Virtue Ethics

Primer of Aristotle’s Ethics:

• Aristotle is primarily concerned with Action but only insofar as it relates to the “good” or “bad” virtue or vice of a personal being.
• It will be the “right” action which will be conducive to a person’s good.
• It is the “wrong” action which will lead away from a persons good.

So, what is "the good?" There are two notions of the good for Aristotle:

The Good – “The good is the action at which all things aim.” This is eudaemonia or happiness. This is what all other goods or desires are done for the sake of. All other desires and goods are done for the sake of the good.

What is Eudaemonia?

Other goods – “every art and every inquiry, every action, every choice, seems to aim at some good.” There are different goods (subordinate goods to the good and the end).

Examples of this would be:

• A seaman aiming at setting out for a voyage.
• A contractor aiming at building a house.

All of these goods are subordinate to and are sought for the sake of the good.

The good for Aristotle is not something which is mathematically precise. Mathematics starts from premises and works to conclusions. Ethics works from conclusions (which are looking at mans actions, and moral judgements of man and sifting between them) to form general principles.

And as such Happiness which is the good is someone who possesses not only moral virtues and intellectual virtues, but is someone who consists in activity according to virtue or in virtuous activity, understanding by virtue both the intellectual and the moral virtues. And the activities according to virtue must be possessed over a whole life. For a person is not happy who just acts occasionally in accordance with virtue.

Now it should be noted that in Aristotle’s view virtue does not exclude pleasure, as a matter of fact the virtuous person will be the one who has the most pleasure because their pleasures are rightly ordered with their actions. Pleasures will differ accordingly to the character of the activities to which they are attached, and the good man must be truly pleasant and unpleasant. Pleasure really is something that is positive. But what we really need is education on what are the right pleasures to have according to the right action. So Jeffery Dhamer who gained pleasure by killing and eating people was not having an appropriate pleasure in accordance with his action.

When someone is being executed unjustly for a crime she didn’t commit and is feeling no pleasure but pain, her feeling is in line or in accordance with her act or the act being done to her.

It should also be noted that external goods are not excluded from one having a happy life. For one needs some external goods in order to doing a virtuous act and becoming a virtuous person.

It must be remembered though: For Aristotle the issue is a virtuous person which is a person who has virtuous character.

But how does one come to have virtuous character? Answer: by doing virtuous acts, of course!

But this seems incredible because how can we do virtuous acts unless we are already virtuous?

Answer: you can begin by doing virtuous acts which are objectively virtuous. So you don’t have to yet have the disposition or reflex to do the virtuous thing but you begin to develop that by doing the objectively virtuous act.

So, a child is told by her parents not to lie and to tell the truth. Should she do this consistently she will always tell the truth and will not lie because she will develop the habit of truth-telling.

So, virtue is developed by the exercise of your will to act in such a way as to choose and do the good which will in turn develop into a disposition to do the virtuous act without having to deliberate or work at it.

Virtue, for Aristotle, is seen as a mean between two extremes. All good actions have a certain order or proportion.

The extreme’s are the vices. One extreme being excess and the other being defect.

Let us say that we have the virtue of confidence or courage. An excess of confidence or courage is rashness where are person acts out of rashness instead of doing the right thing. A defect would be cowardice where one never acts on the right thing to do.

What Aristotle says is that we want to focus on the mean (which is not a calculable arithmetic mean) between rashness and cowardice which is the virtuous thing. In some cases it may in fact be the case that you choose to err on the side of excess rather than defect and vice versa. SO much depends on the character of the action.

So a virtue is a disposition to live by the rule that the truly virtuous man of moral insight would choose to live. The truly virtuous man has the ability to see what is right to do in the circumstances. Aristotle says the prudent man will be the man who sees what is truly food for a man in any set of circumstances; he is not required to enter upon any academic preserve, but to see what truly befits human nature in those circumstances.

So courage is not boldness alone nor is it cool foresight alone (for you need both for it to actually be a virtue) but a synthesis of both – this prevents both a foolhardy man and a coward on the other.

So there is something else that Aristotle is going to say that is necessary for a man to act virtuously and that is the he must know the right thing to do.

The man who does the wrong act does not necessarily know at the moment that it is the wrong act that he is doing. A person, in Aristotle's view, always acts sub ratione boni.

So let me give you a description of Aristotle’s moral process:

1. The agent desires an end.

2. The agent deliberates, seeing that action B is the means to A (the end to be obtained), C the means to B and so on until…

3. He/she perceives that some particular means near to the end or remote from it, as the case may be, is something that he can do here and now.

4. The agent chooses this means that presents itself to him as practicable and…

5. Does the act in question.

While a person always acts for the sake of happiness because he has the power of choice virtue and vice are also within our power to choose.

So a man may have trained himself so well and habituated himself so well that he cannot cease to perform bad actions that naturally flow from that habit, he could have refrained from developing that habit in the first place.

In the same sense a person may habitually choose the right action which has been trained to perform the good action which flows naturally from the person but she could have chosen to train herself to do the bad.

• Courage
• Temperance
• Liberality
• Magnificence
• Self Respect
• Gentleness
• Truthfulness
• Wittiness
• Modesty
• Righteousness
• Indignation

NE 1.1.1-2 and NE 1.7.5.

What is Aristotle trying to get at?
The Highest Human good has two qualities:

Other goods are sought for its sake
It is sought for its own sake (NE 1.7.5)

Remember that what Aristotle means by goodness is not something substantival but attributive. When you say X is good, the next question is a good what? So goodness is going to change from thing to thing depending on what kind of a thing X is, or the nature and essence of X. There are good things and good kinds of things but goodness itself is not a thing according to Aristotle. So when considering goodness we have to consider the nature or essence of a thing.

What is going on here?

Aristotle argument is that everyone, in all times and places, gives the same answer to what it is that satisfies the criteria of “everything being sought for its sake” and it being sought for its own sake”: happiness.

Example: So, why do you come to school? And so on? And it terminates into happiness.

This is Aristotle's starting point for formulating an ethical theory, he takes the common opinion of individuals and starts there. He takes the universal of all human kind on what it is that satisfies the highest human good as his starting point. (NE 1.4.1-5).

Aristotle, when considering the virtues and what the virtues, is going to do the same thing, as a matter of fact in all of his ethics he is going to start from the opinion of wise women and men and then analytically flesh out the details.

You might see a problem here -- Because common opinion thinks this is the way it is doesn’t make it so (the populous for many years thought the earth was flat but it wasn’t in fact true) and Aristotle has been criticized on this point as his starting point commits the fallacy of ad populum where he is appealing to the populous to justify the truth of his claim. But I think Aristotle might respond in a few different ways to justify himself as not committing the fallacy of ad populum:

He is just starting an argument and is not claiming that the populous is right. He needs to gather data and when dealing with ethics you gather data from the appropriate subjects whom the data would correlate with: persons. Aristotle views ethics as a science and in any science you gather data, whether it is quantum physics or molecular biology or ethics. You have to start somewhere.

Second, and as I said earlier, common opinion seems like a better place to start with ethics because you are dealing with persons, which is what ethics is addressing. The question of “are our actions directed towards some greater good?” is dealing with issues that are internal to our minds where questions about particle physics and molecular biology are dealing with issues external to us.

While it is true that if we start with common opinion there are going to be a number of mistakes, and Aristotle admits this and is not suggesting this as a stopping point (NE 1.4.2-3), but is just asking about the opinion of mankind in general, he wishes to move forward and refine his finding and ascend to the truth, even though he is not necessarily starting with the truth.

So Aristotle accepts happiness as the starting point but says we need to refine it a bit (NE 1.4.2-3).

He goes on to consider several different common opinions of happiness:

• Pleasure: (NE 1.5. 2-3)
• Honor: (NE 1.5.4-5)
• Virtue: (NE 1.5.6) – Aristotle is going to be committed to the idea that virtue is going to make someone happier than any of the other opinions but it is itself not sufficient for Happiness.
• External Goods: (NE1.8.3; 1.8.15-16) External things are things like health and wealth.

Now there are several different ways Aristotle could go from here:

He could say that they are all true but Aristotle knows that this would violate the law of non-contradiction because he has already shown that they fall short of being what is happiness.

One of them can be the whole truth. But the problem with this is that those whom we consulted as to the source of happiness would not be so quick to dismiss their ideas of happiness and he begun to show that all of them fall short of being what happiness is.

Third, and what he is going to say is that each of these has a grain of truth. None of these things alone is sufficient but it may be that some of them are necessary such as virtue and instrumental goods which are necessary to carrying out some virtues. For instance, in order for someone to carry out the virtue of generosity there are certain external goods (wealth) that are needed to be generous.

While Aristotle thinks certain things are necessary and possibly sufficient for happiness this shouldn’t be confused with what Happiness IS. Because oxygen and some sort of substance is necessary for fire to exist that doesn’t mean that that is what fire IS. So Happiness won’t be defined as virtue plus external goods even though they may be what is necessary for happiness.

Now we get into the thick of Aristotle’s ethics. What is the good of the human soul?

The good of the human soul is the happiness of the human soul (NE 1.7.9).
Here we get into some Aristotelian Metaphysics. There is a lot of debate amongst Aristotelian Ethics Scholars as to whether Aristotle issues in metaphysics into his ethics, but setting those aside let us just look at Aristotle and what he has to say on the subject.

But before Aristotle considers what is the highest good for humans he considers what is the best good of anything (NE 1.7.10-11)

• The good knife lies in the cutting.
• The good eye lies in the seeing
• The good race horse lies in racing.

Finding the good of a thing is based on the function of a particular thing, or how a particular thing functions, which are all activities. This is sometimes referred to as Aristotle's ERGON argument. (1.7.8-10).

In order to find the particular function of a thing you have to find what is essential to the thing, in other words what is the make up of that thing and what differentiates that thing from other things? So Aristotle is going to isolate what it is to be a human being and what it is that is essential to a human being (NE 1.7.12-13)

What we are left with is reason. The thing that separates human beings from animals is reason and this is what is essential to human beings.

So the function of a human being is activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason.

Now he is going to take one further step and say the good of a race horse is racing and the good of the eye is seeing but the highest good of a race horse is racing well so as to win, and the highest good of an eye is in seeing well so as to see clearly (20/20 vision). The good or function of a knife is to cut but the highest good of a knife is to cut well. And what is going to make a knife cut well? Its sharpness. So sharpness is going to be one of the excellencies or virtues of a knife.

Aristotle has come up with a formula: If X is a things function, then the good of a thing lies in the activity of performing X, and its highest good lies in the activity of performing X excellently.

With respect to the soul Aristotle is going to say the good of the human soul lies in the activity of using and following reason (NE 1.7.14), and its highest good lies in the activity of using and following reason excellently (NE 1.7.15-16)

The proper function or work of the human person is using and following reason, so the quality is a virtue only if and only if it helps it to do so excellently.

One virtue is theoretical wisdom:

The discipline of the mind which helps us reason our way through truth while avoiding error.

Another is practical wisdom:

The discipline of the mind which helps us reason our way to good choices while avoiding evil.

There are more virtues than just the intellectual ones because there is more going on in the human soul than just reasoning.

• There are feelings
• There are desires.

It is going to be moral virtues that direct and guide feelings and desires.

So it is not enough just to have the intellectual virtues which discipline the thoughts but one also needs the moral virtues to discipline the feelings and desires. Aristotle uses the terms virtues of thought and virtues of character (2.1.1.). It is these different virtues which are going to bring the soul into rational order in different respects.

C.S. Lewis puts this principle very well he says:

Imagine a fleet of ships sailing in formation (the ships are like persons). For the voyage to be a success three things are necessary:

• First the ships must avoid collision and getting in each others way.
• Second each ship must be seaworthy, with its engines in good order.
• Third they must all know the fleets destination.

Morality then says Lewis,

Seems to be concerned with three things:

• First (the ships avoiding collision) fair play and harmony between individuals.
• Second (each ship being seaworthy) tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual.
• Third (the destination) the general purpose of human life as a whole; what man was made for; what course the whole fleet ought to be on.

The Principle Lewis uses is Aristotelian but he explains it in such a way that it might be a little easier to understand Aristotle’s virtues. For Aristotle:

Justice is the virtue concerned with fair play and harmony.

Courage and other qualities are the virtues concerned with tidying up and harmonizing things inside each individual.

Theoretical and practical wisdom are the virtues concerned with the general purpose of human life as a whole, the course the whole fleet ought to be on.

So, we have already talked a little bit about the virtues. We know that we don’t think of the virtues are something that is in contrast to vice where we think of virtue on one end of a scale and vice on the other. Rather we think of virtue as standing somewhere between the two ends of line where vice is on either end of the line.

When we think of the virtue of tolerance we do not think of it as:

Tolerance------------------------Intolerance

But rather:

Narrow-minded repressiveness------Tolerance---Soft headed Indulgence

Once we have understood the doctrine of the mean there is really only one more important idea concerning the virtues that Aristotle wants to get across before he gets to politics and this is what is called:

What this means is that all the characters of virtue are interdependent and need to be unified in order to have a good person. Aristotle understood it but does not explain the argument but Thomas Aquinas does:

• Every moral virtue depends on practical wisdom.
  

Courage requires enough fear not to be rash and enough daring not to be cowardly.
Practical wisdom depends in turn upon every moral virtue.

To achieve practical wisdom one needs to fear error yet dare to risk it in pursuit of truth.
So, Every moral virtue depends on every other. You might think of a bicycle wheel or a web where should you remove one spoke of a bicycle wheel the whole wheel becomes shaky and with time will break because what happens to one will affect all the others

These chapter discuss justice and friendship. Aristotle is one of the only persons in the history of the world to include in his ethics a discussion on friendship. Why is that?

From Aristotle we get the idea that the common good requires submission either to just men or to just laws – just men is the best of the two but since we can never find them Aristotle says we settle for the second.

First, Aristotle needs to find out what Justice is.

Once he determines what justice is he can then determine how it is that people are to live together.

Once he determines how people are to live together he can then determine what sort of a system best allows for this to happen and from there we move on to his Politics.

Our discussion of Politics would seem very narrow to the ancients. The ancients realized that politics was on a larger scale what happens in every day life. It is a science of personal relationships: whether it be marriage, neighbors acquaintances, friendships, children etc. Politics and the political arena was just a much larger scale of these smaller political systems.

Do you realize that all your relationships are somehow political. The ancients however would not see this only as political but ethical as all politics has its origins in ethics.

Remember Justice for Aristotle is a virtue of character– (NE 5.1.1and 3) and as such it is something that is acquired by progressive habituation and increasing rational understanding. He wants to say that the vices of justice are unlawful and unfair (NE 5.1.8 and NE 5.1. 9-11) and the just person is lawful and fair (NE 5.1.8).

The Laws for Aristotle are there to instruct us what actions to do and to avoid doing so that we might become more virtuous individuals (NE 5.1.12-14). You might remember from book ten that Law should be based on true moral ideas that should be used to shape character to make mankind more virtuous. For virtue is an acquired characteristic. Justice is something a little bit different than the other virtues because whereas the other virtues are the mean between two vices, justice is the kind of thing that is related to the mean itself, whereas injustice is related to the extremes themselves. From here we start into Aristotle’s distinctions between Justice.

Aristotle considers many different kinds of justice but we are going to focus on three main kinds of justice:

Justice in the complete sense – this is obedience to the law (assuming there is a just law) which allows for the exercise of complete virtue or the sphere that concerns all the virtues. Obedience to the law concerns all the virtues because law itself concerns all the virtues. (law of slander-wittiness, drunkenness – self control, courage etc.) Don’t confuse this with saying that good and bad law concerns everything in every virtue. Good or bad law touches on every virtue even though it might not hit the mean.

Justice in the partial sense (which in our text is called justice in distribution)– which is fairness in the allotment of goods (chapter 3).

This is the allotment goods, honors, and offices. Rectification is included in this – this is the exchange of goods where there has been wrong committed between two or more parties. Rectification also includes exchanging of currency for groceries or other things. So I give 10 dollars and I deserve 10 dollars worth or Starbucks coffee.

Justice in politics – the civic arrangement that exists among people who are free and equal under law (chapter 6). This begins to get into different political systems.

There are basically two kinds of friendship that Aristotle wants to discuss:

• Usefulness
• Pleasure

Partnership in a good life between individuals equal in virtue (this is the highest kind of friendship).

The first and second kind of friendship can exist between unequal. The third cannot, it can only exist between equals.

Civic Friendship or friendship of the government resembles the third in two respects:

• In being a partnership in good
  
• In requiring a kind of equality.
  

However it differs from it in a couple of respects as well:

• Grander in scale
• Being more watery

The degree to which individual friendships flourish has much to do with the kind of regime under which people live. If people live under a regime that requires individuals to live vicious lives friendships will not flourish.

Aristotle makes a couple of interesting claims about friendships:

§ Lawgivers devote more attention to friendship than to justice

§ Friends have no need of justice.

o What does he mean by the second? He is talking about the highest kind of friendship but it includes both complete justice and partial justice.

§ Complete justice is obedience to the law which concerns every virtue. Well friendship concerns itself with every virtue as well; law adds nothing that isn’t already there. If you are a completely virtuous friend then there is no law because the law concerns itself with every virtue and where there is complete virtue there is no need for law because the person is a completely virtuous friend. So there is no need for justice between friends.

§ Partial justice means fairness of allotment of goods. On the political level it means a distribution of honors and offices but on a personal level it means merited advantages.

o Show the difference between the two:

• Merited advantages: I give you something and if I don’t get something in exchange then I complain. We are keeping score.
  

• Unmerited advantages: Like the highest kind of friendship. Amongst my friends we have a saying that it always comes back in return. So someone pays for lunch maybe a few times and then I pay for lunch but during all these transactions no one is keeping score. If one person was to buy every time it would be fine but no one really cares who pays for lunch because the time spent together is enjoying the presence of the other person. In this case we are not keeping score.
  

§ Now Aristotle gets back to the state and say why is it that lawgivers devote more attention to friendship than to justice? It is because they want people to be neighbors and not strangers. If they are participating in the third kind of friendship then we will have a virtuous state where there is no need for law because there is always a fulfillment of the law by people being virtuous. Lawgivers are not so much promoting friendship as they are protecting it.

There is much more to say on this issue, but I hope that this provides a good introduction to the Nicomachean Ethics and Virtue Ethics in general.

Required Text:
Understanding Philosophy
Chapter 6: Traditional Theories of Ethics

Read the following sections:

• Virtue Ethics
• Problems with Virtue Ethics
• Greed
• The Environment
• Ethics of Extinction

Text
Aristotle. (1931). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

Aristotle provides the classic framework for virtue ethics by identifying “happiness” or “living well” as the purpose of human life, giving an account of what that means, and explicating the virtues as those characteristics necessary to live well.

Articles

Hill, T. (1983). Ideals of human excellence and preserving natural environments. Journal of Environmental Ethics, 5(3), 211-24. Retrieved from http://www.umweltethik.at/download.php?id=403

This article discusses the problem of environmental preservation by considering the various kinds of virtues and vices exhibited in different sorts of attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. He argues that this presents a more satisfying approach than thinking in terms of either utilitarian or deontological principles.

Robinson, P. (2007). Magnanimity and integrity as military virtues. Journal of Military Ethics, 6(4), 259-269. Retrieved from the EBSCOhost database.

This article focuses on two virtues thought to be central to the character of someone in the military. He considers the importance of these virtues and how they relate to the life and actions of persons in the military, as well as their possible shortcomings and conflicts.

Multimedia

Nussbaum, M. (n.d.). Virtue ethics [Video file]. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/nLAsm3
This very short clip explains some key features of Aristotelian virtue ethics.

Wingclips. (n.d.). The bridge on the river Kwai [Movie clip]. Retrieved from http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/the-bridge-on-the-river-kwai/the-best-bridge

In this clip from the film, which is set during World War II, a group of British Army prisoners of war are building a bridge for their Japanese captors. The Colonel expresses the significance of character in the life of the soldier.

Wingclips. (n.d.). The emperor’s club [Movie clip]. Retrieved from http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/the-emperors-club/who-we-really-are

The clip from this film relates to cheating and the relationship between cheating and one’s moral character. It also explores responses to virtue ethics and the relationship between virtue and success.

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If you would like to do some further reading on these issues let me recommend a few additional resources:

Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas
The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas
Full Text for After Virtue by Alisdair MacIntyre