just what are the necessary and sufficient conditions, etc., for someone to be engaging in what we correctly identify as philosophic activity?

Philosophy is something something love or pursuit or seeking after wisdom, with the goal or telos of such activity being an actual sage.  A sage is one who has attained wisdom, and so what is wisdom you might ask?  Ah, what is wisdom.  How do we know when we have found it if we do not yet possess it?  We could say numerous things about wisdom and hopefully identify fundamental features in common to those things to form a working definition of wisdom.  Okay, so I'll cheat and see what google says.  "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.
synonyms: sagacity, intelligence, sense, common sense, shrewdness, astuteness, smartness, judiciousness, judgment, prudence, circumspection

So, like I hear about these wiseguys, you know, goodfellas?  Michael Corleone, did he possess these features?  He had to be pretty good at what he was doing to run an empire like that.  Keep your friends close and enemies closer, etc.  Or, how about when the "Meth Milf" Lydia Rodarte-Quayle from Breaking Bad discusses whether it would be, you know, wise to have Mike's good men bumped off.  That's not the wisdom the likes of Socrates, Plato and of course (duh) Aristotle spoke about, but it's something called wisdom by some, and we need to have strict guidelines for distinguishing fool's gold from the real.  And what if Corleone or the Meth Milf do possess some of the characteristics provided by the google algorithm?  Are those good characteristics to have no matter the context?  What about smartness, anyway?  Is that ever bad?  Can one be more clever than smart, more smart than wise?

Wisdom has a synonym in the ancient Greek, scientia or some form of systematized or organized knowing.  In this context it is unavoidable for me to recall a portion of historian-of-philosophy Will Durant's summary statement of Kant: "Science is organized knowledge; wisdom is organized life."  Wisdom is organized life, philosophy is the love of wisdom, therefore by ironclad deduction philosophy is love of organized life, QED, shows over, philosophy 1, non-philosophy zero.  (Plato proved this over 2,000 years ago and yet humanity has not taken to Plato in all this time.  Is it a communication problem?  Shit.)

Humans are distinguished from the animals by the faculty of intellect or reason, which enables thought and the ability to express them via language.  Intellect or reason itself is present enough in the activities of nearly all human beings (not in the category of the developmentally disabled, say) that it serves to organize experiences into a systematic-enough whole to get by to varying degrees of success in daily and often routine affairs.  But the light of independent thought and initiative and creativity is still in there, enough for legal (including criminal) responsibilities.  Some element of free will that accounts for about 30% of our life circumstances (the other 70% roughly evenly divided between genetics and environment/upbringing).

Moving on.  It is systematic approaches to reasoning in specialized areas of knowledge we tend to put under the heading of 'the sciences.'  But philosophy is something about organizing our thought processes at a higher level of sorts, of bringing together all our reasoning processes under a higher-order level of systematicity, enough so that it takes on the task of "organized living".  The pursuit of wisdom seems to be, in addition to anything else, the pursuit of better or organized living.  And this seems to happen via a process known as philosophy.

Time out for a moment.  The first google result for 'philosophy' is:

skin care, fragrance, perfume, bath and body, gifts, philosophy

https://www.philosophy.com/

philosophy | skin care | fragrance | bath & body | gifts philosophy.

Skin care explore advanced skin care products from philosophy. as ...

Bestsellers philosophy.

So philosophy as something to do with, like, beauty?  Are there objective teleological standards for beauty?  Is there an organized field of knowledge that deals with this subject?

Now, I have in mind something more like what appears on the right sidebar:

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Philosophy

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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. Wikipedia

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So

So somehow there's a connection - I'm not entirely clear on it myself at this point - between "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language" and self-improvement! which is what Better Living Through Philosophy might very well best be marketed as?  Have you seen philosophy journal articles where "fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language" are discussed?  A bunch of it almost goes right over my head especially if I'm not reading carefully.  Some of these things just don't interest me that much: I'm more interested in that field known as 'ethics' (link above) than I am in getting it exactly just right whether our conception of substance (this would be in the branch of metaphysics, mysteriously not linked above) is best understood in Aristotelian or Thomistic terms much less Leibnizian or Spinozist terms.  (Is there a difference between Aristotelian and Thomistic conceptions, and even if there is one, are these the best two candidates to choose from, vis a vis the likes of Leibniz and Spinoza?  Yeah, I think they may be pretty good candidates.  But like I said, given only so much available time my own personal focus has been more squarely on the topic of ethics.  This is not at all to say that getting a fully systematized understanding of our ethical concepts won't rely on metaphysical ones.  But then they might also have to rely on aesthetic ones as well, and that seems like a rather under-served area in philosophy; only a few of the most canonized philosophers - little overlap with specialists who've made their name in aesthetics (Danto, say?) - delved into that subject matter.  What is there to say about whatever it is that aesthetics studies, anyway, and what relation does it have to better living / self-help?

So there's something about the activity of philosophy - which encompasses not just (science-like) knowing or wisdom accumulation but also the activity of putting whatever wisdom obtained so far to use in organizing or systematizing the art of living better, but also an activity distinctive to philosophy per se: thought.  It is, ultimately, the activity of thought that itself aspires toward a systematic unity or completeness or wholeness, and so atop the hierarchy of the human sciences is philosophy, basically a science of what it is to live functionally or well as a human being.

This is basically the essential idea of what I think "better living through philosophy" is aiming toward, the rest being application, examples, a treatise-length fleshing-out.

Now, let's say that there are better modes of doing philosophy itself than others.  There are plenty of great philosophers in history but what crucial features account for some philosophers being more influential than others?  (Why isn't a pessimist like Schopenhauer a lot more influential than someone who's more optimistic like Aristotle who believes humans - well, Athenian citizens at least - are in principle equipped for eudaimonia?  If pessimism is true, shouldn't it sell?  And why hasn't the full range of wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, at minimum, rubbed off on all school children all of 2,000 years later?  Communication barriers?  Really?  Surely I could get polemical about the "progressive"-run schools but I'll keep it clean here.  I'll just say that a truly progressive mindset gets you to Aristotelian wisdom-pursuit and I wish I were seeing a lot more of that explicitly and systematically instilled in schools.)

So there are better and worse ways of doing philosophy, let's assume.  We should then have some way of ordering the different approaches and styles and methods (METHODS!!!) according to their value (teleological ranking).  Through to their (methods') fruits ye shall know them.  Aristotle knew a ton of shit - founded biology as a science that was authoritative for 2,000 years until Darwin in the 1800s; systematized the science of logic to such an extent that (quoting historian of philosophy Anthony Kenny in Essays on the Aristotelian Tradition) "his work was subsumed, rather than superseded, by the developments of mathematical logic at the end of the nineteenth century by Frege and his contemporaries; developed a physical science that stood authoritative until the Renaissance, systematized philosophy itself with treatises on metaphysics, ethics, politics, psychology, aesthetics, philosophical procedures and methods.  Aristotle's work (not like this stuff shouldn't be known to everyone by now) exists now only in not-always-accessible, quasi-lecture-note format; he is reputed to have written dialogues that outshone (as gold to silver) those of his master Plato.  He was hailed almost unanimously among the medieval scholars who preserved and studied his work as the ultimate in human intelligence, the philosopher "par excellance," or simply The Philosopher according to the greatest of the medieval minds, Aquinas.  (This despite having numerous erroneous views and often in areas of less specifically philosophical consequence - he didn't think his principles of the good life or eudaimonia applied to slaves or women; numerous of his scientific theories have been superseded or overturned.)

It is my view that an 'Aristotelian' approach to doing philosophy is the best one, or at the very least a suitably strong candidate for one.  I place the likes of Aquinas, Ayn Rand, and Mortimer Adler within that tradition broadly speaking.  When it comes to the "fruits" of whatever his method was, it includes a crucial piece of insight: that the human good, to be most fully or perfectly actualized, requires philosophical contemplation, and a perfecting of one's intellectual activity itself (whether as an aesthetic principle - living to kalon or for the sake of the noble, fine or beautiful - or for the sake of better living overall qua the kind of life-form one is).  I characterize this as an intellectual perfectionism; Aristotle has been variously dubbed an "intellectualist" in his conception of (the fullest realization) of eudaimonia.  The philosophic or contemplative life, and generally the progressive development or perfection of one's intellectual faculty, are in this sense a central and fundamental feature of the good life, the feature that more than any others would best explain all the other facets of a good human life (physical, emotional, social, spiritual, aesthetic,...).  For the Aristotelian, eudaimonia is best or maximally achieved through the perfection of that 'best aspect within' our nature, our nous or intelligence, that a good human life is one led thoughtfully and intelligently, that this perfection of our rational natures is in some sense the same thing as living eudaimonically, as an activity of the rational soul.  (Are living wisely and eudaimonically the same thing?  Must one be a sage to be truly or fully eudaimonic?)

Now this distinctively Aristotelian (or more broadly, Greek) conception of the good life gives us a picture of the human good in terms of both the end and the means by which it is exercised (which are in some sense united and instantiated in rational activity, or: the human good is rational activity), which places it in interesting contrast to other ethical traditions which aren't so homed in on the rational element of our soul as the central defining potentiality to be actualized in a good human life.  (This subsumes even the 'Kantian' rational-willing characteristic of distinctively moral cognition.)  The Aristotelian ethical tradition is big on the concept of virtue (or excellence, arete in Greek): what makes for an excellent human being/life?  Something something the utmost excellence of the rational or intellectual faculty.  Now, the task of figuring out general principles for the best exercise of our rational faculty?  That's for epistemology, the science of knowing as such.  And if we exercise the proper epistemic discipline, the science of knowing becomes a unity with the science of living, with practical concerns.  To live best is (inter alia) to know best, i.e., the latter is a precondition for the former.  So what do the wiseguys, the made men, know exactly, anyway?

So something like philosophic activity itself is central to the Aristotelian conception of the good life.  How much is that notion seared in the consciousness front and center when we consider alternative philosophical schools, whatever extant candidates we might look into for philosophic guidance?

As to such profoundly significant identifications being the fruit of a method, in Aristotle's case it has to do with something called dialectic, or the art of playing opinions against one another to hopefully yield a truth agreeable to all despite their remaining well-scrutinized differences.  And even though Plato is noted for having made The Grand Original Contribution to the philosophical dialogue style via The Republic and other published works, it is dialectic as picked up and applied by Aristotle that may well yield the greatest fruit.  Among other fruits of dialectical method would be what, in the final comparison, differentiated Plato from Aristotle: Aristotle adopted both Plato's 'rationalist' framework for thinking about philosophic questions (homing in on eternal, unchanging Forms or Ideas supposedly grasped by the intellect with the sense experience only providing at best a hint in Their direction), and a thoroughly empirical or experience-based one.  Ideally the Aristotelian approach should be able to provide the very definitional or formal criteria for both living well and specifically philosophical activity, along with empirical examples of such in the real world.  (Shouldn't philosophy be practical and not a lot of idle word-play?)

Dialectic has something to do with taking into account all the essential factors that come to bear on forming an opinion on anything, and ideally applies not just to analyzing and resolving differences of opinion but also in mapping our opinions onto the world itself.  (It is a common sense or classical realist assumption that there is a real world out there independent of our knowing it and that our opinions can at least sometimes match up with or more systematically map onto what our senses provide us.)  And in his inquiries into the nature of existence and our place in it, Aristotle covered a bunch of ground, really thoroughly/completely/wholly/perfectionist-like.  I take him as an example to be emulated, each in our own way (we providing for the individuating features or manifestations of this formal principle of intellectual perfectionism), and perhaps not to be superseded or surpassed.  If we propose to have a superior or more perfect alternative model of thinking/knowing/living on offer, then aren't we just re-affirming a principle of intellectual perfectionism, to the effect that we should adopt the most superior model on offer?  So this becomes like an endpoint of the conversation about the norms of an ideal human society (also known as 'end of history' or perhaps 'utopia').

So as we progress through the stages of development we see that there is the potential for, if not actuality of, better living through philosophy, but then we see that there may be better ways of doing philosophy than others, in which case we should think in terms (eventually) of the best living through the best philosophy.  And getting 'em as young as possible probably wouldn't hurt to speed up the 'end of history' collaborative project, as long as they learn all about things like the Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis and are not pumped full of philosophically-less-perfect material instead.

So this should give a taste of the gist of the 'better living through philosophy' Project that I've been consciously mulling these past 15 or so months, atop the previous context of thought already accumulated, and aided by some possibly-performance-enhancing substances.  (Substance. ^_^ )