Transcript Ch. 9 * the Ethics of Character: Virtues and Vices

Ch. 9 – the Ethics of Character:
Virtues and Vices
Aristotle and Our Contemporaries
Introduction
Concern for character has flourished in the
West since the time of Plato, whose early
dialogues explored such virtues as courage and
piety
Two Moral Questions
• The Question of Action:
- How ought I to act?
• The Question of Character:
- What kind of person ought I to be?
• Our concern here is with the question of
character.
An Analogy from the Criminal Justice
System
As a country, we place our trust for just decisions
in the legal arena in two places:
1. Laws, which provide the necessary rules
2. People, who (as judge and jury) apply rules
judiciously
Similarly, ethics places its tgrust in:
1. Theories, which provide rules for conduct
2. Virtue, which provides the wisdom necessary
for applying rules in particular instances.
- Aristotle
Virtue
•
•
•
•
Strength of character (habit
Involving both feeling and action
Seeks the mean between excess and
deficiency relative to us
Promotes human flourishing
ere of
tence
Deficiency
Mean
Exce
ude toward self
Servility
Selfdepreciation
Proper Self-Love
Proper Pride
Self-Respect
Arroga
Conce
Egoism
Narcis
Vanity
ude toward
ses of others
Ignoring them
Being a
Doormat
Anger
Forgiveness
Understanding
Reven
Grudg
Resen
ude toward good
s of others
Suspicion
Envy
Gratitude
Admiration
Over-i
Spheres of Existence - 2
Sense of
Accomplishment
Humility
S
ri
ttitude toward
Callousness
uffering of others
ttitude toward the
Self-satisfaction
chievement of others Complacency
Competition
Compassion
P
“
E
ttitude toward death Cowardice
nd danger
Courage
ttitude toward
ur own good
eeds
Belittling
Disappointcment
Admiration
Emulation
F
Two Conceptions of Morality
• We can contrast two approaches to the moral
life.
--The childhood conception of moral life
• Comes from outside (usually parents)
• Is negative (“don’t touch that stove burner)
• Rules and habit formation are central.
---The adult conception of morality
• Comes from within (self-directed_
• Is positive (“this is the kind of person I want to be”)
• Virtue centered, often modeled on ideals.
The Purpose of Morality
• Both of these conceptions of morality are
appropriate at different times in life.
• Adolescence and early adulthood is the
time when some people make the
transition from the adolescent
conception of morality to the adult
conception.
Rightly-ordered Desires
• Aristotle draws an interesting contrast between:
• Continent people, who have unruly desires but
manage to control them.
• Temperate people, whose desires are naturally—
or through habit, second-nature—directed
toward that which is good for them.
• Weakness of will (akrasia) occurs when
individuals cannot keep their desires under
control.
Rightly-ordered Desires and the Goals
of Moral Education
• Moral education may initially seek to
control unruly desires through rules, the
formation of habits, etc.
• Ultimately, moral education aims at
forming rightly-ordered desires, that is,
teaching people to desire what is
genuinely good for them.
Character and Human Flourishing
• Aristotle on Human Flourishing
- functional context: a good hammer nails well, a good
guitar is capable of making good music.
- unique properties: for humans reasoning or thinking: for
Aristotle, the contemplative life leads to happiness. Largely
determined by leisure.
- for Aristotle happiness is related to practical wisdom.
Deliberating well promotes flourishing and a recognition of
political conception of happiness – that humans are happy in
a social context.
• Pluralistic approach recognizes humans have many goals,
contemplative and social. Some restraints on goals from
our social and intellectual natures.
Assessing Aristotle’s Account of
Flourishing
• Anti-reductionistic – not lowest common
denominator.
• Holism – other extreme: highest common
denominator. Overemphasis on role of
thinking not totality of human functions.
• Ethics for nobility – ethics for privileged ruling
class, free, adult Greek males.
Contemporary Accounts of Human
Flourishing
• External impediments to human flourishing:
- social factors: economics, architecture of living
and work environments
• Internal Impediments:
- Freud’s or Jung’s balance of psychological
factors
- Maslow’s peak experiences
- we are our own worst enemies; flourishing is
primarily a state of mind rather than a state of
matter.
Aristotle’s Definition of Virtue
•
•
•
•
A habit or disposition of the soul
Involving both feeling and action
To seek the mean in all things relative to us
Where the mean is defined through reason as
the prudent man would define it (EN 2, p.6)
• Virtue leads to happiness or human
flourishing.
Habits of Soul
• According to Aristotle virtue is a hexis, a
dispostion or habit.
• We are not born with virtues. We acquire
them through imitation of role models and
practice.
• Moral education focusses on the development
of character, or what Aristotle calls “soul.”
Feeling and Action
• For Aristotle virtue is not just acting in a
particular way but feeling certain ways.
• Virtue includes emotion as well as action.
• The compassionate person not only helps to
alleviate suffering but has feelings toward others’
suffering.
• Exclusion of feeling from moral consideration led
to problems for Kantian theory, utilitarianism and
egoistic theories. Aristotle’s inclusion of the
emotive character of virtue overcomes this
objection.
Virtue As the Golden Mean
• Strength of character (virtue), Aristotle
suggests, involves finding the proper balance
between two extremes.
--Excess: having too much of something
--Deficiency: having too little of something
• Not mediocrity, but harmony and balance.
• See examples below.
Courage
• The strength of character necessary to continue in
the face of our fears.
-Deficiency: cowardice, the inability to do what is
necessary to have those things in life which we need in
order to flourish.
• Too much fear
• Too little confidence
-Excess: Rashness
* Too little fear.
* Too much confidence
* Poor judgment about ends worth achieving.
Courage and Gender
• Women are not warriors: For Aristotle, women
can’t be courageous in the fullest sense. They
weren’t allowed to fight in wars. Only in 2011
have women been permitted active combat roles
in America.
• Underrecognition of Women’s Courage: Native
American and European pioneer women required
courage. Childbirth requires courage. Courage in
response to emotional and physical abuse.
Developmental challenges of going from girlhood
to womanhood.
Compassion
• Compassion begins in feeling.
• Compassion needs action.
• Moral imagination needed to translate feeling
into action.
• Compassion is not pity – acknowledges a kind
of moral equality.
Self-Love
• Involves feeings as well as acting and knowing.
• Loving Others – wants to see the other
flourish.
• Loving Ourselves – not unconditional selfapproval, involves self-examination and deep
concern for welfare of the self.
• Self-love involves a self that is engaged in the
world.
• Self-love demands self knowledge.
Practical Wisdom or Phronesis
• Application of specific excellence of character
to a particular situation in light of an overall
conception of the good life.
• Knowing how to achieve a particular end and
which ends are worth striving to achieve.
• The virtues are interdependent.
• Practical wisdom is difficult and elusive.
Ethical Pluralism and Practical Wisdom
• Balance competing theories in particular
situations.
• Admit all relevant moral considerations and
seek best balance.
• Act-oriented traditions needed to balance
character ethics. This is practical wisdom.