Tag: Aristotle

Work

Corporate Punishment i) Questions

I’ve decided to begin an irregular series on ‘corporate’ behaviours which one encounters in large organisations.

Most of these start with the germ of a good idea from some management book or coach. Some are learnt through imitation and emulation. Taken to excess or with the wrong intent they stymie progress, sap energy and scupper decision making. A common feature is they are safe and look clever but often aren’t. As with so much in life, too much or too little is a vice – only the golden mean is a virtue.

Number one in the series is always asking questions and not stating your own view. Aristotle (not himself a man to beat around the bush) quotes a prior Greek, Hesiod, on this topic.

Hesiod is pungent as an old sock in his critique:

“He is best of all who of himself conceiveth things; Good again is he too who can adopt a good suggestion; But whoso neither of himself conceiveth nor hearing from another layeth it to heart; — he is a useless man.”

It takes Aristotelian effort to develop a new insight and the courage of Achilles to present a new idea. Listening, thinking, improving, adapting and adopting is what you want in return. Questions are too easy.

Ethics, Life

The Harp Player

In pursuit of the good life, Aristotle has sent me in a couple of very important directions recently. First the harp. He says that the work of the harp player is to play the harp, and of the good harp player to play the harp well. That way fulfilment lies.

He suggests we all have different ‘virtues’ or capacities which it is our life’s work to bring to excellence. Doing what we are good at ‘excellently’ gives us pleasure in the moment and fulfilment over time. An Aristotelian life is a balanced life though. There are eleven different virtues to cultivate not to mention the welfare and good of the many, politics, as he defines it. It’s a lot to fit in and doesn’t leave much time for pleasure. Or does it?

As Aristotle says: To each is pleasant of which he is said to be fond: a horse, for instance, to him who is fond of horses, and a sight to him who is fond of sights: and so in like manner just acts to him who is fond of justice. So then their life has no need of pleasure as a kind of additional appendage, but involves pleasure in itself. 

In fact Aristotle considers the highest human achievement and pleasure lies in contemplation. I now realise that there are many harps I play well enough to give me eudaimonia. I’m good at work, a decent leader and manager. I’m a good father, I love my kids and love being with them. But, above all, I am a good thinker. A life of thought is a pleasant life for me.

This leads me to the second idea, friendship. Aristotle spends a full fifth of his entire work on ethics in defining and describing the nature, types and specificities of friendship. There are transactional friendships and friendships for fun and frivolity. But the highest form of friends are friends for contemplation. These are friends whose excellence of thought, virtue in action and sheer interestingness in what they have to say draw us to them. And the same draws them to us.

Seeing these two things together is a revelation. We all care about our friends, but Aristotle reveals that our highest order friendships define us, enrich us and enable us to engage in the very highest of human achievements and pleasures – contemplation. As a friend of mine said recently ‘friends are a rich indicator’. They are indeed.

This week I told two of my ‘friends in contemplation’ at work how much I now understand they mean to me. I will seek and tell others in other parts of my life. As one of them told me in return, the great American Thomas Jefferson would always ensure he had his truest friends no more than an hour’s ride away. I now understand why. 

The intellectual harp is a wonderful instrument. But it takes a lifetime of practice to master and the company of fellow harp players to play it well.

Death, Life

Hospital

I went to hospital on Monday to see a consultant to check up on the moles I’ve been worrying about. Here’s what I tapped out on my iPhone as I sat waiting to go in:

Hospital

It scares the living sh1t out of me. Just walking here brings deep anxiety to the surface. My heart rate is up, I’m conscious of my chest.

We don’t see illness and death unless we go looking for it these days, but here it all is. Everyone you look at you don’t know if they’re losing their life or here to save them. Especially the older people.

The NHS is fantastic, but support staff sometimes look right through you. Two members of staff are currently hailing each other down the length of a corridor in front of me, while I sit here with several others wondering whether fate has something lethal, painful or banal in store.

I will likely end my life in one of these places. And in this very hospital we witnessed the start of life too – my son was born here. But this hospital despite its cleanliness and modernity reeks more of entropy, human decline and infirmity than life.

It brings back my melanoma which is why I am here. I don’t want to die here, but maybe I will.

It turned out to be banal. That’s the weird thing about health. Like life, you take it for granted for much of your life, although you know you shouldn’t. But also, like life, you have to take it for granted – to some extent – otherwise you don’t make the best of it.

In the space of five minutes lethal turns to banal and in the space of five days fear to insouciance. I’m glad it’s this way round. But the useful goad to action, which having melanoma on my mind has been, is something I now need to find from a happier more positive place.

Reading my old friend Aristotle again sat on a tube ride yesterday – and talking to half a dozen different really thought-provoking people this week – I have some emerging ideas…

Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Work

Anger

Last weekend I had a ‘falling out’ at work on my mind. Someone had confronted me and asked to come to an important board meeting and I’d said No. The following morning the person stormed in and accused me of being irascible and aggressive before storming out and slamming the door. I was surprised, hurt and sad.

It so happened last weekend I had some time to kill on a train. So while brooding I read a bit of Aristotle’s ethics on the topic of anger. In general my temper is slow to rise. I can soak up a lot and am quite stoical but then when it (unusually) snaps I can say hurtful things, sometimes clinically hurtful, which I regret, often for a long time.

One of the things I’ve tried to do – and having kids has helped with this – is to connect a bit more with my emotions. Part of this involves getting cross more readily but less severely and responding better ‘in the moment’ rather than bottling things up, brooding or dishing up verbal vengeance. Aristotle would approve. For him to be too slow to anger was as much a defect as to be too quick. The ‘golden mean’ of ‘appropriate’ and ‘fitting’ behaviour is what he is all about.

When I lived in France in the 1990s, shouting, being rude and saying what you thought was a normal part of French office life. I remember the first time after extreme provocation that I lost it with someone thinking “That’s it, game over, one of us will have to resign”. The next day the guy I’d had a shouting match with greeted me like a long lost brother and shook me warmly by the hand. It was as if at last he felt he could work with and trust me now we’d had a stand up row. In my experience the ‘golden mean’ for anger in France is very different to that in the UK – just look at their street protests…

So why did I feel so bad about my spat the other week? Partly because the person I’d said ‘no’ to sharply had felt hurt by it. I was also, in truth, worried in case it turned into a grievance or an HR problem. But most of all I was worried that maybe I was out of line, and I had been aggressive, although it hadn’t felt like it at the time. Cue Aristotle for a soothing intellectual balm from 2500 years ago:

“At any given time it is possible to praise someone who seems deficient in anger, and at another praise someone who is excessively angry. There is no simple formula to determine how a man should act in a given situation or how far he can err before he is considered at fault. This difficulty of definition is inherent in all cases of perception. Questions of degree are bound up in the circumstances of particular cases. The solution in every case rests on one’s own moral sensibility. But this much is clear: in all areas of human conduct the mean is the most desirable and its attainment is the source of all moral virtue.”

I felt better for reading that. On Monday I went to talk to my accuser. I explained how the incident and subsequent exchanges had made me feel, I shared some context on the situation, my response and the history of previous board meetings. The result was a rapprochement and reconciliation. I achieved conciliation without contrition.

I’m still left with a question though: what is the golden mean for anger in the modern workplace. I remember coming back the the UK after 5 years of working in France and quite missing their candour and frankness. Sometimes people were really rude, but problems got sorted and people said what they thought.

Perhaps a bit more honest emotion in UK workplaces might be a good thing. I’m trying to show more – and feel more – these days, and it seems to work more often than not, but it’s important to be governed by the ‘golden mean’.

Ethics, Life

Magnificence

I’ve talked to a lot of people about the Aristotelian virtue of Magnificence in the last two weeks. Magnificence feels a bit strong as a virtue one might aspire to these days, and indeed the good news is that most of us needn’t bother according to the great Greek. 

Magnificence lies in ‘fitting expense on a large scale’. Although ‘fitting’ is relative in Aristotle’s view, it does require significant means. A poor man cannot be a Magnificent man, as he lacks the means to spend ‘largely and yet becomingly’. 

On a trip to France last week I encountered a good deal of magnificence. I visited the British Embassy in Paris and saw the throne room, Napoleonic bed, victorian silver and cutting edge modern art which is a reminder that although less so these days the UK was and still can be magnificent from time to time. A walk through Paris reminds one that France has been and can still be too. So there’s potentially a lot to like about magnificence. But it’s also potentially problematic. 

Minor Magnificence may not be impossible for many in the developed world today – a simple ball or cup is a magnificent gift for a small child as Aristotle points out – but it is surely impossible for the vast majority in most of the world. Magnificence is exclusive and most people are excluded.

So should I resent the few who or born to or acquire the means to be truly magnificent. Should I despise those with the wealth to equip a great house, give a public spectacle or patronise the arts? If you’d have asked me a few weeks ago I fancy I would have said on balance yes. Even though many of the Magnificent men and the fewer Magnificent women of our times give greatly to good causes I would have begrudged them their wealth on grounds of excess and privilege. 

But now I’m not so sure. First begrudging or despising the Magnificent hurts me not them. Second it’s not necessarily their fault they are rich. And third, even if it is, the virtue of Magnificence is a tough one to pull off ‘fittingly’.

According to Aristotle, with his pleasing circularity which invites us to use our own powers of introspection and intuition: it is characteristic of the Magnificent man to do magnificently whatever he is about. I know a Magnificent man who has great wealth and does do pretty magnificently whatever he is about. I was puzzled when I first encountered his wealth as to why I didn’t really resent it. It is because he keeps a great house, gives public spectacles, patronises the arts and gives to good causes – fittingly. He does Magnificently what he is about. 

If everyone with great wealth did as he does there would be less poverty and inequality and more aestheticism and eudaemonia in the world. It feels strange not to be a ‘class warrior’ on this or decide ‘if you can’t beat them joins them’ as I tried to for some years when I slavishly pursued pay rises myself. But I’m more relaxed on this now. 

Magnificence on an Aristotelian scale is a virtue I don’t have to worry about but I now have a constructive and positive frame to assess the virtue of people of great wealth. And this means I can be around Magnificent people without resentment,  anger or jealousy. I can enjoy them doing Magnificently all they are about and feel enriched and not diminished myself.