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Kant’s Philosophy of Friendship, and How it Differed from Aristotle’s.

In his youth and middle age, the sharply dressed Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) moved in Königsberg’s most refined circles and often stayed out into the small hours. In this period, his student Johann Gottfriend Herder described him as “the most urbane fellow in the world.” 

But when Kant turned forty, he underwent a midlife transformation. He quite literally sobered up, abandoning carefree carousing for the disciplined life of the mind. This profound change owed to the early death of a close friend, the dissolute Johann Daniel Funk, together with the making of a new friend, the English merchant Joseph Green, who lived by the clock. Kant essentially adopted Green’s modus vivendi.

Kant’s Daily Routine, and How It Helped Him

For the rest of his productive life, Kant employed a retired solder, Martin Lampe, to wake him up at precisely five-to-five every morning. Lampe would stride into his master’s bedroom and cry out, “Herr Professor, the time is come!” Or in German, Herr Professor, es ist Zeit!

Kant worked at his desk in his nightclothes until his lectures began at seven. At eleven, he would change back into nightclothes and return to his desk. The working day effectively ended at one, when he would take lunch in company in a public inn or restaurant. Lunch would end at three with a round of manufactured jokes—in the belief that laughter was good for digestion.

At three, after lunch, Kant would take his daily constitutional around Königsberg. He would walk alone, from fear that outdoor conversation would lead him to breathe through the mouth. He often wound up at Green’s, with whom he liked to discuss Hume and Rousseau. It is said that the housewives of Königsberg would set their timepieces by the time—seven sharp—at which he left Green’s house.

By automating trivial daily decisions, Kant’s rigid daily routine freed his mind to focus purely on philosophy. It’s because of Kant that I have six of the same shirt.

Kant’s Jokes and Philosophy of Laughter

What kind of jokes did Kant tell after lunch? Some of his jokes have come down to us in his writing. For instance: A man tried to arrange a solemn funeral for a rich relative, but failed in the task: “The more I paid my mourners, the merrier they looked.” A merchant sailed back from India with his fortune, but, in a violent storm, had to throw all his cargo overboard. This upset him so much that his wig turned grey overnight.

Laughter, Kant thought, “is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing.” The mind is deceived into tensing up, but with the deception revealed suddenly relaxes, leading to laughter, which mimics the motions of the mind and is extremely health-giving. Kant never laughed at his own jokes, but always kept a straight face.

In The Critique of Pure Judgement (1790), Kant quoted Voltaire in saying that Heaven had given us two comforts against life’s hardships, hope and sleep—before suggesting that Voltaire “could have added laughter.”

The Death of Joseph Green

In 1786, Joseph Green died, deeply affecting Kant, who, thereafter, became a lot more housebound.

After a suitable period of mourning, Kant recruited a female cook and began hosting protracted lunches aimed at stimulating the play of thoughts. To this end, he gathered guests from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, believing that the ideal number of guests lay somewhere in between that of the Graces and the Muses (three and nine). All topics great and small were on the table. Philosophy was allowed but not dogmatism, for fear that it would interrupt the convivial flow of ideas.

As well as wine, Kant had a taste for Königsberger Klopse (meatballs in a creamy white sauce with capers), Teltow turnips (an heirloom turnip from the Berlin-Brandenburg region), roast beef, cod, and, as a condiment for the above, English mustard, which he mixed himself.

Kant’s Philosophy of Friendship

Joseph Green was the closest friend that Kant ever had. Green had inspired Kant’s routine, and became his philosophical sounding board. Kant allegedly discussed every single sentence of the Critique of Pure Reason with Green before publishing it in 1781.

In the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant ended his discussion of character traits just like, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle ended his discussion of the same: with an analysis of friendship.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle made much of the idea of “perfect friendship”, which, he thought, is only possible between men of reason and virtue. He famously described a perfect friend as “another self”—later paraphrased by Diogenes Laertius as “a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” 

Kant deemed “perfect friendship” an ideal that in practice cannot be attained. But in striving for it, we might nonetheless arrive at “moral friendship,” in which two persons feel able to disclose their secret thoughts and feelings to each other. Moral friendship requires a savant mélange of love and respect, love for bringing two people together, and respect for not driving them apart by infringing upon their dignity and autonomy.

From his own experience, Kant came to believe that most people cannot develop their true character until middle age, when they might undergo a “rebirth”. At twenty, we are no more than the product of our upbringing and environment. At thirty, we are still reliant on the judgement and approval of others. Only at forty are we confident enough (or perhaps tired enough) to become who we truly are.

Neel Burton is the author of the newly published The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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Why speakers shouldn’t always pander to their audience.

In the Rhetoric (4th century BCE), Aristotle identified the three modes of persuasion, or persuasive appeals, that are in: the character of the speaker (ethos), the emotions of the audience (pathos), and the argument itself (logos).

Ethos, pathos, and logos are referred to as artistic means of persuasion, and contrasted to non-artistic means, that is, to hard evidence, such as laws, witnesses, and contracts.

Ethos and decorum

In a speaker, ethos is also a matter of agreeability and meeting the expectations of the audience in terms of appearance, diction, and comportment. The Romans referred to this aspect of ethos as decorum.

Anything that grates with the audience, or sets you apart from it, is a violation of decorum. What this might be varies from audience to audience. For example, an audience of academics would expect some jargon, which, however, would jar with a general audience. Boastfulness and vulgarity can be a violation of decorum, as can be, unfortunately, complexity and subtlety.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle remarks that it is their simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated before a general audience:

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences—makes them, as the poets tell us, “charm the crowd’s ears more finely.” Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

When to break decorum

The rhetorician Quintilian (d. c. 100 CE), author of the Institutes of Oratory, points out that what might de decorous in the eyes of an audience might be repugnant under the aspect of eternity, that is, in the eyes of God.

In example, Quintilian cites the trial of Socrates: how would this paragon of virtue be remembered today if, instead of standing up to them and rebuking them, he had sought to meet the expectations of the jurors by shedding tears, resorting to prayers and supplications, and bringing forth his young children?

Today in America, many politicians are grappling with just this problem in addressing their base. It is much easier to be decorous before an audience that is itself decorous.

How to break decorum

So how to go about telling an audience something that it doesn’t want to hear?

One strategy is to appear to have reached your conclusion reluctantly, driven only by the overwhelming force of the argument. You might even use a technique known as the dubitatio, which involves expressing doubt or uncertainty about what to say.

Another approach is to make your conclusion seem like a concession in the face of an even greater evil, such as inflation or recession.

And the third thing is to make your stance seem in line with the orthodoxy, as when Elon Musk (himself a South African) defended the skilled immigrant visa as “American”.

These techniques work for politicians and public figures, and they will also work for you.

Neel Burton is author of How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero

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The symbol of wisdom is the owl, a bird of prey which cleaves through darkness.

Every time I utter the word “wisdom”, someone giggles or sneers. Wisdom, more so even than expertise, does not sit comfortably in an egalitarian, anti-elitist society. In an age dominated by materialism and consumerism, science and technology, and specialization and compartmentalization, it is too loose, too grand, and too mysterious a concept. With our heads in our smartphones and tablets, in our bills and bank statements, we simply do not have the time or mental space for it, or even the idea of it.

But things were not always thus. The word “wisdom” features 222 times in the Old Testament, which includes all of seven so-called ‘wisdom books’: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Wisdom, and Sirach.

Here is Ecclesiastes 7:12:

For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.

The word “philosophy” literally means “the love of wisdom”, and wisdom is the overarching aim of philosophy, or, at least, ancient philosophy.

In Plato’s Lysis, Socrates tells the young Lysis that, without wisdom, he will be of no worth to anyone:

And therefore, my boy, if you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful and good; but if you are not wise, neither father, nor mother, nor kindred, nor anyone else, will love you.

The patron goddess of Athens, the city in which the Lysis is set, is none other than Athena, goddess of wisdom, who sprung out from the skull of Zeus. Her symbol, and the symbol of wisdom, is the owl, a bird of prey which cleaves through darkness.

Indeed, “wisdom” derives from the Proto-Indo-European root weid-, “to see”. In Norse mythology, Odin gouged out one of his eyes and offered it to Mimir in exchange for a drink from the well of knowledge and wisdom, symbolically trading one mode of perception for another, higher one.

Wisdom as knowledge

But what exactly is wisdom? People often speak of “knowledge and wisdom” as though they might be closely related or even the same thing. So one hypothesis is that wisdom is knowledge, or a great deal of knowledge. If wisdom is knowledge, then it has to be a certain kind of knowledge, or else learning the phonebook, or the names of all the rivers in the world, might count as wisdom. And if wisdom is a certain kind of knowledge, then it is not scientific or technical knowledge, or else every contemporary person would be wiser than the wisest of ancient philosophers. Any twenty-first century school-leaver would be wiser than a Seneca or Socrates.

Remember: the Delphic oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of all people not because he knew everything or anything, but because he knew the extent of what he did not know.

Still, there seems to be more to wisdom than mere “negative knowledge”, or else I could simply be super-skeptical about everything and count myself wise…

Or maybe wisdom consists in having high epistemic standards, that is, in having a high bar for believing something, and an even higher bar for calling that belief knowledge. But then we are back to a picture of wisdom as something like science…

Wisdom as correct opinion

In Plato’s Meno, Socrates notices that people of wisdom and virtue seem to be very poor at imparting those qualities. Themistocles was able to teach his son Cleophantus skills such as standing upright on horseback and shooting javelins, but no one ever credited the poor wretch with anything like his father’s wisdom; and the same could also be said of Lysimachus and his son Aristides, Pericles and his sons Paralus and Xanthippus, and Thucydides and his sons Melesias and Stephanus. And if wisdom cannot be taught, not even by the wisest of Athenians, then it is not a kind of knowledge.

If wisdom cannot be taught, how, asks Meno, did good people come about? Socrates replies that right action is possible under guidance other than that of knowledge: a person who has knowledge of the way to Larisa (a city-state in Thessaly) may make a good guide, but a person who has only correct opinion about the way, but has never been and does not know, might make an equally good guide. Since wisdom cannot be taught, it cannot be knowledge; and if it cannot be knowledge, it can only be correct opinion—which explains why paragons of wisdom such as Themistocles, Lysimachus, and Pericles were unable to impart their wisdom even unto their own sons. Wise people are no different from soothsayers, prophets, and poets, who say many true things when they are divinely inspired but have no real knowledge of what they are saying.

Wisdom as the understanding of causes

Aristotle gives us another clue in the Metaphysics, when he says that wisdom is the understanding of causes. None of the five senses are regarded as wisdom because, although they give the most authoritative knowledge of sense particulars, they are unable to discern the distal causes of anything. Similarly, we suppose artists to be wiser than artisans because artists know the “why” or cause, and can therefore teach, whereas artisans do not, and cannot. In other words, wisdom is the understanding of the right relations between things, which calls for more distal and removed perspectives, and maybe also the ability or willingness to shift between perspectives.

In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero cites as a paragon of wisdom the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras, who, upon being informed of the death of his son, said, “I knew that I begot a mortal.” For Cicero, true sapience consists in preparing oneself for every eventuality so as never to be taken, or overtaken, by surprise. And it is true that wisdom, the understanding of causes and connexions, has forever been associated with both insight and foresight.

In conclusion

In sum, wisdom is not so much a kind of knowledge as a way of seeing, or ways of seeing. When we take a few steps back, like when we stand under the shower or go on holiday, we begin to behold the bigger picture. In common parlance, “wisdom” has two opposites: “foolishness” and “folly”, which both derive from the Latin follis [bellows, bag], and involve, respectively, lack and loss of perspective.

In cultivating a broader perspective, it helps, of course, to be knowledgeable, but it also helps to be intelligent, reflective, open-minded, and disinterested—which is why we often seek out and pay for “independent” advice.

Above all, it helps to be courageous, because the view from on high, though it can be exhilarating, and ultimately liberating, is at first terrifying … not least because it conflicts with so much that we have been taught or enculturated to think.

Courage, said Aristotle, is the first of the human qualities, because it is the one which underwrites all the others.

Neel Burton is author of How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero

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Gorgias hailed from Leontini in Sicily. He studied rhetoric under Corax and Tisias in nearby Syracuse, and was versed in the teachings of Empedocles. In 427, he led an embassy to Athens to forge a defensive alliance against an overbearing Syracuse.

Gorgias was something of a showman. He specialized in making unconventional, counterintuitive, or absurd arguments appear the stronger, and spoke in a florid, rhyming style that hypnotized his audiences. When in the theatre at Athens, he would say, ‘Come, propose me a theme!’ He took pride in his ability to take any position, on any subject, and founded the art of extempore oratory. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle characterizes his style of oratory as ‘ironic’, so that his own opinions, if he had any, are hard to decipher. Rather than any positive philosophy, he offered an agnostic art of persuasion which he held to be of the utmost value.

In Plato’s Philebus, the sophist Protarchus tells Socrates:

I have often heard Gorgias maintain that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will.

Works

Of Gorgias’ works, two short display speeches survive, the Encomium of Helen and the Defence of Palamedes, along with a fragment of a funeral oration and two paraphrases of a lost treatise, On Non-Being. 

In the Encomium of Helen, which aims at praising Helen and exculpating her for leaving Sparta with Paris and sparking the Trojan War, he compares the effect of speech on the soul to the effect of drugs on the body:

Just as different drugs draw forth different humours from the body—some putting a stop to disease, others to life—so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion.

In sum, he argues that Helen could have been persuaded to leave in one of four ways: by the gods; by physical force; by the power of love; by the power of speech. But whichever way it was, she herself would have been blameless.

In On Not-Being, he parodies and refutes Parmenides by arguing that:

  1. Nothing exists.
  2. Even if something did exist, nothing could be known about it.
  3. Even if something could be known about it, this knowledge could not be communicated to others.
  4. Even if it could be communicated to others, it could not be understood.

But as ever with Gorgias, it is far from clear whether these stood among his own opinions.

Later Life

Gorgias spent much of his long life in Thessaly where he enjoyed the patronage of Aristippus of Larissa and Jason of Pheræ. He taught Aristippus’ one-time beloved, the Meno who lent his name to Plato’s Meno, as well as the orator Isocrates, who came to rank among the ten Attic Orators.

In his autobiographical Antidosis, Isocrates tells us that Gorgias:

…spent his time in Thessaly when the Thessalians were the most prosperous people in Hellas; he lived a long life and devoted himself to the making of money; he had no fixed domicile in any city and therefore paid out nothing for public weal nor was he subject to any tax; moreover, he did not marry and beget children, but was free from this, the most unremitting and expensive of burdens…

Gorgias died at the grand old age of 108.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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Many Oxford University students have thanked me for teaching them the six parts of discourse—which, for many centuries, used to be common knowledge.

Since at least Cicero (d. 43 BCE), speeches have been divided into six parts, known as the ‘six parts of discourse’:

  1. Introduction (exordium)
  2. Narration (narratio)
  3. Division (divisio or partitio)
  4. Proof (confirmatio)
  5. Refutation (confutatio)
  6. Conclusion (peroratio)

The six parts of discourse are, of course, just as good for structuring essays, so let’s look at each one in turn.

1. Introduction

In the exordium, you might announce the subject and purpose of the speech/essay and lay out your credentials for speaking/writing.

All the better if, at the same time, you can hook your audience, for instance, by creating a sense of urgency.

Keep the exordium as short and clear as possible, A speaker/writer should never bore, confuse, or test their audience, and the beginning would be the worst time to do so.

2. Narration

In the narration, you lay out the facts of the case and issues at stake. What is the background to this problem, how did it arise, what has it led to, what has so far been said and done about it, what does the research indicate, have there been any similar problems, and so on.

The narration may seem neutral and objective, but is in fact an opportunity to frame the debate/discussion.

3. Division

Division is the turning point in your speech/essay. ‘So this is what is at stake, this is why you should care about it, and this is what we should do about it.’

Like the exordium, the division ought to be brief if it is not to reek of artifice.

The rhetorical handbook Ad Herennium (c. 80 BCE) provides a couple of examples of division, concerning dilemmas in Greek mythology.

Orestes killed his mother [Clytemnestra]; on that I agree with my opponents. But did he have the right to commit the deed, and was he justified in committing it? This is in dispute.

You admit that Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon; yet despite this they say that I ought not to have avenged my father.

4. Proof

The proof is your argumentation. This includes logos (arguments), of course, usually in the form of enthymemes (informal arguments) and examples, but it also includes non-technical proofs such as laws, witnesses, and contracts.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) advises that if the written law is against us, we should claim that it is more equitable to fall back on the general law (natural law), as Antigone did when she buried her brother Polynices against Creon’s edict. Alternatively, we might argue that the law is antiquated, that it contradicts itself or another law, or that it is ambiguous or open to interpretation.

For Aristotle, witnesses can include ‘ancient witnesses’ such as Homer, Hesiod, Solon, proverbs, and received wisdom … and, nowadays, old Aristotle himself. Ancient witnesses can be appealed to indirectly, as when Barack Obama echoed Martin Luther King, who himself echoed Abraham Lincoln, who himself echoed the King James Bible, notably in the first line of the Gettysburg Address of 1863:

Four score and seven years ago [i.e. 87 years ago] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

5. Refutation

Refutation, in which you acknowledge and address the other side of the argument, need not be fair or principled. You might exaggerate, misrepresent, or caricature your opponent’s stance (for example, refer to their plan to fund social care as a ‘dementia tax’ or ‘death tax’), indignantly deny a made-up or unrelated charge, or equivocally deny an actual charge.

If it helps, you can also concede an argument while framing it within your own, stronger argument. Far from being a retreat or capitulation, concession (concessio, synchoresis, paromologia) makes you seem agreeable, honest, and fairminded, while deflating your opponent and reframing the debate to suit your strengths: ‘Yes, that’s correct. I’ve read the report myself and seen the numbers. But the real question is…’

If your proof is insubstantial, you might instead begin with a vehement refutation in the hope that no one notices your lack of argument. Since Plato’s Phaedo, and even a little before, the Western mind has been marked by deep divisions or dualities, such as soul and body, mind and matter, reason and sense experience, reason and emotion, reality and appearance, good and evil, heaven and hell… This binary thinking carries over to dialectic and rhetoric, in which it is often one thing or the other, rather than both or several or neither. Thus, in the Western mind, knocking down your opponent’s argument is tantamount to validating your own. Notice that the very concept of a debate with an ‘opponent’ is confrontational, when the exercise could instead be cooperative and conversational, as in the Upanishads.

6. Conclusion

Finally, the peroration often includes a forceful summarising of the key points together with a pathetic (emotional) appeal and call to action. 

For example, this is how President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded his Day of Infamy Speech, delivered to a Joint Session of Congress on December 8, 1941, a day after the Attack on Pearl Harbour:

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

Caveats

Although many great talks deliberately or naturally follow this six-part scheme, it is important to remember that a speech should sound artless and authentic rather than contrived and formulaic.

Once they have been assimilated, it is possible to break the rules, as Cicero himself did in the first line of the First Catilinarian, first, by addressing Catiline directly in the Senate chamber, and, second, by overlooking his own advice ‘not to spring at once into the passionate portion of your speech’ [Orator 2.213-14].

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

In some speeches, entire parts may be missing, or not clearly distinguished. Indeed, Aristotle identified only two necessary parts, statement and argument, that is, narration and proof, which might be supplemented by an introduction and conclusion [Rhetoric 3.13]. Other ways of seeming natural are to use simple and direct language, express doubt about what to say (dubitatio), and correct yourself aloud (epergesis). Dubitatio and epergesis can also make you seem more even-minded and scrupulous.

Craft is something that you learn; art, that you unlearn.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.