Aristotle on the Good

How can anything be good?

Aristotle's answer: Only if there is something that is good in itself.

Aristotle considers several proposals for what is good in itself.

(1) pleasure

(2) honor

(3) excellence

(4) money

All of these are incomplete goods. The only complete good is happiness.

What is happiness?

Aristotle's teleological answer: Every living thing has a function. The good for a living being is to perform its function well.

What is the function of a human being? Its function must distinguish it from other plants and animals.

"Human good turns out to be activity of the soul [the part of humans that distinguishes them from other animals] in conformity with excellence . . . in a complete life"(379).

Thus, happiness includes:

(1) excellence (as activity, not as mere state)

(2) pleasure (but not as an "adventitious" addition). Pleasure from the love of justice and of excellence.

(3) nobility: Not merely honor, but to be deserving of honor.

(4) external goods are needed to be able to do noble acts. Includes "good birth, satisfactory children, beauty"(380).

Moral Excellence

Ethics derives from Greek term for character, which Aristotle identifies with habitual responses.

Virtue = excellence.

In addition to the excellence of the activity of a carpenter or a violinist, there is the excellence of the activity of a human being. This is moral excellence, or moral virtue.

Aristotle's key idea: There are no exceptionless principles for being morally virtuous (e.g., no necessary and sufficient principles for justice). Moral virtues require judgment or practical wisdom.

Moral training should be aimed at making us "feel delight and pain rightly"(385). What does this mean?

Does Aristotle identify a virtue with right action?

No. It is "not the man who does [just and temperate acts] that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as the just and temperate men do them"(385).

1. An Aristotelian Definition of Moral Virtue: A moral virtue is a stable disposition to respond (to act and feel) appropriately.

"Moral excellence . . . is concerned with passions and actions"(387).

2. Virtues are developed by habituation. To develop a virtue, one must imitate the responses (acts and feelings) of a virtuous person.

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit"(383).

3. Aristotle's "Golden Mean" formula for moral virtues: Moral virtue "is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it"(387).

Why is the mean "relative to us"?

Moral virtue "is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency"(388).

Is Aristotle's Golden Mean Formula a principle giving purely descriptive necessary and sufficient conditions for moral virtue?

4. Virtue is practical wisdom. It involves reason, though not in the way that Socrates thought.

"For all men think that each type of character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for from the very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities; but yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense—we seek for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and brutes have the natural dispositions to these qualities, but without reason these are evidently hurtful. Only we seem to see this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of its lack of sight, still, if a man once acquires reason, that makes a difference in action; and his state, while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense. Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom.

This is why some say that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates in one respect was on the right track while in another he went astray. . . . All men, then, seem somehow to divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz. that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is a right rule about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, all of the, forms of scientific knowledge), while we think they involve a rational principle."

(Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VI, Ch. 13, 1144b13-29.)

MacIntyre on the Virtues

MacIntyre's core conception of virtue is built up out of the following elements:

1. practice

2. narrative order of a single life

3. a moral tradition

What is a Practice?

"By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended"(420).

Key concepts:

internal vs. external goods: external goods are rival (i.e., their desirability depends on their scarcity); internal goods are not.

standards of excellence: They cannot be written down. They are not immune to criticism, but only by those who have internalized them.

complex activity: no algorithm or recipe. The exercise of judgment, which involves internalizing the standards of excellence, is required.

MacIntyre's preliminary definition of a virtue: "A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enables us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods"(422).

Three universal virtues: Justice, courage, and honesty.

Is there a logical structure to MacIntyre's virtues?

"The vicious and mean-spirited necessarily rely on the virtues of others for the practices in which they engage to flourish and also deny themselves the experience of achieving those internal goods which may reward even not very good chess-players and violinists"(424).

MacIntyre seems to be saying that the vicious and mean-spirited are free riders.

The Historical Dimension

Standards of excellence evolve over time. This makes practices dynamic, not static, and requires that they be thought of as part of a tradition, not as simply an activity.

An Objection to MacIntyre's Account of Virtue:

Some practices are evil.

Part of MacIntyre's reply:

Need to extend the account of virtue from practices to a "human life viewed as a whole" (428).

This suggests that there are standards for evaluating whole lives. Where do they come from?

The part of MacIntyre's answer left out of the reading:

Moral tradition provides us with standards for evaluating ways of life.

Frankena's Challenge

Which is more fundamental to morality: character traits or actions?

Frankena's Answer: "I propose therefore that we regard the morality of duty and principles and the morality of virtues or traits of character not as rival kinds of morality between which we much chose, but as two complementary aspects of the same morality"(405).

"Principles without traits are impotent and traits without principles are blind"(405).

What does this mean?

"The function of the virtues in an ethics of duty is not to tell us what to do but to ensure that we will do it willingly in whatever situations we may face"(406).

Also, "An action is to be judged right or wrong by reference to a principle or set of principles"(408).

"A man and his actions are morally good [as opposed to right or wrong] if it is at least true that, whatever his actual motives in acting are, his sense of duty or desire to do the right is so strong in him that it would keep him trying to do his duty anyway"(408).

The problem with this position. Frankena himself admits that moral principles are only "principles of prima facie duty"(405). What does this mean?

Schaller's Response to Frankena and Others

The Standard View

(1) Moral rules apply to acts. They can be followed by those who lack moral motivation.

(2) "Moral virtues are, fundamentally and essentially, dispositions to obey the moral rules"(410).

(3) "The moral virtues have only instrumental or derivative value"(410).

Schaller provides three counterexamples.

#1. The Duty of Beneficence

There is no rule for beneficence. The problem is that beneficence is an imperfect duty.

#2. The Virtue of Gratitude

"In order to perform an act of gratitude, one must be grateful"(412).

The duty of gratitude cannot be stated in terms of a moral duty for action.

#3. The Virtue of Self-Respect (if it is a virtue)

Self-respect cannot be captured in a rule, because it depends on attitude and belief.

EXPLICIT APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES VS. IMPLICIT RESPONSIVENESS TO PRINCIPLES

EXPLICIT APPLICATION OF A PRINCIPLE

S's choice of act A conforms to principle P because S explicitly applies P to determine what to do, and S's application of P is reliable.

TWO KINDS OF IMPLICIT RESPONSIVENESS TO PRINCIPLE P

Tracking Test: The motivational state of a subject S tracks Principle P:

(1) S's motivational state leads S to choose act A and act A conforms to Principle P; and

(2) If act A did not conform to Principle P, S's motivational states would be different. S would have the motivational states that would lead S to act in ways that conform to Principle P.

Sufficient Sensitivity Test: The motivational state of a subject S is sufficiently sensitive to Principle P:

(1) S's motivational state leads S to generally act in ways that approximate Principle P; and

(2) S's motivational states tend to evolve over time in ways that make it more likely that S's acts approximate Principle P or that produce acts that better approximate Principle P.