Aristotle on Virtue

1

• Aristotle on Virtue
• Conclusion of the function argument and final
  answer to the question, What is happiness?
• The human good turns out to be activity
  (energeia) of soul (psyches) expressing
  (according to) virtue (kat areten), and if there
  turns out to be more than one virtue, in
  accordance with the best and most perfect.
  (1098a16-18).
• Obviously Aristotle owes us an account of what
  virtue is, and indeed an account of what the
  repertoire of virtues, if there is more than one
  of them. 1102a14

2

• Parts of the Soul 1102a15/1039b15
• Non-rational

Nutrition and Growth
Emotions and Feelings techne
craft/art Episteme - science phronesis
practical wisdom/intelligence sophia
wisdom nous understanding
Rational
3

• We may remark that every virtue/excellence both
  brings into good condition the thing of which it
  is the excellence and makes the work of that
  thing done well. For of such a kind is the
  virtue/excellence of the eye as to make the eye
  and its function/work good. 1106a16
• If this is true in every case, then the virtue
  of a human being will likewise be the sate that
  makes a human being good and makes him perform
  his function well.
• What is the function of a human being?

4

• What kind of thing is a virtue?
• There are three things which may come to be in
  the soul
• Feelings - pathe
• capacity/potentials dynamis
• state/dispositions hexis
• Virtue is not 1. and 2.
• We are not in full voluntary control of our
  feelings.
• We are angry and afraid without decision. But
  virtues are decisions of some kind or require
  decision. 1106a4
• Hence virtue must be 3.

5

• According to Aristotle there can be virtues
  (states) of action and virtues of feeling.
• 1106b25/1107a10/1109b30
• Dispositions to feel or be affected by something
  (else).
• Dispositions to act (on that feeling).
• N.B. feelings and actions go together.
• Actions (prattein/praxis) and Passions
  (paschein, pathe), these are correlates,
  disposition to be affected by something else and
  the disposition to affect other things.
• Human beings are both agents and patients.

6

• This is vital part of what a virtue or
  excellence of character is. For it is a
  disposition to be properly affected and to act
  appropriately on that disposition.
• Virtues are stable states of the should that
  govern so to speak the inputs of feeling and the
  outputs of decision and action.
• Character is organised desire, decision and
  action.
• J.Lear Three conditions of virtuous action.
• The agent must have (correct) practical knowledge
• The act must be chosen for its own sake.
• The act must flow from a stable character.

7

• Courage is required when, say, a soldier
  realises that, when under attack under certain
  circumstances he has to stand and fight.
• 1. He must correctly judge that this is
  required. (It is not foolhardy or reckless or
  avoidable.)
• 2. He must be doing it out of courageousness,
  not for other reasons, say in the anticipation
  of spoils or glory.
• 3. It must not be a one off. As it might be if
  someone fought hard and well because they have a
  very strong survival instinct, but would have
  run away if they could have.

8

• Actions then are called just and temperate when
  they are such as the just or temperate man would
  do but it is not the man who does these that is
  just or temperate, but he man who also does them
  as just and temperate men do them. It is well
  said, then, that it is by doing just acts that
  the just man is produced, and by doing temperate
  acts that the temperate man is produced without
  doing these no one would have even a prospect of
  becoming good. 1105b5-11
• Aristotles view is that character is not a
  stable repository of good deeds and words that
  exists independently of and antecedently ones
  deeds and actions.

9

• Example Lloyd George.
• Cf Aristotles Rhetoric. Character is the most
  powerful form of persuasion, but character is
  constittued by the speech not by some
  pre-conceived idea of what the speaker is like.
  1, II, 1356A9
• In other word ones Actions and Words reveal and
  manifest character, whilst also shaping and
  reconstituting character at the same time.
• Character settle disposition to feel and to
  decide and act accordingly - results from
  habituation, through repeated action. (This is
  why customs and laws are so important to the
  legislator in politics for they shape actions
  and help form habits.)

10

• Becoming virtuous (and thus being happy) is like
  learning how to do something building a house
  or playing the harp. You can only learn by doing.
• By doing the acts that we do in our transaction
  with other human beings we become just or unjust.
  And by doing the acts that we do in presence of
  dange, and being habituated to feel fear and
  confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same
  is true of appetittes and feelings of anger
  some men become temperate and good-tempered,
  others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving
  in one way or another in the appropriate
  circumstances. In a word, states/dispositions
  arise out of the same kind of activities
  (energeion). Hence we must do the right kind of
  activitiesIt makes no small difference, then,
  whether we form habits (ethidzesthai) of one kind
  or another from our youth it makes all the
  difference. 1103b14-25

11

• You cannot learn to be virtuous by hearing
  lectures on morality or moral philosophy.
• Aristotles ethics is less a modern moral
  philosophy than a theory of socialisation through
  sentimental education namely an education of
  the sentiments to teach us how to be properly
  affected, and to appropriately decide and act on
  our feelings.
• Modern moral philosophy would give us either
• 1. a repertoire of rules rights and duties,
  governing our behavious, and or
• 2. a procedure of criterion for determining
  whether the rule is correct.

12

• Compare the Kantian, faced with the situation on
  the battlefield.
• 1.
• What should I do?
• The kind of answer he is looking for is a rule
  that can be applied to the present situation
• You ought to stand and fight?
• How do we find that out?
• Apply the principle or procedure for
  determining whether the rule is the correct one.
• Apply the categorical imperative act only on
  that maxim according to which your action can be
  willed as a universal law.

13

• Aristotles theory we might ask that question,
  but the answer would be act courageously, and
  only someone who had developed a brave character
  (and who could in the circumstances reason
  correctly) would know what to do.
• No point in looking for rules.
• 2. For Kant what we need to do is to impose
  reason on our sentiments, by abstracting away
  from our desires and interests and doing what
  reason demands.
• For Aristotle acting virtuously is amatter of
  developing the appropriate feelings and the
  disposition to decide and to act appropiately on
  them.

14

• 3. Aristotle says it is good to come to love
  virtues and to enjoy acting virtuously for its
  own sake.
• Compare Kant on one popular (but ungenerous)
  reading.
• Gladly I do my duty,
• But alas I do so with pleasure.
• F. Schiller.
• A final problem. If acting virtuously is about
  developing character and dispositions to feel,
  and feelings are not under our full voluntary
  control, are we can we be responsible for our
  vicious actions.

15

• Virtue is acquired by habit. Does that mean that
  virtue is not natural?
• Yes. If natural automatically or under ones
  own steam.
• No. If natural means according to ones final
  end.
• Virtue unnatural artificial or acquired.
• Virtue is not unnatural in the sense of against
  nature
• para phusin
• kata phusin
• Virtues are aquired but in accordance with
  nature.

16

• This is the answer to Aristotles puzzle over
  whether we can be responsible for vices vicious
  actions, if the vicious man is not responsible
  for his nature.
• Book III