The Practicality of Virtue Ethics

For those of you still interested in further reading (if any!), here is a paper arguing that virtue ethics may in fact be impossible and yet still both practical and desirable.

Tom asked me recently why I don't read contemporary philosophy; this is a good example of why. For thousands of years at least some have striven for the virtues, and those who have lived lives that we often still remember. 

Edward Abbey wrote a few critical things about philosophy, although he was deeply interested in the subject. Once he wrote, "I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife."

Yet I think the most devastating thing he wrote was this: "In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy."

The idea that the virtues are impossible, because some psychology researchers in rooms somewhere found that they were difficult, is no kind of argument. It's another indoor philosophy. Go tell the Spartans. 

Ol’ Arlo

Now you know what has to be done. 

But here, then, also this:

And, therefore, one more. 

Roast Thanksgiving

My wife appealed for a non-turkey feast this year, and of course I am usually easy for her to convince. We did Roast Beast instead, and in fact roast everything: baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, and baked breads and pies. Hard cheese, I guess, which wasn’t roasted. 

Easy feasting, though. Turns out a standing rib roast is a great variation if you want a vacation from the usual turkey and dressing. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.9

The last chapter of the last book is upon us, and it's a very long one for Aristotle. 

If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our programme has reached its end? Surely, as the saying goes, where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them; with regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it, or try any other way there may be of becoming good. Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character which is gently born, and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness.

Not everyone has an equal capacity for virtue. We have seen this repeated many times, especially in Book IV. This is not only due to environmental issues -- for example, the presence or absence of a good upbringing -- but also due to these issues that Aristotle describes as character-based. Plato, meanwhile, had belabored repeatedly in his dialogues that great men often fail to produce great sons: even an extraordinary family will only sometimes, and not reliably, produce people with the highest capacity for virtue. This is a major theme of both the Protagoras and the Republic, for example. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.8

In the penultimate chapter of the ultimate book, Aristotle considers the claim of the vita activa that I was defending in the commentary on X.7.

But in a secondary degree the life in accordance with the other kind of virtue is happy; for the activities in accordance with this befit our human estate. Just and brave acts, and other virtuous acts, we do in relation to each other, observing our respective duties with regard to contracts and services and all manner of actions and with regard to passions; and all of these seem to be typically human. Some of them seem even to arise from the body, and virtue of character to be in many ways bound up with the passions. Practical wisdom, too, is linked to virtue of character, and this to practical wisdom, since the principles of practical wisdom are in accordance with the moral virtues and rightness in morals is in accordance with practical wisdom. Being connected with the passions also, the moral virtues must belong to our composite nature; and the virtues of our composite nature are human; so, therefore, are the life and the happiness which correspond to these.

This active life is a human life, then; and, therefore, a life so oriented is humane. It is a fit life for a human being. 

Perverse Incentives

Hard cases make bad law, as we know. So too laws that are designed to protect "young women" rather than for the general purpose of applying an equal legal standard to all of society; we human beings readily take stern steps to avoid upsetting the beautiful and fertile young women among us. 

Liberal judges who decide not to jail violent career criminals and sadistic psychopaths ought to be held liable when the felons attack innocent citizens. Two horrendous, unprovoked attacks on helpless young women on public transit in recent weeks would never have happened if the legal system had done what it’s designed to do. 

The problem here is the context: we live in a society in which almost no trials happen at all, because aggressive charging coupled with plea bargains almost always prevent any trial of an accused. It's 98% of Federal criminal trials, and 95% of state-level ones. 

The system is not failing on the side of leniency for the accused, even if it is possible to find two recent cases out of the lives of four hundred million people. Making judges liable if they happen to release someone who later commits a crime would only add an additional incentive to send people to prison for a long time without worrying too much about whether or not they actually did anything wrong. The US is already the world's leading producer of prison population; if anything, we should be trying to reduce the number of Americans in prison if we can find good ways of doing so. 

It's a dangerous world. Freedom and protection are oppositional goods; the more protected you are, the less free. Everyone can and should be horrified by the murder in Charlotte, for example, but it doesn't follow that we need even more incentive to put people in prison for long sentences. Prison doesn't work anyway: nobody gets reformed. More of a bad solution is not a good answer to any problem. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.7

Just as we had to go slow when we were starting, because so many unfamiliar concepts were being deployed that we needed to map down, at this point the conclusions should be familiar and obvious. That said, there are surprises yet to come.

If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us. Whether it be reason or something else that is this element which is thought to be our natural ruler and guide and to take thought of things noble and divine, whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be perfect happiness. That this activity is contemplative we have already said.

It's still somewhat surprising that perfect happiness is contemplative. That has already been said, but it isn't obvious even so: most of the virtues are actualized through action, rather than by thinking alone. The courageous man doesn't just think the brave things, but acts on them; it is only in the vita activa that the virtues get to be lived-out.  

Now this would seem to be in agreement both with what we said before and with the truth. For, firstly, this activity is the best (since not only is reason the best thing in us, but the objects of reason are the best of knowable objects); and secondly, it is the most continuous, since we can contemplate truth more continuously than we can do anything. And we think happiness has pleasure mingled with it, but the activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvellous for their purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected that those who know will pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire.

It is easy to see how this model pleased later monotheistic thinkers; the ability to contemplate God's perfection and glory is a ready substitute for this model of contemplating what is best in practical life. For Aquinas, the greatest and highest purpose of men is this contemplation of God.  

Aristotle is not thinking of religion at all here, however. He is speaking of reason as 'that which is most divine in men,' but the exercise is not a ritual: it's carrying out activity in accord with reason, rather than prayer or imaginations. It's only contemplative in the sense that it is a pleasure to contemplate what is best, highest, most honorable. It's even more of a pleasure to contemplate that you did such things with your time and skill.

And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity. For while a philosopher, as well as a just man or one possessing any other virtue, needs the necessaries of life, when they are sufficiently equipped with things of that sort the just man needs people towards whom and with whom he shall act justly, and the temperate man, the brave man, and each of the others is in the same case, but the philosopher, even when by himself, can contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is; he can perhaps do so better if he has fellow-workers, but still he is the most self-sufficient. And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action.

Aristotle first raised the issue that the end of ethics should be self-sufficient in I.4, there as a possibility that should be sought if it could be found. It turns out that philosophical contemplation is a good you can have even by yourself, whereas most of the virtues require someone to act upon -- to treat justly, or to be brave against, or the like. Thus, since this is the most self-sufficient of the possible goods, it has the standing that we have been looking for from the beginning of the inquiry. 

And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

Is that why we make war? We seem to be staging up for a war in Venezuela right now, which it would be possible to live in peace without fighting. Wars of choice were well known in the Athenian era, too: the best story from those days is Thermopylae, where the war was unchosen and forced and where a few stood against many. Yet Xenophon's story, which we spent last winter with, was all about Greek mercenaries going to fight in someone else's war for profit and because they were good at it. 

Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely.

Indeed. Von Clausewitz: "Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult." 

Warlike actions are completely [unleisurely] (for no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war; any one would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter); but the action of the statesman is also unleisurely, and-apart from the political action itself-aims at despotic power and honours, or at all events happiness, for him and his fellow citizens-a happiness different from political action, and evidently sought as being different. So if among virtuous actions political and military actions are distinguished by nobility and greatness, and these are unleisurely and aim at an end and are not desirable for their own sake, but the activity of reason, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself (and this augments the activity), and the self-sufficiency, leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the supremely happy man are evidently those connected with this activity, it follows that this will be the complete happiness of man, if it be allowed a complete term of life (for none of the attributes of happiness is incomplete).

It is true that being a philosopher is more self-sufficient than war; war needs an army or two. It is much more leisurely; and it doesn't tend to make one weary. All the same, speaking practically, I enjoyed war a lot more than I usually enjoy peace. For that matter, I enjoyed the rescue operations in the hurricane better than I enjoy peace. 

In a way this should be unsurprising: in those situations in which 'everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,' it's easy to know what reason directs you to do next. The necessity of the problem drives you and those you are working with to align your efforts in accord with reason, and to pursue the next virtuous thing: the brave thing, sometimes the just thing, the self-disciplined thing. 

That seems to be eudaimonia as Aristotle has described it: it is the life of the warrior.  Yet here, at the end, we get an endorsement of a much less active and more leisurely life. Philosophers tend to love this part of the book, as it seems to endorse their mode of life as the highest of all possible ones for human beings. I admit that I've always found this section's conclusions implausible. 

But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue. If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. This would seem, too, to be each man himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of his self but that of something else. And what we said before' will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.

So there you go. If Aristotle's analysis is right, you now know how to be happy. Go and do it, if it seems right to you that you should. 

Another Cowpunching Song

Nicomachean Ethics X.6

We can now begin the final assault on the EN's slopes. 

Now that we have spoken of the virtues, the forms of friendship, and the varieties of pleasure, what remains is to discuss in outline the nature of happiness, since this is what we state the end of human nature to be. Our discussion will be the more concise if we first sum up what we have said already. We said, then, that [happiness] is not a disposition; for if it were it might belong to some one who was asleep throughout his life, living the life of a plant, or, again, to some one who was suffering the greatest misfortunes. If these implications are unacceptable, and we must rather class happiness as an activity, as we have said before, and if some activities are necessary, and desirable for the sake of something else, while others are so in themselves, evidently happiness must be placed among those [activities] desirable in themselves, not among those desirable for the sake of something else; for happiness does not lack anything, but is self-sufficient. Now those activities are desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought beyond the activity. And of this nature virtuous actions are thought to be; for to do noble and good deeds is a thing desirable for its own sake.

This is a restatement of what we've already learned: happiness is an activity; it is one of those activities that is chosen for itself, not as a means to something better; and that it is bound up with virtuous action. These are highly important conclusions; we immediately get an aside.

Pleasant amusements also are thought to be of this nature; we choose them not for the sake of other things; for we are injured rather than benefited by them, since we are led to neglect our bodies and our property. But most of the people who are deemed happy take refuge in such pastimes, which is the reason why those who are ready-witted at them are highly esteemed at the courts of tyrants; they make themselves pleasant companions in the tyrants' favourite pursuits, and that is the sort of man they want. Now these things are thought to be of the nature of happiness because people in despotic positions spend their leisure in them, but perhaps such people prove nothing; for virtue and reason, from which good activities flow, do not depend on despotic position; nor, if these people, who have never tasted pure and generous pleasure, take refuge in the bodily pleasures, should these for that reason be thought more desirable; for boys, too, think the things that are valued among themselves are the best. It is to be expected, then, that, as different things seem valuable to boys and to men, so they should to bad men and to good. Now, as we have often maintained, those things are both valuable and pleasant which are such to the good man; and to each man the activity in accordance with his own disposition is most desirable, and, therefore, to the good man that which is in accordance with virtue. Happiness, therefore, does not lie in amusement; it would, indeed, be strange if the end were amusement, and one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself. For, in a word, everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else-except happiness, which is an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.

This is an important point too, although one we should have well-mapped-down by now. Happiness is not merely the kind of experience we have when amused. Ironically that is mostly what contemporary Americans mean when they use the phrase: "I was happy" means something like "I was engaged in my favorite amusements." There is something better, and higher, intended here. 

The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. And we say that serious things are better than laughable things and those connected with amusement, and that the activity of the better of any two things-whether it be two elements of our being or two men-is the more serious; but the activity of the better is ipso facto superior and more of the nature of happiness. And any chance person-even a slave-can enjoy the bodily pleasures no less than the best man; but no one assigns to a slave a share in happiness-unless he assigns to him also a share in human life. For happiness does not lie in such occupations, but, as we have said before, in virtuous activities.

This is closer to Teddy Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life" than it is to a life of amusement; more about saddles and rifles than it is about beer by warm fires. 

Meeting David Foster

So, one of the nice things about last week's trip was the opportunity to meet our friend Mr. Foster for the first time in person. He brought along an intelligent and interesting colleague, and we had a very pleasant discussion there in DC. 

I do not, however, own "an arsenal" of weapons as is apparently is reputed. I have a small, select collection of weapons, many of which are medieval (several swords, for example), others of which are historical from other periods (mostly cowboy guns from the days when I was interested in SASS), and all of which are perfectly lawful in case that's of interest to anyone reading this. Just to be clear. You're thinking of that other old milblogger, John "the Armorer" Donovan. 

We do have bears and motorcycles, though.

Decompression

It might seem strange that after six days’ travel I’d want to get out on the road, but it’s a very different sort of road. 

Licklog Gap is always a peaceful stop.