Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

okay and welcome to the lecture on Aristotelian virtue ethics now just to remind you of some things we were discussed in earlier Aristotle is interested in the question how do I become a good person he thinks that the question what makes an action good is going to be answered by knowing what makes a person good and then seeing what kinds of actions that good or virtuous people perform now good actions that are defined in terms of what a good person will do as I would just say now the answer to this question for Aristotle is basically very simple and it's one that every Greek person would have agreed to what makes a person good well they're good when they have certain virtues now virtues are character traits like honesty generosity chastity bravery courage etc so a person is good when they have virtues and every Greek would have accepted this basic answer the Greeks as I mentioned previously in these lectures the Greeks almost to a person thought that this was the basic this was the basic question and this was the right answer and of course what's distinctive about Aristotle is he gives a basic theory about what it means to be virtuous and more importantly how you acquire those virtues which is a fundamental importance if you think that this is the right way to go now in order to understand what Aristotle is up to you first have to understand the kind of context that he's located in and that means understanding the views of his teacher Plato and Plato's views were influenced heavily by the views of his teacher namely Socrates so Socrates and Plato had argued sort of interestingly counter intuitively that no one ever knowingly does evil so Socrates what Socrates thought is that if someone knows what the right thing to do is then they're going to do it so the evil person on this view assembly ignorance are mistaken about what the right thing to do is so let's get a picture of this so here's you you're looking very happy and healthy today and here's the thing that Plato thought existed it was called the good now the good is the property that all good things have in common it is not physical it's not part of physical reality according to Plato it's eternal and unchanging so it's always the same what was good in Plato's day according to him is good now and so if a certain action is right then it's always right now there's also of course the other corresponding property which he calls the bad and that's also mind independent subjective exists outside of our minds and so on now Socrates thought that people always naturally wanted the good but because of ignorance they might aim at the bad so what is the basic idea that he's getting at here well the basic idea is very simple think about even the worst serial killer usually what they say is that they were doing something which they can interpret as being good they are helping the person freeing them the person was evil they deserve to die it's very rare that they say yes I know this is a terrible action but I did it anyway or in other words that they generally aim at the bad usually people tell themselves a story and they're the good guys in the story they they have a justifying reason which allows them to do this thing so it's not that they're want to be bad if they're really mistaken about what bad is they're simply ignorant about what makes this that what the real truth of the matter is in this case and they have mistakenly identified something as good which isn't I noticed this is an Objectivist view so Plato things there's a real answer here to whether this is right or wrong and this person has simply got it backwards because of whatever reason they simply don't properly identify the thing which is good but if they did properly identify that then they immediately aim for it since people are naturally constituted to be drawn towards the good sort of like a month to a light now Aristotle denies that this is true every thought all think that there are cases where people know what the right thing to do is and simply fail to do it so you might think look you know we can think of these cases that's right so you find a wallet in the street the wallet has $100 in it and also the person's name address phone number might even imagine it has a tax return information in there so you really can see that this person doesn't have a lot of money and you say well gee I know I have to give the money back but for whatever reason you just keep the money you want the new video game you want Modern Warfare poor or whatever is coming out next and so you think to yourself yeah I know what the right thing to do is here the right thing is to give the money back but I'm just not going to do it now if there ever are cases like that then Socrates and Plato can't be right so what does Aristotle draw off from this well the lesson for him from these kinds of cases of the person who knows what the right thing to do is but fails to do it well the lesson is for Aristotle being a good person is not about knowing something but about performing right actions now so what he does is he makes a distinction between acting in the appropriate way and simply mastering a tracked body of knowledge when he wants to do with the develop a moral theory that at least allows for the possibility of the kind of person we've described who knows what the right thing to do is but for whatever reason fails to do it now once you have sons a theory then you might be able to say we'll look how do you avoid that right how can you get to the point where you know what the right thing to do is and do the right thing so having just distinguished between the theoretical sciences and the practical sciences and identified ethics as a practical science that deals with acting in various ways and not simply with acquiring knowledge the next step is for Aristotle to start thinking about what an act is that's going to be the province of ethics now for Aristotle an action is a purpose of behavior it's distinguished from a mere happening so think about this in steps so for instance if you're walking down the road that's an action that's something that you're doing but if you stumble if you trip on the sidewalk and fall as you're falling you're moving but we wouldn't want to say that that's an action of yours it's something that's happening to you now again if you think about a reflex if I take a little hammer and hit you in the knee the patellar reflex kicks in and your leg will jerk forward but it's not as though we want to say that this motion of your leg is an action of yours it's a reflex it's a happening it's automatic there's no purposive behavior there when we act we have some goal that we're trying to achieve and Aristotle defines action as those things that we that agents do that persons do in order to achieve some goal so every action has some goal that it's aimed at which can be said to be the reason that the action is performed and now since ethics is a science of action it too is going to be achieved excuse me is going to be concerned with achieving some goal because that's what actions are there are the kinds of things that we do in order to achieve a goal so ethics is going to be the science of achieving some goal because it's a science that deals with action now the only question is which goal that's the big question is if if if the point of ethics is to help us achieve some goal we need to know what the goal is nor at least this is what Aristotle thinks and he divides the kinds of goods that there are into three categories so the first category he calls an instrumental good so these are the things that are desirable that we say are good but they're only good because of what they can get us so for instance a classic instrumental good is money a dollar bill an American currency is just a piece of paper it's a fancy piece of paper with Holograms and serial numbers and so on but it's just a piece of paper if it weren't embedded in the system of the US economic system it wouldn't be worth anything so it's only good we value it only because it's used as legal tender in the United States now the way that you can see that this is the case is if you think about Confederate money so during the Civil War in America the south printed its own money in Confederate dollars and now that the Confederate south no longer exists that money is not real it may as well be monopoly money it's not good anymore because it can't you can't use it to get anything so cash is used as a way to get something else so it's instrumentally good and also a way of thinking about this think about this class that you're in right now now it's good for you to be in this class but you might ask yourself why is it good why am i doing all of this stuff well to pass the class so all of your actions are aimed at passing this class the listening of the lectures the doing of the assignments the writing of the exams and so on but why is it good for you to pass this class well it's because of what it can get you it's part of a degree program at LaGuardia college and so passing this class will help you achieve the goal of earning a degree now of course these instrumental Goods can be contrasted with what Aristotle calls intrinsic goods now the word intrinsic in English just means because of the nature of the thing in question so if something is in trinsic li a certain way it's that way because of the kind of thing that it is so something is intrinsically good not because of what it can get you but because of the kind of thing that it is by nature and Aristotle characterizes intrinsic goods as those things which we want for their own sake and never for what they can get you so some things you want because of what they can get you and some things you want not because of what they can get you but just because of the kind of things that they are so for instance think about jewelry perhaps or diamonds and sapphires and rubies and so on people think that these things are good not because of what they can get them but because they think that they're inherently beautiful and so valuable in their own right which is why they're so expensive partially because they're so rare now of course as the diamond case illustrates some things can be intrinsically good even though ultimately they are also instrumentally good so sometimes you want things both because of what they can do for you and also of what they are so the diamond is also worth a lot of money so you might want it because of its value monetarily or you might want it because of its intrinsic beauty or because of its nature so there are things that are mixes so there's a scale Aristotle thinks going from things which are purely instrumental they're only good for what they can get you then going up the scale there's an intermediate stage where things are good because of what they can get you and also because of their nature and then at the top of the scale there are the things which are only good because of what they are and can't ever be good because of what they can get you they are only intrinsic goods now that is what Aristotle calls the final goal of all actions so here's the picture that he is working with we perform actions actions are purposive they're aimed at some goal so if something is random or spontaneous are not aimed at some goal Aristotle doesn't think it's an action actions have to be purposive they have to be aimed at something so now there's this hierarchy of things that you can aim at there are purely instrumental things you can aim at there are things that are instrumental and intrinsically good that you can aim at and then there's things that might be just purely intrinsically good that an action can aim at and if you think about why you act you'll notice that each instrumental goal is a step in achieving some other instrumental good so for instance take this class that you're in you are doing all these things right now and if someone asked you why you were doing them you might say because you're in this class and you want to pass it well if someone asks yeah but why do you want to pass the class you might say oh because I'm trying to get a degree and if they said well why are you trying to get this degree you might say oh because I'm trying to get a job so ultimately then all of these actions that you're doing right now have as their ultimate goal giving a job now sure you're studying for this test and that has as its immediate goal to pass the test but that's because you want to pass the class that's because you want to get a degree but that's because you want to get a job so ultimately you're studying for the exam has as his goal all of these things not directly but ultimately by this kind of reasoning now Aristotle then argues well there's got to be something at the end of this chain there's got to be something which is final something which is intrinsically good and is the ultimate aim of every human action that thing has got to exist now why why does he think that you might say well maybe it's just a bunch of instrumental Goods all the way down why couldn't why couldn't it be that way why does it have to be that at the there's some final goal which is the endpoint which we're all aiming at well Aristotle's idea that if it weren't that way then all of our actions would ultimately be fruitless and we would never really get what we want and so would never be truly satisfied now here's the argument so you have this chain lad that we were talking about before of purely instrumental goods so you say I want to pass this class excuse me you say I want to pass this test so that I could pass the class so that I can get a degree so that I can get a job so that I can have my own apartment and pay my bills so that's what this says here you do a to get B to get C to get D to get oh I don't know my alphabet that should be e etc etc where a here is passed the test you want to pass the test so that you can be passed the class so you can see get the degree so you can D get a job so you can let's call that a move out of your mama's basement F pay your bills G buy clothes etc etc so there's this chain of goals but if there's no final goal if there's no place of this ends then you never get what you actually want now notice why this is the case say that you want to pass this well why do you want to pass the test to pass the class so unless you pass the class you don't really get what you want right so as soon as you pass the test while you're doing that only because you really wanted to pass the class so you have to then pass the class but of course you were only doing that so you could get the degree so to really get what you want you have to get the degree but of course you only want the degree so you can get a job so to really get what you want you have to get a job but of course you only want to get the job so that you can move out of your mama's basement so to really get what you want you have to move out of your mama's basement but of course you only want to do that so you can meet a significant other right a female or a male depending on who you are so you only get what you want if you get that so if there's just this if there is just this long chain of instrumental Goods every time you get something that you want it's only to get the next thing in the chain so you haven't really been satisfied you're seeking the next thing then you get that thing but it was only to get this further thing so you're still not satisfied so there's no point then at which you can say oh now I have what I want and your whole life will be spent jumping from one thing to the next I want this to get that I want that to get this I want that to get the other thing and you'll never get to the point where you're satisfied so Aristotle concludes there's got to be some thing that we all want which we want only for what it is and not ever for what it can get us and he thinks is common sensical that what this is is happiness so if you ask a person why they're doing what they're doing and if you're annoying and if you're persistent enough ultimately you will have to stop when the person says look I just want to be happy so why do you want to pass the class well give job get a degree get a job to make money to get a house to meet someone to buy stuff to live my life to be happy that's why I'm doing all this right that's what we all want what we want is happiness so happiness for Aristotle is intrinsically good nobody ever says I want happy so that I can get this other thing happiness is something we desire just because we value it not because of what it can give us in fact it doesn't even make sense to say you want happiness because of what it can get you what you want is happiness because happiness is good so now notice what Aristotle has done here he started out making this distinction between theoretical and practical sciences theoretical sciences a man knowledge so that's what physicists do they want to figure out how the world works they design experiments they gain knowledge etc etc then there's a another class of theories which aren't really aimed at knowing something but are aimed at producing the right kinds of actions and politics and ethics are closely related for Aristotle but we've been focusing on ethics and in this course so ethics isn't aimed merely at generating abstract knowledge as the wallet example kinds of things illustrate for Aristotle so you could know what the right thing to do is he thinks but yet failed to do it so what makes a person good is not that they know something but that they're performing certain kinds of actions so what we want to do is figure out what actions are well they're things which have purposes which aim at things they can aim at different kinds of goals there's a hierarchy of gold at the top of this hierarchy is something that's intrinsically good something which is desired for its own sake and never for the sake of what it can get you it's the thing we all want every hue action we perform is ultimately aimed at this one goal everything you do get up in the morning from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night is ultimately aimed at giving you happiness that's what we all want it's the intrinsic good so now putting all this together ethics is the science of action all of our actions ultimately are aimed at this one intrinsically good goal happiness so what is ethics supposed to do then what is its goal well it's got to be happiness right that's the intrinsically good thing what else would ethics be aimed at or in the science of accomplishing so Aristotle concludes then ethics is the science of achieving happiness what ethics does the job of ethics is as a Thea's a science is to help human beings achieve their ultimate goal the goal of being happy now this may sound like an egoist view because he's ultimately going to say well why should you care about ethics well because it's going to get you something that you that every person wants namely happiness so that gives you a lot of reason to care about ethics but now you could call this egoist right you can say well he's grounding morality and self-interest but this would be a really weird thing to say for Aristotle because he's simply saying no look what we're worried about is how how to act actions are of a particular kind of thing in the world we can investigate them we notice they have this structure their purposes we can investigate the kinds of purposes there are rank them and then find out which one is at the top and say well identify ethics as the science of achieving that so of course ethics has got to be relevant to us it's not some abstract theoretical thing it's supposed to be about in for human beings and it's got to be useful for them now of course before you start jumping up and down for the joy of common sense to bear in mind that Aristotle does not mean by happiness what you probably mean by happiness so the average person probably takes happiness to be pleasure or feeling good but Aristotle denies that he says look the common person who thinks that pleasure is the is the same as happiness degrades human beings to the level of a common animal so take your average cow or pig or donkey their highest goal is probably pleasure and the avoidance of pain that's really what their life amounts to so they are happy so long as they just out there chewing the cud grazing in the Sun not being bothered or eaten or slaughtered or anything like that they just have pleasure the feels this probably feels good for them and that's really all that a cow can aspire to but human beings of course are not cows and Aristotle's view is that what distinguishes a human being from a cow we're both animals by the way right so often we talk as though we're not animals and we use the word animal to distinguish things which are not human from things which are human so we say I'm not an animal damn it and what you mean is you don't eat with your hands or poop outside or go without clothing or etc etc but of course ultimately according to science we are animals we're part of the animal kingdom were animals but we're different from all other animals or something unique about us and Aristotle was aware of that obviously what was unique about us was reasoning now by reasoning Aristotle means something very specific in particular he means syllogistic reasoning logical reasoning as exemplified by such patterns of inference as all men are mortal Socrates is a man so Socrates is a you should have heard the word mortal in your minds just then because that's what follows from those first two premises if it's true that all men are mortal and if it's true that Socrates is a man then it must be true that Socrates is immortal you can kind of see just by thinking about it that there's it doesn't make sense to for someone to say yes I agree it's absolutely true all men are mortal obviously of course Socrates was also a man but he was not immortal someone who said that would either be making a bad Joker or just confused about the words or if they weren't then they don't really have rational capabilities to see that that's a contradiction that that can't be the case now that's just one example of the kind of logical reasoning that human beings are capable of that no animal is capable of so maybe pleasure is an fit goal for an animal and so for animals excuse me that are not rational for non rational animals sorry that may be a fit goal but for rational animals pleasure is not a fit goal it's not the thing that we aim at or should be aiming at because it lowers our status to that of an ordinary cow or monkey or donkey now as an another note why pleasure can't be happiness and why we can't just recommend that everyone seek pleasure that that be the goal every human action is because pleasure can be derived from wicked behavior so for instance someone who gets pleasure from lying or from stealing take your kleptomaniac someone who doesn't need the thing that they're stealing but just enjoys it they like the rush of it the thrill of it so famously I guess or allegedly Winona Ryder has this it's a it's a thrill to get away with something you take a little thing from the store no one catches you get a small rest from it so you're getting some pleasure from that but of course stealing is wrong it's wicked so here's a case where the pleasure doesn't seem to be good doesn't seem as though we want to say that that's good in that case because the action which produce that pleasure is itself immoral so there's these two reasons that are thought of things yeah the common person the average person they think that happiness is pleasure but they're wrong because that neglects the thing which is special or unique about humans which distinguishes us from other animals our rational faculties and it also neglects this weird thing that if you say that pleasure is the ultimate goal that all our actions are aiming at and that it's intrinsically good then then you're forced to say that in the case of pleasure derived from wicked behavior and Aristotle just doesn't think that that sounds right and that's because whether then pleasure counts as good or not if that's true then whether pleasure counts as good or not depends on what it's derived from and that shows Aristotle things that pleasure isn't intrinsically good it's not the case that it can be desired for its own sake because when it's produced in an inappropriate way it's not desirable it's not good this is what Aristotle advances his theory of what happiness is which is not what the average person thinks but we'll give it a shot and see how far we can get with it so for happiness for Aristotle is a kind of activity it's not a mental state it's not having pleasure you can see that pleasure isn't intrinsically goodbye the kinds of things we've been thinking about and rather happiness is living one's life in the right way what we might say a satisfying well lived life one who flourishes in the world they have friends they have family they have a job they have they don't need to be super wealthy but they have enough money not to worry about money they pursue their own interests are well respected by their peers they're known to be good at what they do they are just all-around well-off in every sense of that word and it's not just financially it's that they're they're rich in in the things that life can provide that for Aristotle is happiness and it doesn't mean that you feel a certain way it means that you're doing something you're performing these things in the right way now just let really quickly let me give you a way to see the difference here so it's a bit scientifical if that's a word let me coin it but it'll help us see what's going on here so imagine two different situations so the first situation is a person who's living the kind of life that I was just describing someone who's healthy happy has family loved one's children has a job has their health has property respects they're good at their job people recognize that they're good at their job whatever that it is that they do people say yeah that person's great at that job I wish I could do it like he does or she does everyone likes this person they have friends that are respected by their peers etc so this person just doing a fantastic job at living life just all around now so you have that on the one hand no mention on the other hand you have a person who's in some official situation like the matrix so we all know what the matrix is the matrix is a case where you real in real life quote unquote you are a body in a in a vat you're in this machine and you're hooked up to various wires and tubes in your brain and throughout all your body actually so you can stimulate the nerves in any way that they want to and your your nerves and brain are being stimulated in such a way that it causes in you the conscious experience as of a bunch of stuff happening that isn't really happening so the people in the matrix think that they're going to work they get up in the morning they get dressed they drive their car they punch the clock they go out to the club they take ecstasy they drink beers they do all the things that you think you do except they're not really doing it they are in real life laying in this machine in their sin and their nerves are being stimulated in various ways so now imagine someone in this matrix like scenario who doesn't know it they think that they're living a real life outside of the matrix now imagine that they are living a matrix version of the first scenario so in this matrix life that they live they're happy they're healthy people respect them they have a job that they people think they're good at except of course they're they're the only person they're this they're living this simulation of all of this stuff and none of its real now ask yourself which of these would you rather be in experientially notice they're exactly the same so all the pleasure that you feel in one you'll feel in the other the pleasures of a good life the taste of the food the aesthetic beauty of the sights basking in the warmth of the glow of approval of your peers etc all that stuff's going to feel the same except in one case you're in an actual physical world with no people and in another case you're in this virtual matrix world computer simulation now which of those would you rather be in now some people say it doesn't matter right it feels the same but if you think that it does matter that there's something about the real scenario that's good or better whereas in the virtual scenario it's not then it's not just the pleasure that makes this good it's something about it the activity of doing it of really doing it not pretending to do it not virtually doing it but really doing it now if you think that that's right then you might sort of see what Aristotle's getting at as far as this life well-lived stuff and we do talk this way in English sometimes where we use the word happy not to specify a feeling but a time so we say you know back in when I was a kid we'd go to the lake every summer and go fishing with my grandpa whatever homina homina and then you might say that was a happy time in my life that was you know really good time for me and it may not even have been that you were feeling pleasure at every moment that you were there it's just that you remember that that was a time where you were doing things well where things were going well for you now this is important for Aristotle because now he's going to give his actual theory of what this is what happiness is so he's building up this argument starting from an analysis of action to what happiness is and how we can achieve it so here's the summary by the way of the argument that ethics is the science of happiness I won't rehash that I just hashed it a second ago so I won't rehash it so the point where right now is that happiness is living well which is to do well at life and now here's where Aristotle's genius comes in because what he notices and what he's been aiming at all along actually in this chain of argument is that when we say that something does well we refer we use we use well how do you put this we use the function that the thing is built for as a way of evaluating whether the object in question is good so for instance take a knife we say that a knife does well when it cuts well that's because a knife's function is to cut and notice that a knife that fulfills its function one that does what it's supposed to do in the sense of function is a good knife so we say that's a good knife it really cuts well now a pencil also does well if it writes well that's a really good pencil a heart does well if it pumps blood you have a good heart not in the metaphorical sense of being charitable but having a good heart or a bad heart in the literal sense of having heart disease or having clogs in one's arteries etc etc now by analogy if humans are going to do well it should be because they perform their function the thing they're supposed to do in the right way now this of course brings us to the question of what wait a minute do humans have a function so Aristotle thinks that humans do have a function that it's not we or to talk this way in fact he argues it strange to talk the other way so think of a person and their body so take an animal for instance every part of a person's body has a function so the heart has a function it pumps blood the liver have a a function it filters things the kidneys have a function the intestines have a function every part of you that it has a function so to every person in society has a function some of us are doctors some of us are students some of us are teachers some of us are cab drivers some of us grocery store clerks some of us are presidents of the United States some of us are advisors to the president news reporters manufacturers etc every person does something in the society which is a function but they have a job species also have functions if you notice we say of one that it's a scavenger that it serves a certain purpose in nature some things seem to be prey so there's carnivores and there's preys and then they're scavengers and so it wouldn't it would be very interesting if human beings were the only thing in this hierarchy and notice there is kind of hierarchy here going from parts of a thing to the whole thing to the species that the thing is a part of it would be kind of strange a result of things if this species human beings rational animals as he would call them if those things didn't have a function - now a function is that thing which is unique to the object and which distinguishes it from other things like it so the function of a knife is the cut because it was made to cut right that's its purpose that's what it was fashioned to do so that is the thing which distinguishes it from other objects that's why a knife isn't a spoon now you can use a spoon to cut but that's not a spoons purpose so - you can use a knife to scoop up some stuff but that's not a knife's purpose now the function of the heart is the pump blood that's what it does which distinguishes it from other things which are organs so you have a general class of things organs and then you have dis differentiating properties which individuate particular organs the blood pumping organ organ the blood filtering Oregon the air providing Oregon etc etc so you have the class a thing and the thing which differentiates members of the class so two in the knife the general class would be silverware cutlery and then you can differentiate the individual pieces of Civil War by what functions they are supposed to perform the spoon for scooping the knife for cutting the fork for grabbing etc so well what is it that's that distinguishes humans it's not living since plants do that and animals do that and we do that so that's something that we all have in common it's not merely perception or a movement because animals do that as well animals can perceive that environment they move themselves around plants can do that so animals and humans have in common doing this but of course what we have that they don't have is rationality that's what we've already mentioned and so the thing of the class of things is animal that's what we have in common with other things that move and so on were animals but what differentiates us from the other animals is our rationality in particular it's this business about syllogisms and logic and being able to think abstractly which animals can't do so when Aristotle says rationality he doesn't mean the kind of thing that Aristotle does let's get lucky well yeah the kind of thing that Aristotle or Einstein do what he means is the kind of thing the average person does when they say if all animals are mammals and this dog is an animal then it's a mammal and that's something that even the least intelligent person out there is able to grasp that if all of a certain kind of thing are one way than any example of that kind of thing or one way and they may not be able to grasp the abstract Ness of it and the in various subtleties of it but it's sort of obvious that this is the case so rationality is something that all human beings have as a species even if individual members of that species aren't as what we would call smart in our colloquial terms as other people so he's not talking about smartness he's just talking about the this ability that all human beings have to see general patterns of inference which dogs cats so on cannot do so from this Aristotle concludes Eris thought that people have as their function rationality that's our purpose our purpose is to be rational that's what makes us different from the other kinds of things around here that's what gives us our unique place in the world our rational faculties we are the rational animals now since happiness means living well and something does well when it fulfills its function well when it does what it's supposed to do happiness is therefore acting rationally well it's doing that well so what is the view that he's arrived at ethics is the science of achieving this intrinsic good happiness and what happiness is is fulfilling a certain kind of function our function turns out to be rationally rational excuse me our function turns out to be rationality so what do you do and live well what it must be that you're acting rationally somehow so ultimately even though it looks like this is a kind of view that's grounded in self-interest you want happiness so that's why you should act in this way but the real twist here is that it's rationality which is going to be doing a lot of the work so if you want to be happy Aristotle saying your actions have to be rational but how do we fulfill this function right how do we act rationally right how does it mean say that our actions are rational well this is again where Aristotle draws on his general theory so generally speaking objects fulfill their functions by having certain virtues now a virtue is simply by definition whatever it is that allows an object to fulfill its function so for instance the virtues of a knife are the properties that knives can possess in virtue of which they cut well now notice that this use of virtue is very different from the modern use of virtue Aristotle is perfectly happy saying that a knife is virtuous or that a horse is virtuous or that a car is virtuous or that a computer is virtuous or that a person is virtuous now nicely virtues include such things as sturdy easy to grasp handle sharp blade durability etc etc etc the excuse me etc etc etc now these are the things which knives can possess which makes them good knives which makes them virtuous knives which makes them the kinds of knives which do the thing they were designed to do cut well so to us it sounds weird to call a knife virtuous and modern people usually reserve the term virtue for human beings they don't for instance say that their car is virtuous when it performs its function well they do say it's a good car so we still use the word good in this way to apply to things which are not moral that's a good car - that's a good knife but we don't really use the word virtue in this way anymore but to ease this little uneasiness people often translate the word that Aristotle used which is arte as excellence so it's a it's a trait that something has that makes that's a characteristic of an excellent exemplar of the thing question so it's an excellence of the knife and we do it's much more natural in English to say that's an excellent knife as opposed to that's a virtuous knife but it's basically you're saying the same thing so when Aristotle says that's a virtuous knife what he means is that's an excellent knife that's a good knife it has the qualities that you want a knife to have now of course the human virtues are not having sturdy easy to grasp handles or sharp blades or durability human virtues are going to be those things that allow us to fulfill our human function now our human function is acting rationally our being rational and there are two kinds of virtues two classes of virtues that are going to be required in order fulfill this function so you have the intellectual virtues wisdom knowledge strategy and you have the moral virtues things like justice prudence temperance and courage now the book lists a lot more of virtues and there are a lot more virtues but we we can focus just in our discussion on these four of what are called the cardinal virtues now that's the the stuff that we say about for instance courage and justice and temperance can be extended to all the virtues listed in the book and Aristotle is very clear now you know friend and generosity and all of these kinds of things get the exact same treatment as these exemplar virtues now these kinds of virtues are different in their natures though so intellectual virtues are simply acquired by formal education you go to school you study some some cases and you learn strategy that's something you get by book knowledge you can learn all theoretical II what strategy is you can go do some physics and learn about the way quarks combining to form protons neutrons electrons and the forces that interact between them etc you can simply master that body of knowledge of calculus of physics etc that's very different from the way the moral virtues work for Aristotle moral virtues are not the kinds of things which you can learn by book knowledge and of course that follows from this general view which we've been talking about all along if if you could know what the right thing to do is but fail to do it then having the virtue of being honest for instance isn't simply knowing that you should tell the truth the virtuous person is the one who does tell the truth now how do you do that well Aristotle gives us a general theory on which to have a virtue is to have a habit which is acquired by practice now the word habit is a bit weak doesn't really call to mind the the force of the kind of thing that every thought I was trying to talk about here so when he talks about habits it's really the kind of thing that we would say is like second nature to the person so it sounds weird to say that I have a habit of speaking English speaking English is second nature to me I don't even really think about it I just speak English at this point now I know that people who are learning English for the first time have to think about it quite a bit more than I do but whatever language is your or their first language that's the point it's is habitual these things that you do but they're more than habits they're so ingrained into your very nature that it's almost hard to imagine not speaking this language and when you have a virtue you have a disposition so ingrained into the way that you act think and behave that you can't even really imagine it being differently although it could have been differently it can be differently and if you don't keep up the practice it will decay over time but the point is that these things are deep ingrained dispositions into the person's character they're very stable almost to the point where you can say that they're part of the person's nature but since they were learned are not ingrained they're not born in the person they're not innate they're not part of their nature they're like second nature to them so the model that he has well as you practice until you get to the point where it just happens automatically so being virtuous is a kind of skilled activity for Aristotle in much the same way as being a musician or a horse trainer or any of these practical Sciences which aim not to add knowledge but at a certain skill producing a certain kind of action so the analogy with music is going to be playing a big role in Aristotle's work and also the same with he uses that he talks a lot about learning medicine and so think about the way that you become a doctor for a second well first you have your med school when you learn a bunch of theory memorize a bunch of stuff and then after that you have to go do an internship a residency where you actually go to a hospital and actually try to start doing a bunch of the stuff that you were learning only about in theory before and of course this is what they are always dramatizing on various shows about hospitals the the new people come they have a bunch of book knowledge but they don't have the practical skills that they need in order to actually do medicine that's something that you have to learn that's a skill that's what you have to acquire so - with like playing an instrument so you may theoretically know what the scales are a C C major scale goes c d e f g a b c you can say in the scales you can talk about the pentatonix and so on and so on but you might not be able to sit down on a piano and actually play the scales because knowing the theory is one thing and being able to do the thing is another thing so to be a good person is to fulfill your function in the right way and the way you fulfill your function is to acquire virtues which allow you to act rationally well and thus achieve happiness now the way you get these moral virtues like I was saying is by practice so think about how you do this well if you wanted to learn how to play an instrument you would first have to practice playing the instrument but you have to practice it in a certain way you don't just sit down and start banging on the instrument you have to know what you're doing what you're practicing so you have to be aware of the fact that you're playing the instrument now someone who really has these virtues ultimately is doing these actions because they recognize that they're good that they're virtuous actions so they're doing the action not because they think it's going to get them something eventually but because they see that this kind of activity is good in its own right and it's something that's done from a settled habit so this is not an accidental uncharacteristic kind of action this is something that you people can attest to over a long period of time so let's compare this with musicianship so take a jazz saxophonist so someone who's skilled at the saxophone knows what they're doing it's not an accident that they're up there doing what they're doing they've mastered a lot of theories so they have that abstract theory and so to the the virtuous person knows what they're doing they know that they're performing a virtuous action they're not doing it accidentally it's not a mistake on their part but it's something that they're aware of as going on now of course this should be something that's the product of a stable habit so if I go in here you play the saxophone one night and I've never heard you play before and you play beautifully I think to myself ah gee this tacks one player is amazing and then I go and see you the next night and it's not very good you know you're hitting off no trough time etc and then I see you again the next time and it's a well gee more of the same you're off again you're not playing well so if it was just that one time that you sounded really good I'm likely to conclude that you're not a great saxophone player you just got lucky that night you were in the mood the mood was in the right orbit you were on the right drugs who knows what was going on but it wasn't something you could reproduce so it's not as exciting we wouldn't say you're as good as someone who could reliably reproduce that that really great performance so that's what Aristotle means when he says the virtuous activities the virtuous actions are those that are produced from this kind of stable character namely from the possession of the virtue if you're acting virtuously it's when you in the full sense of that word according to Aristotle it's not uncharacteristic it's something what you regularly reliably do and people recognize yeah that's the way he acts he tells the truth he's upright he's generous he's kind cetera et cetera et cetera or she is etc okay so now to be a good saxophonist you should meet these three criterion to be a good person Aristotle things you should meet these criterion as well you've got to perform these actions but performing virtuous actions is not enough to make you virtuous as aristotle says you've got to realize that these things are good in their own right so here's the view that he has well when you're young people just tell you to act in certain ways and you do it they say tell the truth they say cheaters never win they say lighter lying is bad and so on protect those who are weaker than you etc etc don't abuse others bla bla bla and you don't really know anything at that point you're just being told what to do so you do it but you don't do it because you know that it's good you do it because you are emulating or imitating those around you that you look up to a respect and admire your family so they tell you to do it they say it's good you don't understand really but you do it because you want to be like them so you you perform these behaviors but eventually as you go through this process you come to realize at some point that you're performing these actions not because your parents told you to or your authority figure whatever told you to but because you recognize their intrinsic value their goodness and at that point you start imitating the good person and start becoming a good person so again the analogy with the saxophone is very instructive so at the beginning of your musical career you get a teacher someone who's good already at what they do they tell you practice disk put your fingers that way you don't really understand you just do it they say play this scale and this way breathe it this time put your finger in that way it feels awkward it you do it anyway you practice and practice and practice and eventually you get to the point where you see the merit of this oh you should have your fingers this way because you can play faster it's more economical you can hit these notes at that time in the right way so you can play that song and blah blah blah and so you recognize that these things that you've been told to do over and over and over haven't have their own value and then you start doing them now because you were told to play the saxophone that way but because it's good to play it that way because you can express yourself better if you hold your fingers this way and if you breathe in this rhythm and play it hit the note at that time and so on so eventually you get to the point where you recognize that these things should be done for their own sake not because somebody told you that they should be done so you're no longer imitating a good saxophone player you are a good saxophone player now that's the general view that Aristotle has and we'll talk about some specifics of the virtues in how you acquire them but just at the general level we can say there are some interesting consequences so notice right off the bat well gee this isn't a kind of view where you calculate what are the good actions what are the bad actions add them up subtract one from the other and see what's going on here so if you make occasional lapses that doesn't mean you're a bad person so think about the saxophone player if you if you're an amazing saxophone player you're still going to have off days maybe have a cold you're all congested you go to the concert that day people here they go I wasn't that great but every other time they've heard you has been fantastic no one's gonna say well you're not a good saxophone player they'll say something was up with him that day maybe she had a cold maybe his mother died maybe he was thinking about his whether he left his oven on something was up because he wasn't playing like he normally plays and Aristotle thinks something like this is true in ethics so if you're a generally truth-telling person but you lie on a certain occasion that doesn't make you a bad person maybe it's because you have an off day even the best of us have off days being a virtuous person doesn't mean you're a perfect person doesn't mean you never do what's wrong just means you rarely do what's wrong and when you do it's because something's something's up right thing going on which is interfering with this this well-oiled habit that you've acquired now of course the opposite of this is true as well occasional virtuous actions don't make a person virtuous so if you're generally a wicked person who goes around lying cheating stealing being dishonest unchivalrous throwing old ladies out of the way when the house is on fire and so on but you occasionally perform actions of chivalry honesty justice and so on that doesn't make you a good person you're just having an off day - it's just that you're off day happens to be telling the truth or helping a person so a person is characteristically ungenerous who then uncharacteristically donates to charity or takes a friend out to lunch or something isn't a virtuous person thereby or a good person they're just having a weird off day something's up with them in exactly the same way as the other case so that's the again just bringing out this point that it's stable character dispositions that Aristotle calls virtuous the virtues so it's not just occasional tellings of truth that makes you have the virtue of honesty it's someone who reliably regularly tells the truth and who only doesn't when or who only lies when something is really up with this person and the more and more practiced you get at with the virtue the less the less and less often it's the case that you have these kinds of slip-ups now of course another interesting consequence of this of Aristotle's view is that what being virtuous is a lifelong activity it's not as though you simply practice practice practice and then you're a great saxophonist for the rest of your life if you stop playing saxophone when you graduate from college then by the time you are 45 you will no longer be decorated the saxophone right take practice daily practice you need to keep at it keep playing otherwise the skill degrades over time and the same can be true of a virtuous person so you may have the virtues you maybe have the virtue of honesty of just giving people what they deserve but if you stop performing just actions eventually you'll fall out of practice you'll lose the virtue of justice so this is again notice above if you if you're a virtuous person you're a good person you have these virtues you perform these kinds of actions well if you stop performing the actions you may lose the virtue now if you make an occasional mistake I can't say you're losing the virtue if I show up in here you play one day and it's not that great but I know over the last ten years you've rarely sounded like this only on times when you've had a cold then I can conclude you're not a terrible saxophone player you're just having one of your cold off days but if I show up every time and you're always sounding like this I might start to think well you used to be a great saxophone player but you just lost it I don't know what's going on maybe not playing as much maybe you don't care enough anymore I don't know but something's going on you're not that good anymore so - in the area virtue of ethics you can fall out of practice you can lose the virtue of honesty you can lose the virtue of temperance modesty etc so this is not something that you just get at - and then say I'm there it's something you have to work at for your whole life now that sounds a bit grim you got to work at this all the time yes that's right but on the other hand it's a bit optimistic because Aristotle claims is never too late to become virtuous right you're it's only limited by death here so you can learn you can start learning how to play a saxophone when you're 65 you may have never never picked up a saxophone ever you can start playing when you're 75 I mean just you know depends how long you have how you treat yourself and you can always acquire these skills so - with virtue in the ethical realm you may be a wicked curmudgeon but you can always choir the virtue virtue of generosity friendliness etc no matter how late in life and that sort of the Ebenezer scroo of the Christmas Carol a theme in Aristotle's view he was a stingy miser he gets the Christmas spirit and buys you know everyone at Ricky and gives people Christmas now of course on Aristotle's view we can't tell whether he acquired the virtue of generosity on that occasion unless we know whether he kept that behavior up and I think according to the story he's opposed to at least in Scrooged the Bill Murray version he does keep that behavior up and they show at the end over over the course of time he continues his kind of behavior so if that's the case then you know he became virtuous after a life of vice so it's it's it's an optimism in the sense that well gee we can always acquire these virtues even if it happens late in life now of course it's going to be harder to do it late in life because the vices that you have of dishonesty and so on will have set in so they'll be hard to change but it's not impossible because it's not part of your nature it's just a really ingrained habit so if you work at it if you practice you can turn that around so now we're finally in a position to say something more specific about the virtues but before we do let me just add something here about what it is to be a good action according to Aristotle so notice remember all the way back in the beginning of this Aristotle's not doesn't think that the question of what makes an action good is the fundamental question that an ethical theory should address he thinks the fundamental question and ethical theory should address is what makes a person good first you figure out what makes a person good and then you talk about good actions afterwards so that's what we've been doing notice lis notice he talked about what makes a person good is acquiring these virtues these dispositions these habits of acting which you acquire by practice and emulating those who already have them so then what does it mean for an action to be good then well good actions a quarter Aristotle are precisely the ones that are performed by good people and we can identify good persons we know the good persons in our community and we have certain moral moral like icons that we look up to so for instance Jesus Christ is a moral icon you might not think he's the son of God some people do some people don't but whether you think he's the Son of God or not people generally agree do unto others is a good moral thing to do that that Jesus was a moral exemplar someone who lived a morally virtuous life and that we could emulate and be better off for so rather than ask is lying right what you have to ask on Aristotle's view is what a virtuous person lie and then you have to pick out the virtuous people and then sort of ask well what would that person do what would Gandhi do with Gandhi lie with Jesus lie with these people that we recognize as being good people ones who possess virtues ones that we want to emulate would we recognize that they would do it now that's how you answer these questions in the abstract where you really need to get to is to the point where you can answer these questions for yourself so you can say well gee is it the case that this is a good action or not or in other words what you need to do is acquire the virtues and be able to tell for yourself what these kinds of things are now part of doing that is identifying virtuous people emulating them and that's one the part of the process we've been focusing on here where we're going to turn to in the next week is looking at the specific theory of the virtues that Aristotle gives how they how they how they actually work how you actually acquire them what it actually means to say you have the virtue of justice or temperance or courage according to according to Aristotle this has all been very abstract but before we move on to that let me just put a couple of things into context here so the first thing is well since we can identify good persons and since what were the way you learn how to be virtuous is first by identifying good persons the people that are virtuous in your community and emulating them it follows for Aristotle that if you don't live in a in a place that is values virtue and is actively seeking virtue you're going to have a hard time acquiring these virtues so if you grow up in Nazi Germany it's going to be very hard for you to become a good person because the people you'll be emulating are not people with virtues they are not going to be the kinds of people who foster the kind of behavior which is good so now that's unfortunate but that's why it's important that you live in the right kind of City Aristotle thinks and that's the connection between ethics and politics so for for Aristotle that the city really exists as a way to help individuals achieve their virtues or in other words help them live a happy life that's the goal of the city is to foster virtue in its citizens so that the citizens of the city can live well do well in life be happy in other words so politics and ethics are connected in this way it's important that you have the right kind of government the right kind of city life be available so that you can flourish and do well at life so that you don't have you know grow up in a fascist society etc and etc so it really does matter what kind of company you keep and that's just because you know at the earliest stages of your life the people you emulate and look up to are the people that you well your family and if you grow up in a wicked family you're doomed from the beginning it's not going to be I mean it's not impossible for you to acquire these virtues acquire the virtues just going to be very hard for you to do it okay so now let's turn to looking at the the the specific theory that aerosol gives up the virtues but what exactly are these virtues like justice and courage so so a result just got through telling us that you need to acquire these virtues but what are they well in his view he said that there means between extremes so for every virtue there's going to be a vice vice is simply the opposite of a virtue so if you have the virtue of honesty lining a device so we call something vicious you simply mean that that thing has a vice now we don't use it English we don't use that word in English that way anymore we usually mean by vicious a particular kind of icing with being overly aggressive or inflicting harm so you call a dog vicious when it bites you but vicious just generally means having a vice so for every virtue there's going to be a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess or in other words there's going to be something which is too much of the thing in question and something which isn't enough of the thing in question and ourselves says well the virtuous state is somewhere in between those two extremes and the Latin sort of phrase for that was very popular in the Middle Ages was where tustin medio stat and what that means is virtue stands in the middle that would have been a very nice way of phrasing this the average Greek person would have thought that was very nice very interesting and very congenial to them now what does this mean well here we have our way of pictorially representing that so we have on the one hand divisive excess on the other hand over there we have a device of deficiency and the virtue is going to be standing in the middle so let's take an example of this so here's our scale here again let's do for instance the the virtue of courage now what do you call someone who's deficient with respect to courage let me call that person a coward so the Vice of deficiency in this case is going to be cowardice now we don't really have a word in English for the opposite problem every thought poins a term and typically we train late that as something like full heartiness so basically you can say here look the foolhardy person is the person who runs into the danger no matter how great it is the coward is the person who runs away from the danger no matter how small it is and the courageous person is somewhere right in the middle of that or let's do another example just as for instance whoop when you Justice League loss basically as giving a person what they deserve so some of the divisive deficiency is going to give a person less than they deserve so for instance in this class if you earned an A and I give you a C then I'm being unjust because I've given you less than you deserve now of course on the other hand you get the very same thing with device of excess so not only am I being unjust if I give you less than you deserve but I'm also being unjust if I give you more than you deserve so if you earn a C and I give you an A I'm also being unjust so there's two ways to lack courage there's two ways to lack justice it depends a hundred I excuse me there's not just one way to be on courageous but you could be uncreate this in the foolhardy way you could be ungracious in the cowardice way you could be unjust in the giving more than they deserve way and you could be unjust in the giving less than they deserve wait now these means Aristotle says are relative to the person and the situation what does he mean by that well what you're trying to get out here is this isn't a mathematical need it depends on the actual situation that the person finds themselves in so let's take an analogy Aristotle himself uses a similar analogy suppose you were wondering how much protein you should eat well it's going to depend on you and the kind of life that you live so they had a skit about this on Saturday Night Live not too long ago if you watch that show so they had the swimmer on fells and they were making the joke eat a diet like Phelps she's a wool champion so you must eat healthily they said what kind of diet you eat in the morning while 12 pancakes 14 eggs 5 pounds of toast no juice orange well all of this food why because he's a world-class athlete whose training day in and day out he's bulking up on protein he needs that energy so he eats a lot more protein than the average person would well a person like me doesn't train that way ate like that I would become obese so it wouldn't be healthy for me to eat the way that Phelps does and it wouldn't be healthy for him eat the way that I do because what's healthy for me depends on the kind of person that I am and the situations that I find myself in so that's what Aristotle says when he says it's a relative to the person but notice this is not relativism what he thinks is that in any particular given the person and the situation that they find themselves in there's always one answer to what the right thing to do is where does the mean fall in this particular case but it's up to the individual to determine that in the situation that they find themselves in every situation is different every person is different and so air assault includes there's nothing like a general rule which you could memorize which will tell you in every given instance which things you should do and which things you shouldn't do rather what you needed to do is develop it a skill this practical ability to determine where on this sliding scale your position will fall so let's take a look at this illustrate this with some examples so we'll use courage that's that's fairly straightforward now imagine that there is this a burning building okay now imagine there are two people so on the one hand we have our friendly firefighter guy here he's in his uniform he's dressed for this and on the other hand you have me over there there I am at Junior's enjoy some nice cheesecake now suppose that key and this fireman and I were confronted with this burning building well what are we to do listing about the firemen first so the fireman is confronted with this situation was going to be courageous is going to look more to the outside person like something that's foolhardy since since this person has the proper training here the proper equipment he's going to have to to be courageous he's going to have to run into this burning building risking his own life so it's not as though running into danger risking your own life is always full hearty it depends on the kind of training now for me in the same situation to run into the building by myself unaided would be foolhardy because I don't have the proper training I don't know what I'm doing I'm going to die of smoke inhalation and have to be saved myself okay so now instead of talking about the fireman let's talk about me well something that's going to be virtuous for me is might look more like cowardice to an outside observer since it's not going to be virtuous for me to go running into the fire what's going to be virtuous for me perhaps is go get help to call someone like our firefighting gentleman friend over here that's going to be the thing that the virtue is for me so here you have two people in the same ish situation and they each have different actions which are virtuous for them but each one of those things is something that's determined in the situation by facts about the situation that are unique to it so there's an objective answer here this isn't relativism but the only person who can determine the answer is the individual who finds themselves in that kind of situation and that leads us right to the key concept in Aristotelian philosophy the concept of phronesis so the virtuous person then is the one that's able to judge where this moon falls for them in the situation that they find themselves in so there's not going to be a rule that's going to tell you what you should do you've got to develop this practical skill of determining for yourself where the mean is for you and that's in English you would translate the word phronesis at practical wisdom and you only acquire this through repetitive practice and all the other things what we said which requires a lot of mistakes

Channel: Richard Brown

Views: 17,983

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Keywords: YouTube Editor, Aristotle (Author), Virtue (Taxonomy Subject), Ethics (Field Of Study)

Id: eMAv2bS2TpQ

Length: 84min 30sec (5070 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2013