Virtue according to Aristotle
Virtue is a state (2.5)
There are 3 things in the soul that virtue could be:
- Feeling (pathe)
- Capacity (dunamis)
- State/Disposition (bexis)
Virtue is a state because it is a characteristic of a given motivational capacity that makes the capacity be disposed towards certain feelings or actions.
Virtue is concerted with decision (2.4)
- What is decision?
- Decision is a commitment, a desire to perform some action to sake of some goal. This desire is reached usually by deliberation about how to promote or achieve the goal.
- The goal for which one performs the action reveals one's reasons for performing the action. Decisions are thus reflections of our characters.
- Since moral virtue concers our motivation, it also concerns our decisions.
[[Doctrine of the Mean]]
Moral Virtues
[[Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue]]
Acquisition of Moral Virtues
Example
If you are fed a lot of broccoli as a child, you will end up liking broccoli in adulthood.
→ You have to LIKE doing a virtuous action to be virtous. Virtue of character is concerned with pleasures and pains. (NE 2.3 1104b4-14)
Gaps
Doing something for external reward doesn't necesarrily start the jump to appreaciate a thing for its own sake. if you give someone a reward for something for a long time and it stops, the person likely isn't going to continue doing that thing. Stoics have an answer to that.
If you repeat something a lot, you might as well start disliking it and be fed up with it. Aristotle just assumes you'll like it.
Problem of Habituation in Aristotle's Idea of Virtue
from NE 2.4
Argument that leads to the puzzle:
- Virtue is acquired by perofrming virtuous actions (e.g., we become just by acting justly).
- Actions flow from character: for example, we act justly, when we are just.
- In general, we act virtuously, when we are virtuous.
- Hence, in order to perform virtous actions, we must be virtuous.
- If virtue is acquired, it cannot be acquired by performing virtuous actions
Aristotle's Response
He distinguishes between virtuous actions (or acting virtuously) and virtuous actions done in the way in which virtuous person would do them (or virtuous actions done virtuously).
- In craft: someone can be said to be in a possession of craft if:
-
- They produce correct products
-
- They do so by using their knowledge of the craft.
-
- (1) could occur by chance or by merely following instructions
- Why not? Because
- They could be acting from ulterior purposes (this does not matter for caft, but it does matter for virtue).
- They could be acting on some one-time impulse.
How to perform virtuous actions virtuously
In order to perform virtuous actions virtuously one must:
- do them knowingly;
- deliberately choose/decide on them and do so because of (those actions) themselves;
- do them from a stable and unchangeable state.
Example
I decide to bake bread, does it meant that (if my decision is to be virtuous) I have to decide to bake it for the sake of baking?
Considering [[Virtuous Motivation]]
Example
If John bakes bread so as to make profit, trying to minimize costs and maximize profits we could say that he bakes bread for ulterior purposes that are neither praiseworthy or admirable if not in fact immoral.
If John bakes bread so as to feed those who are hungry - we could say that his motive or purpose is in fact a good one. It also becomes: Admirable (not usual), Praiseworthy (beneficial) and thus makes it's purpose kalon (the fine)
To choose to bake bread in order to feed the hungry (i.e. for a fine goal) just is to choose it for the sake of the goal for which breadbaking exists (and so for itself)
Virtuous Motivation
Aristotle uses two experssions to characterize virtuous persons:
- The virtuous agent decides on virtuous 'for themselves'.
- The virtuous agent's decisions aim at
[[the fine]].
Important for [[Problem of Habituation in Aristotle's Idea of Virtue]]
The fine
(to Kalon) in ordinary greek: beauty
According to Aristotle and Plato
moral/ethical beauty (the noble/the fine)
- It connotes something that is not only good but also exceptionally worthwhile and praiseworthy.
- For example, these can be human perfections or achievements when these are admirably or beneficial. It can also be something that is generally recognized to be hard to do/ahieve, but is, at the same time, worthwhile
Doctrine of the Mean
According to [[Aristotle]]
Virtue is lying in a mean relative to us (EN 2.4-9, esp 4,6,8-9):
- 1106a30ff:"By the mean relative to us I mean that which is neither too much nor too little - and this is not one, nor the same for all."
- 1106b18-28: "We can be afraid for instance, or be confident, or have appetites, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well. But having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is a proper virtue. Similarly, actions also admit excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition ... Virtue, then is a mean, insofar as it aims at what is intermediate"
How to determine the mean?
1109b14-23: Such things depend on particular facts, and the judgment rests with perception.
Intellectual Virtues
Types
(similar to [[Wissen#Wissensschichten]])
- Theoretical Thinking → Scientific knowledge
- It aims at the truth by which Aristotle understands possession of explanation of given phenomena
- Productive Thinking → Craft Knowledges
- It aims at finding out how to construct things - its results are recipes of production
[[Practical Thinking according to Aristotle]]→[[Practical Wisdom according to Aristotle]]
Practical Thinking according to Aristotle
Book 6 is concerned with this
- It aims at living well or good living
- It is concerned with finding out what would best promote such living
- In its full-fledged form, it cannot be divorced from motivation - if one knows what is good but one does not desire it, one is not practically wise.
From NE 3.2-4
It is DELIBERATION
It is an inquirey about how to promote or achieve some goal or end that one desires to achieve (that one wishes for)
Its result: DECISION
A desire, arrived at by deliberation, to perform an action for the sake of a desired goal (say, to exercise for the sake of health)
Its Goal: truth, in practical matters, that is to find the right goal or end.
Implications
- The initial desire needs to be correct (this is provided by virtue)
- That one's deliberation is appropriately sensitive to all the relevant concertns
- That one choose the correct action that will in fact promote the goal and that one does so for the right reasons (i.e., not by chance)
Practical Wisdom according to Aristotle
Summary
the ability to figure out what the right thing to do is
Practical Wisdom is 'a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man' (NE Vl.5)
Unlike theoretical knowledge, practical wisdom involves, essentially, desire to act on one's knowledge of what is [[Good and bad]]
Features of it
- a general conception of what is good or bad, which Aristotle relates to the conditions for human flourishing;
- the ability to perceive, in light of that general conception, what is required in terms of feeling, choice, and action in a particular situation
- the ability to deliberate well; and
- the ability to act on that deliberation
[[Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue]]
Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue
- Aristotle says that they cannot exist apart.
- Why:
- Moral Virtue supplies the goals
- Practical Wisdom helps us to figure out how to achieve them but can also help us to reassess them
- Moral Virtue supplies the motivation to act on one's practical knowledge
- Hence, one cannot be practically wise without being virtuous and vice versa.
Example
A person might give an argument for what is virtuous that is very good. But a person without practical wisdom would ignore it, because they don't have the capacity to deliberate it