Is Happiness Limited? #040

Aristotle and the virtues

Hello and welcome again to Every Dawn. As you can see, I'm back. Thank you for your patience for the past three days where I have been traveling and it was impossible for me to make these videos. But now we are back, and let us concentrate on Aristotle again and see how his theory can improve our lives. I think we will finish with Aristotle this week, and then we will talk about other theories.

For today, I wanted to give you the last bit of Aristotle's theory. We already talked about the virtues, and we said that the virtues are only good in the right amount. You remember, so you have to have a judgment about how much virtue you want to employ of every particular virtue. There is this idea that we have a capacity which we can practice, and this capacity allows us to judge the amount of virtue, the right amount of virtue. So by practicing, I become better at this virtue game. I acquire more of what Aristotle calls "phronesis" with this Greek word, which doesn't need to be scary. It's just the fact that we don't have a word in English for that. It's the ability to know the right amount of virtue for every particular situation.

So when we live our lives and we get better and better at this ability to judge the right amount of virtue, then we will always act in a good way, which for Aristotle means that we will always benefit ourselves and others at the same time. Because for Aristotle, these two things are not separate. It's not like I'm benefiting myself and then I'm harming somebody else, like it's often seen today, or when I'm benefiting somebody else, I'm necessarily harming myself. This is a wrong perception, Aristotle would say, that perhaps is enforced by capitalism where we have this one measure of all things: money. And money has this quality that it is a zero-sum game. So when I give away some of the money to somebody else, then I have less.

And so we have this idea that by giving away some of our happiness perhaps, or some of our virtue by doing something good, we lose something. We often call it a sacrifice. I'm sacrificing something in order to help somebody else. But for Aristotle, this is wrong. This is not the case. When I give something to somebody else, I'm not sacrificing anything. I'm not losing it. I am actually practicing my virtue. When I'm virtuous towards others, I'm practicing to become better myself. Every time I use my virtue in a good way, I am enforcing it in myself.

So let's say when I'm honest, when I'm honest I'm not losing honesty by giving it to the other person. It's not like money. When I'm honest, I'm actually gaining honesty myself. I'm practicing honesty. So next time I will be more honest. Or to take the example of the piano playing I had earlier, when I am practicing the piano, it's not like I'm losing those notes that I'm practicing and now I have less piano in me because I practiced for an hour. This would be stupid to say. What really happens is that now I'm better at piano. So giving away these notes, I'm not actually giving away anything. I am becoming better at producing the notes, at playing the piano.

And the same is true of human relations in many different ways. Think of a mother who loves a child. When a mother loves her child and takes care of it and is nice to it and cuddles it and whatever else she does with it, feeds it, it's not like the mother is losing any love. It's not like the mother has less love now that she has given some to the child. It's quite the opposite. The bond between the mother and the child has been strengthened. Now they have even more love for each other through this act of giving love.

And this is something that we need really to distinguish, and today we are not doing that sufficiently. We are not seeing that there are some things that are called "zero-sum" in game theory, that are zero-sum in the sense that the sum of both parties is zero. So when I give something away, some other person gains something and I lose something. This is true of many board games. This is true of chess or of some card games. It is true of money when I'm buying something or when I'm selling something. But it is a mistake that we make that we see human relations in this way because for human relations, this is not the case. Relations and human feelings, human sentiments are not zero-sum. So when I'm giving away my love, I don't lose love. I actually gain more because I improve my own ability to be a lover, to be a loving person. When I give away my attention, I'm not losing attention. I am getting better at giving my attention to others. When I give my help to somebody, I'm not losing help. I'm not having less help afterwards. Instead, I'm improving my ability to help others. The more I help others, the more practiced I become in this.

Even in a very practical sense, let's say I repair somebody's computer. If I do this 50 times, I'm a better computer repairman than if I do it only five times. The more I repair computers, the better I become as a computer repairman, and so on. The more I teach philosophy, the better I become at teaching philosophy. It's not like now that I have said all these things, I have less philosophy in me than before.

So this is what we need to keep in mind, and when you go out to your life today, try to really keep in mind that your virtues don't get less by applying them. This is clear when I say it like this. It's obvious. But very often we behave like that. We say, for example, by being charitable to somebody in need, I feel like I'm losing something. I'm sacrificing something. But this is only the case if I give them money. If I give them love, if I give them attention, if I give them some practical help, then I'm not losing anything and I'm actually benefiting them much more.

So let's try to see it like this and let's try to give to our families perhaps more attention and more love, and to our friends, because every little bit that we give to them improves our own ability to have more of that and it improves our own skill at these things: at love, at attention, at charity. So practice these things. Give them away freely and the more you give, the more you will receive. And this sounds almost Christian now, and this is true because Christians and Aristotelians agree on many points, and one of them is that being virtuous is a good thing and the more virtuous you are, the better it is for yourself, not only for the people you benefit.

So thank you and see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye.