Imagine a person who always knows what to
say. Who can diffuse a tense situation, deliver tough news gracefully, is confident without being arrogant, brave but not reckless, generous but never extravagant. This is the type of person that everybody
wants to be around, and to be like. Someone who seems to have mastered the art
of being a person. This may sound like an impossible feat, but Aristotle believed that, while rare, these people do exist. And they are what we all should aspire to
be: virtuous. And there's a whole moral theory based on
this idea of virtue. But unlike most of the moral theories weâve discussed, virtue theory doesnât spend a lot of time telling you what to do. Thereâs no categorical imperative or principle
of utility. Instead, virtue theory is all about character. Rather than saying, âfollow these rules so that you can be a good person,â Aristotle and other virtue theorists reasoned that, if we can just focus on being good people, the right actions will follow, effortlessly. Become a good person, and you will do good things.
No rulebook needed. So, why should you be a virtuous person? Because: eudaimonia. [Theme Music] Virtue theory reflects the ancient assumption that humans have a fixed nature â an essence â and that the way we flourish is by adhering to that nature. Aristotle described this in terms of what
he called proper functioning. Everything has a function, and a thing is good to the extent that it fulfills its function, and bad to the extent that it doesnât. This is easy to see in objects created by
humans. A function of a knife is to cut, so a dull
knife is a bad knife. And a function of a flower is to grow and reproduce, so a flower that doesnât do that is just bad at being a flower. And the same goes for humans â weâre animals â so all the stuff that would indicate proper functioning for an animal holds true for us as well â we need to grow and be healthy and fertile. But weâre also âthe rational animal,â and a social animal, so our function also involves using reason and getting along with our pack. Now you might notice that some of this sounds like parts of natural law theory â Aquinas' theory that God made us with the tools we need to know whatâs Good. Well, Aristotle had a strong influence on Thomas Aquinas, so part of Aristotleâs thoughts on virtue ended up in natural law theory. But for Aristotle, this isnât about Godâs
plan, itâs just about nature. Aristotle argued that nature has built into us the desire to be virtuous, in the same way that acorns are built with the drive to become oak trees. But what exactly does it mean to be virtuous? Aristotle said that having virtue just means doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, toward the right people. Which sort of sounds like Aristotle is saying
exactly nothing. I mean, how vague can you be? But according to Aristotle, there's no need to be specific, because if youâre virtuous, you know what to do. All the time. You know how to handle yourself and how to
get along with others. You have good judgment, you can read a room,
and you know what's right and when. Aristotle understood virtue as a set of robust character traits that, once developed, will lead to predictably good behavior. You can think of virtue as the midpoint between
two extremes, which Aristotle called vices. Virtue is the just-right amount â the sweet spot between the extreme of excess and the extreme of deficiency. And this sweet spot is known as the Golden
Mean. So letâs take a look at some particular
virtues, starting with courage. What is courage? To take a closer look at this, letâs head
to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy. Walking home from a movie, you see a person
being mugged. What is the courageous action for you to take? Your impulse might be to say that a courageous person would run over there and stop the mugging, because courage means putting yourself in harm's way for a good cause, right? Well, no. A virtuous person â in the Aristotelian
sense â would first take stock of the situation. If you size up the mugger and have a good reason to believe that you could safely intervene, then that's probably the courageous choice. But if you assess the situation and recognize that intervention is likely to mean that both you and the victim will be in danger, the courageous choice is not to intervene, but to call for help instead. According to Aristotle, courage is the midpoint
between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness. Cowardice is a deficiency of courage, while recklessness is an excess of courage â and both are bad. Aristotle said that you definitely can have
too much of a good thing. So, being courageous doesnât mean rushing
headlong into danger. A courageous person will assess the situation, theyâll know their own abilities, and theyâll take action that is right in the particular situation. Part of having courage, he argued, is being able to recognize when, rather than stepping in, you need to find an authority who can handle a situation that's too big for you to tackle alone. Basically, courage is finding the right way
to act. And a lot of the time â but not all of the time â that means doing a thing that you know youâre capable of, even if doing it scares the pants off of you. Thanks, Thought Bubble! Aristotle thought all virtue works like this. The right action is always a midpoint between
extremes. So, thereâs no all-or-nothing in this theory
â even honesty. In this view, honesty is the perfect midpoint between brutal honesty and failing to say things that need to be said. Like, no one needs to be told that they have
a big zit on their face â they already know. The virtue of honesty means knowing what needs to be put out there, and what you should keep quiet about. And it also means knowing how to deliver hard
truths gracefully. How to break bad news gently, or to offer criticism in a way thatâs constructive, rather than soul-crushing. The virtue of generosity works the same way. It avoids the obvious vice of stinginess,
but also doesnât give too much. Itâs not generous to give drugs to an addict, or to buy a round of drinks for everyone in the bar when you need that money for rent. The just right amount of generosity means
giving when you have it, to those who need it. It can mean having the disposition to give just for the heck of it, but it also means realizing when you canât, or shouldnât give. So now you can see why Aristotleâs definition of virtue was totally vague â where that Golden Mean is depends on the situation. But, if you have to figure out what virtue is in every situation, how can you possibly ever learn to be virtuous? Aristotle thought there was a lot that you could learn from books, but how to be a good person was not one of them. He said virtue is a skill, a way of living, and thatâs something that can really only be learned through experience. Virtue is a kind of knowledge that he called
practical wisdom. You might think of it as kind of like street
smarts. And the thing about street smarts is that
you gotta learn âem on the street. But the good news is, you donât have to
do it alone. Aristotle said your character is developed
through habituation. If you do a virtuous thing over and over again,
eventually it will become part of your character. But the way you know what the right thing to do is in the first place, is by finding someone who already knows, and emulating them. These people who already possess virtue are moral exemplars, and according to this theory, we are built with the ability to recognize them, and the desire to emulate them. So you learn virtue by watching it, and then
doing it. In the beginning, it'll be hard, and maybe itâll feel fake, because youâre just copying someone who's better than you at being a good person. But over time, these actions will become an
ingrained part of your character. And eventually, it becomes that robust trait
that Aristotle was talking about. It'll just manifest every time you need it. That's when you know you have virtue, fully
realized. It becomes effortless. OK but: Why?
What's your motivation? What if you have no desire to be the guy who always says the right thing, or the lady who always finds the courage when it's needed? Virtue theory says that you should become virtuous because, if you are, then you can attain the pinnacle of humanity. It allows you to achieve what's known as eudaimonia. This is a cool Greek word that doesnât have
a simple English translation. You might say it means âa life well lived.â Itâs sometimes translated as âhuman flourishing.â And a life of eudaimonia is a life of striving. Itâs a life of pushing yourself to your
limits, and finding success. A eudaimonistic life will be full of the happiness that comes from achieving something really difficult, rather than just having it handed to you. But choosing to live a eudaimonistic life means that youâre never done improving, youâre never to a point where you can just coast. Youâre constantly setting new goals, and
working to develop new muscles. Choosing to live life in this way also means
you'll face disappointments, and failures. Eudaimonia doesnât mean a life of cupcakes
and rainbows. It means the sweet pleasure of sinking into
bed at the end of an absolutely exhausting day. Itâs the satisfaction of knowing youâve accomplished a lot, and that youâve pushed yourself to be the very best person you could be. This is morality, for Aristotle. Itâs being the best you can personally be, honing your strengths while working on your weaknesses. And, for Aristotle, the kind of person who lives like this, is the kind of person who will do good things. Today we learned about virtue theory. We studied the Golden Mean, and how it exists as a midpoint between vices of excess and deficiency. We talked about moral exemplars, and the life
of eudaimonia that comes with virtuousness. Next time, weâre going to consider a tricky
little problem in ethics known as moral luck. Crash Course Philosophy is produced in association
with PBS Digital Studios. You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of the latest episodes from shows like: PBS Space Time, BBQ with Franklin, and PBS
OffBook. This episode of Crash Course was filmed in
the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio with the help of all of these awesome people and our equally fantastic graphics team is Thought Cafe.
OK, this video isn't as bad as it could have been. It has two large problems, though: its treatment of virtue-ethical action-guidance is somewhat misleading, and it presents a downright bizarre view on eudaimonia. It doesn't suffer from the awful lack of focus other videos in this series often does, but that said it doesn't have any clear good points. By the very low standards of Crash Course Philosophy, this makes it one of their better videos.
This video goes all-in on a common representation of virtue ethics that it doesn't provide straightforward action-guidance. This is a common thing to say, but it's false and pretty obviously false. For instance, Aristotle explicitly lists certain kinds of actions and motivations that are always wrong (e.g. fraud, seducing the spouse of a friend, acting out of spite). What is more, it's just a plain fact that very many of our action-guidance in everyday life, maybe even the majority, is made in virtue- and vice-terms: you are told not to do something because it is cruel, you encourage someone to act honestly, etc. Rosalind Hursthouse has a useful way to talk about this point: the virtues and vices offer what she calls 'v-rules' which are action-guiding generalities: you shouldn't be a coward, which means you shouldn't do the things that count as cowardly, which means you shouldn't run away when doing so means something too important gets destroyed, you shouldn't put your own health and comfort above things that are more important, etc. This just is action-guidance.
The video goes on at length about how there isn't a general way to tell what to do, you need to virtues to see what to do. But this is taking a good point somewhat too far, and it makes what virtue is meant to consist in a mystery. If the thought just is that what we should do depends a lot on the circumstances, then that's true of consequentialism as well: the consequentialist if anything has it worse since that view means that in principle you need to consider everything, for now and indefinitely into the future when deciding what to do. So that's not the problem. What Aristotle and virtue ethicists explicitly argue for is that you can't have a set of general rules that tell you everything you need to know to do what is right. The video goes entirely for the opposite extreme and says there aren't any worthwhile general rules, but this is just false about Aristotle (some virtue ethicists may endorse it, though, maybe Christine Swanton, but even that is doubtful) and not the consequence of denying there is a complete set of rules. The relevant section of the SEP article does a nice job of explaining the mistake.
Aristotle's point, and the virtue ethical point, isn't that we should evaluate character instead of actions. This is an absurdity: handsome is as handsome does. The point is that character is something we can and should evaluate, and that actions that come from certain settled character traits are different in character from actions not from this character trait. Character makes a difference, rather than character exhausting everything there is to say about the matter.
So, that's something the video says and I wish it wouldn't, but this is a very common mistake and it's not surprising that the video would repeat it. What is distinctive and wrong about the video is its view on eudaimonia. They are right that Aristotle thinks eudaimonia is the thing virtue is for. What is really weird about the presentation is that they act as if eudaimonia is one option amongst many that you may choose to pursue for your life: you need to choose to engage in this kind of self-cultivating effort, or (the video isn't clear about the alternative) slob around or go with the flow or something. But this is bizarre. Aristotle starts the Nicomachean Ethics with the observation that everybody agrees that eudaimonia is what people are after, and the question is how to identify eudaimonia. In contemporary English we'd say something like 'everybody agrees that we should try to get a worthwhile life for us and those close to us' or 'everybody agrees that we want lasting happiness' or something like that. Aristotle defends at length why pursuit of eudaimonia will have to involve cultivating the virtues if it wants to be successful. If the thought is that you can choose between this project of self-cultivation or not, what is it meant to look like if you don't do it? Do you just follow whatever seems most pleasant at the time? That's not going to work, nobody thinks that is a good strategy even for having the most pleasant experiences in the long run. You need some way of judging what is likely to work better in the long run, what kinds of temptations to avoid, etc. This just is part of practical reasoning and cultivating the virtues. In addition, Aristotle has extensive arguments for why doing what is most pleasant, or what will give you the most social recognition, is self-defeating as a life-strategy. The point isn't meant to be that eudaimonia is worthwhile should you choose it. The point is that everything else makes you less happy, at least in the long-run and in general. So, this bit is just wrong, and wrong in a very weird way.
I talk about virtue ethics, because that's the most common way to describe what they're talking about. The video talks about virtue theory, and there's nothing wrong with doing so (e.g. Hursthouse's seminal paper, 'Virtue Theory and Abortion'), but that usage is a little outdated. Nowadays people distinguish between virtue ethics--the view that the ultimate level of explanation for right and wrong is the virtues--from virtue theory--the systematic study of the virtues. The thought is that every can, and possibly should, engage in virtue theory whether they are virtue ethicists, deontologists, consequentialists, or whatever, and many people offer virtue theories from the perspective of other ethical theories.
This is a warning that all of the Crash Course philosophy videos I've seen have been awful. They swing from being very uninformative to pursuing red herrings to containing outright errors. Even for the parts of the videos where they aren't just saying things that are false, it's hard to see anybody learning from them because they are so unfocused and seem bizarrely disinterested in good pedogagy. This is a shame, because it would be wonderful to have not only highly produced and accessible videos but also ones that are at all worthwhile to see. Much better resources are available, like the Wireless Philosophy videos.
Since this is a topic of special interest for me (I wrote up an introduction to the topic some time ago as part of our Weekly Discussion series), I will later write up an annotation of this video. The last one I did took over an hour, and I don't have the time straight away, so don't hold your breath, but it'll come.