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I discuss citizen and political ethics at length in Chapters 5 (“Citizen and Media Ethics” and 6 (“Political Ethics”) of my book Reason and Human Ethics.

INSTINCT VERSUS RATIONALITY IN POLITICAL DECISIONMAKING: BOB WOODWARD’S TRUMP TAPES

On page 151 of my book Reason and Human Ethics, at the beginning of a section titled “Transition to Authoritarianism?: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump (2017–21),” I write: “Donald J. Trump’s presidency, like that of George W. Bush, was characterized by his self-advertised ‘gut instinct’ rather than by reasoned consideration of factual evidence and policy alternatives.” I cite chapter and verse in support of this proposition. However, additional evidence of Trump’s irrational decision-making style has now been presented in audiotapes of twenty interviews with Trump that journalist Bob Woodward has just made available on Amazon: see The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump (https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Tapes-Wo...).

In an October 23, 2022 op-ed regarding these recordings, Woodward states, among other things: “In these interviews, you hear Trump relishing the authority of the presidency and relying on his personal instincts as the basis for major decisions. It’s a self-focus that gets in the way of his ability to do the job.” (Bob Woodward, “The Trump Tapes: 20 interviews that show why he is an unparalleled danger,” Washington Post, October 23, 2022 [https://wapo.st/3DoJSAH]). (As a result of my Washington Post subscription, the foregoing link can be accessed without charge for fourteen days, notwithstanding the usual Washington Post paywall.)

I am cross-filing the foregoing comment in the “Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking” topic of this Goodreads group.

PROPOSALS FOR EDUCATION IN RATIONAL AND ETHICAL THINKING

I have posted my paper “Proposals for Education in Rational and Ethical Thinking” at https://www.academia.edu/122128491/PR....

Abstract: In this era of widespread irrationality and violence, it is clear that traditional methods of moral indoctrination are failing. This paper proposes a new approach to ethical instruction based on proper reasoning about both ends and means.

I am cross-filing the present post in some other topics of this Goodreads group.

AEJ!

I wished to inquire with you, regarding the parable of 'the knife' in Platonic/Aristotlean ethics.

Can you direct me to the specific spot where this is ever discussed?

Feliks wrote: "AEJ!

I wished to inquire with you, regarding the parable of 'the knife' in Platonic/Aristotlean ethics.

Can you direct me to the specific spot where this is ever discussed?"

I am not aware of this parable in Plato or Aristotle. Perhaps you are thinking of another author/philosopher.

ADDENDUM TO MY PRECEDING POST:

Per Microsoft Copilot AI: “There is no ‘parable of the knife’ in Plato or Aristotle. Aristotle does discuss the virtue of tools in Nicomachean Ethics II.6, where the virtue of an instrument is the quality that enables it to perform its function well. Some modern writers illustrate this with a knife whose virtue is sharpness, but Aristotle himself does not use the word ‘knife.’ ”

I use translations (like that of Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins) of the Nicomachean Ethics that are literal and accurate. More freewheeling translations (Jowett of yesteryear or some current popular translations) may take liberties with what Aristotle actually wrote, but I pay no mind to them. Thus, I was unaware of any translation that actually used the word "knife."

Further explanation by Copilot:

The Greek word Aristotle uses in nearby passages is ὄργανον — “instrument,” “tool,” “implement.”

A knife is the paradigmatic example of a tool whose function is obvious and whose virtue (sharpness) is equally obvious. So:

W.D. Ross uses “knife” in his commentary.

Terence Irwin sometimes uses “knife” in lectures.

Joe Sachs uses “tool” but discusses knives in notes.

Modern virtue‑ethics textbooks often paraphrase Aristotle using “knife.”

But Aristotle himself does not say μαχαίρα (knife) in this passage.

Hallo! I've been trying to pin it down myself (for the past day or so).

It has to do with: if a neighbor comes to you asking to borrow a knife.

You are a good neighbor if you lend him your knife; however --at the same time --you cannot lend it to him if for any reason, you suspect him of (a) mental instability or (b) violent intentions.

Must be somewhere in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but I'm currently at a loss to pinpoint it...

Feliks wrote: "Hallo! I've been trying to pin it down myself for the past day or so).

It has to do with: if a neighbor comes to you asking to borrow a knife.

You are a good neighbor if you lend him your knife;..."

Ah, that's in Book 1 of Plato's Republic: Socrates's dialogue with Cephalus. I'm tied up right now for a few hours, but I'll elaborate either later this evening or tomorrow.

ADDENDUM TO MY PRECEDING POST:

The following does not correspond exactly to your description, but it is the only discussion of the borrowing of weapons in Plato or Aristotle of which I am aware.

In book 1 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates has a discussion with a number of interlocutors, including, initially, Cephalus (the father of Polemarchus), who is an old, wealthy man preoccupied with sacrificing to the gods. The following excerpt is from Joe Sachs’s translation of the Republic (Focus, 2007) at 331c-d:

“Wholly beautiful are the things you’re saying, Cephalus,” I [Socrates] said. “But about this very thing, justice, shall we simply claim in this way that it is truth and giving back anything one takes from anyone? Or is it possible to do these very things sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly? I mean, for instance, this sort of thing: surely everyone would say, if someone were to receive weapons from a friend, a man of sound mind, and he kept demanding them back when out of his mind, that one ought not to give back things of that sort, and that anyone who gave them back would not be just, and neither would anyone who was willing to tell all the truth to a person in that condition.” “You’re right,” he [Cephalus] said. [Socrates:] “Then this is not the definition of justice, to tell the truth and give back what one takes.” “It most certainly is, Socrates,” said Polemarchus, breaking in, “at least if one ought to believe Simonides at all.” “Indeed,” said Cephalus, “and I hand over the discussion to you folks, since I need to take care of the sacrifices now.” “So I’m heir to a share in what’s yours?” said Polemarchus. “Quite so,” he said with a laugh, and as he did he went off to the sacrifices.

Thus begins the discussion of “what is justice” in the most famous of Plato’s dialogues. Note that the above translates ὅπλα as “weapons” and not as “knife.” Allan Bloom’s translation of the Republic also translates ὅπλα as “weapons.”

Wonderful stuff. Thanks AEJ. I 'ppreciate you typing up that entry for me.

So --in other words --absolute honesty and absolute justness isn't always strictly the best course, when by the convolutions of circumstance, they may cause harm.

This reminds me of the character in Hugo's Les Miserables, Sister Simplice --famous for never having had ever told a lie in her entire life. Yet she tells two white lies in the course of the tale, to save the innocent Valjean.

Feliks wrote: "So --in other words --absolute honesty and absolute justness isn't always strictly the best course, when by the convolutions of circumstance, they may cause harm.."

Yes, except that Socrates specifically indicated in the above quotation from the Republic that it is just to lie and also just not to return a weapon to a crazy person. Note how this differs from Kant's categorical imperative that one must never, under any circumstances, lie. I will have more to say on such matters later today or tomorrow, but I am currently preoccupied with practical things for many hours.

ADDENDUM TO MY PRECEDING POST:

Feliks wrote: “This reminds me of the character in Hugo's Les Misérables, Sister Simplice --famous for never having had ever told a lie in her entire life. Yet she tells two white lies in the course of the tale, to save the innocent Valjean.”

So, Plato long ago made the argument set forth above for the justice of lying to and not returning weapons of mentally disturbed people. As mentioned, this contradicts Kant’s categorical imperative of not, under any circumstances, lying. Kant lived from 1724 to 1804. And, according to your information, Victor Hugo made essentially the same point in Les Misérables (1862).

This raises some further interesting and somewhat bizarre facts. Ayn Rand despised Kant. In The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New American Library, 1975), Rand wrote that “the greatest Dionysian in history was a shriveled little ‘square,’ well past thirty, who never drank or smoked pot, who took a daily walk with such precise, monotonous regularity that the townspeople set their clocks by him; his name was Immanuel Kant. [¶] Kant was the first hippie in history.” (I have misplaced my paperback copy, purchased in the 1970s, but the above-referenced essay and quotation is reprinted in Ayn Rand, Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, new expanded edition, edited by Peter Schwartz [Meridian, 1999], 105, Kindle). Rand blamed Kant for creating what he called a “noumenal” sphere in which religion, morality, and free will existed, as distinguished from a “phenomenal” sphere dominated by scientific laws. Rand opposed religion (she was a self-professed atheist). She devised an ethical system that was based on her version of secular reason (see her infamous book The Virtue of Selfishness as well as her most famous work, Atlas Shrugged). One very strange thing is that both Kant and Rand strongly supported a concept of free will. However, they based their respective principles of free will on different grounds.

With regard to Victor Hugo, I read, very long ago, his novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; I have not read Les Misérables. Rand loved Victor Hugo. In a new 1968 introduction to her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, Rand wrote that “my attitude toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: ‘If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.’ Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of the moment” (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, with a special introduction by the author [Bobbs-Merrill, 1968] vii).

The last many posts probably don’t belong in the topic that Feliks originally put them in, but he was trying to recall something that he could not identify without some additional input. So we’ll leave it in this topic, largely because there is no way to transfer it to another topic at this point. To paraphrase Lady Macbeth, what’s done is done and cannot be undone.