AREA DE DOCENCIA E INVESTIGACION

Now that we have a general understanding of flourishing as the human telos, though we do not have much of the content of that telos, further exploration of the concept of virtue, or excellence, and how it operates within the teleological scheme is needed. How does Aristotle define virtue or excellence? In book II of NE, Aristotle argues that virtues are not feelings, nor are they capacities because ‘we do not become good or bad by nature’ (NE 1106a 8-9) and we are not praised or blamed for how we feel without qualification, only for how we express that emotion and act on it; for example, being angry in a certain way. As such, virtues are a result of rational choices — how we direct emotions through reasoning to be in a certain state. Excellence of moral character, it turns out, requires the person also to be practically wise. However, virtue is not just a state of being, for Aristotle, but a certain kind of state. His first definition of the virtue of a human being then is ‘the state that makes a human being good and makes him perform his characteristic activity well’ (NE 1106a 23-4). However, this definition is incomplete.

Aristotle also explains how this happens by reference to the mean, or that middle point which is neither excessive nor deficient. The mean in this context is not fixed, as it is in arithmetic, but is relative to us and as such is not one single thing or the same for all. In particular, Aristotle is interested in the virtues of character because ‘it is this that is concerned with feelings and actions, and it is in these that we find excess, deficiency and the mean’ (NE 1106b 16-8). To have the right feelings ‘at the right time, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way is the mean and best; and this is the business of virtue’ (NE 1106b 21-3). Aristotle also claims that it is

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possible for there to be an excess and deficiency in actions and it is with both feeling and action that virtue is concerned. His second more complete definition of virtue then is:

A state involving rational choice, consisting in a mean relative to us and determined by reason – the reason, that is, by reference to which the practically wise person would determine it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, the other of deficiency. It is a mean also in that some vices fall short of what is right in feelings and actions and others exceed it, while virtue both attains and chooses the mean (NE 1106b35 – 1107a6) [emphasis added].

Hitting the target of the mean is difficult because, Aristotle claims, badness is unlimited whereas people can only get things right in one way (though that one way is relative to the person, and her emotions, and the context). It also seems important to realise that even though Aristotle distinguishes between the moral and intellectual virtues, between the condition of desire and the condition of the mind, these two aspects of human excellence are inseparable. The training of desires and instincts to form a settled character requires practical reason. The good life is thus achieved through possession of the virtues which direct human activity towards good ends. However, it is not a simple means-ends relationship. The exercise of the virtues is not simply one means that human beings can choose to bring about a desired end (MacIntyre 1985, 149). Rather the exercise of the virtues is a constitutive part of a whole human life, lived at its best, ‘not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life’ (1985, 149). Now we can see how ethics is the science which enables human beings to move from a state of untutored human nature to ‘man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realised-his-telos’.

Aristotle is keen to identify the best life with what his audience already hold in esteem or consider to be pleasurable activities, and then ‘expends his efforts in establishing that what is most eudaimonistic is what is lastingly admirable rather than most sensually and subjectively pleasurable’ (Knight 2007, 14). He does not deny pleasure; on the contrary, he claims that activity which is most in accordance with virtue is also pleasurable.

Aristotle recognises that humans are political animals who are not self-sufficient individuals and therefore spend most of their time engaged in practical rather than contemplative activity. Moral character cannot be improved through contemplation of abstract forms as Plato believed. Thus the practical activity, or praxis, of politics which involves the hierarchical ordering of all other forms of activity towards the human good of flourishing is the highest form of activity after theoria (contemplation). While theoria requires the exercise of theoretical wisdom (sophia), praxis requires practical wisdom

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(phronesis). The form of human activity which is lower than both of these, according to Aristotle, is production (poiesis), which requires technical expertise (techne). However, techne differs from practical and theoretical wisdom for Aristotle because he considers it to be a capacity, rather than an activity or virtue, which may or may not be acted upon and may be used for good or bad ends (Knight 2007, 18). Productive and craft activity is therefore used analogously and is not actually a form of excellence according to Aristotle.

Techne refers to the skill of the craft, the end being the transformation of an artefact rather than the human being.⁸ Sophia and phronesis on the other hand can only be for the human good.

MacIntyre is critical of Aristotle’s belief that praxis and poiesis are lower forms of human activity and cannot fully actualise human potential in the way that theoria can. Instead, he reconceptualises Aristotle’s idea of goods internal and external to the human being and applies them to the idea of a human practice. For MacIntyre’s conception of a practice, goods are internal or external to this or that particular social practice, though, according to Knight, this does not mean that there are not goods internal and external to human beings as well. While internal goods denotes ‘goods internal to practices’, Knight claims that it also connotes goods internal to human beings qua practitioners (Knight 2008b). According to Knight, this does not lead to a contradiction because MacIntyre’s

‘idea is that the goods internal to practices exist prior to the participation of individual practitioners but that participation in those practices involves practitioners internalizing those goods’ (Knight 2008b, 114). MacIntyre elaborates his account into a coherent moral critique of liberal modernity; central to MacIntyre’s critique is the notion of a practice (Knight 2007). Thus (re)productive activity, or activity which requires technical skill, can still be ethically educative because it often requires the exercise of virtue in order to be carried out well, for example, a parent needs more than a set of skills in order to be a good parent. Skills are essentially goods of effectiveness for MacIntyre because they provide us with the potential to act for the good. Also included in goods of effectiveness are goods external to practices such as money, power and status. Again, these may enable us to do good acts or bad ones.

What, then, is the significance for Aristotle of goods, either internal or external? Having a good character is not a guarantee of eudaimonia, though one cannot be fulfilled without

8 See Tom Angier’s Techne in Aristotle’s Ethics: Crafting the Moral Life for the importance of the concept of craft in Aristotle’s ethical approach (Angier 2010).

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living a life in accordance with the virtues or excellences. Aristotle refers to those things that are instrumental for living well as external goods. Of these, the highest good is honour because honour is something bestowed upon us by others when we have done a noble act (NE 4.3 1123b 20-21). According to Aristotle external goods also include wealth or money, political power, leisure, friends, slaves and one’s children (Knight 2007, 26). If these external goods are pursued as ends in themselves, then one’s flourishing will be frustrated. Thus, according to Aristotle, if someone lies about herself because she takes pleasure in falsehood then she is ineffectual; if she does so for the sake of reputation (honour or status being external goods) then she is to be censured; but the one who lies for the sake of profit (also an external good) is, according to Aristotle, the more disgraceful figure (NE 4.7 1127b10-13). However, if a person is truthful about her life and possessions, it is ‘by virtue of being such by disposition’ (NE 4.7 1127b3). A virtuous disposition is simply the habituation of, or tendency towards, excellence in one’s character. However, according to Rosalind Hursthouse, virtue also must include having certain motivations or reasons for one’s actions rather than there simply being a tendency to act in a certain way. For example, having the virtue of compassion ‘includes being moved by the suffering of others and treating their suffering as a reason for acting and not acting in certain ways’ (Hursthouse 2002, 48).

Thus the person who always practices truth-telling about herself and her life will not have to try hard to tell the truth each day but will do so by virtue of the excellence of her character, because that is who she is and because she is motivated by good reasons to do so. It is this kind of person that will flourish according to Aristotelian thought. However, Aristotle does not deny that wealth and influence improve one’s chances of living a flourishing life: a vagrant, for example, will not have the opportunity to live a flourishing life. MacIntyre similarly argues that practices cannot survive without external goods to sustain them in the pursuit of internal goods; however, the pursuit of these goods as ends in themselves will corrupt practices. MacIntyre uses a distinctly Aristotelian framework to make his claims. When Aristotle refers to internal and external goods it is usually in relation to some individual i.e. the goods are internal or external to him or herself.

However, for MacIntyre philosophy presupposes sociology and Aristotle is no exception.

MacIntyre thus points to the goods internal and external to practices where the good life is pursued in a plurality of ways. Furthermore, goods are teleologically ordered towards

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the highest good so that external goods are instrumental to the achievement of internal goods. Internal goods are good in themselves and, therefore, constitutive of a good life.

The highest internal good is that for the sake of which all other goods are ordered. For the Aristotelian, this highest good is human flourishing, or eudaimonia, as argued towards the beginning of this chapter. MacIntyre appeals to the virtues because a person habituated to the virtues, through a practice, has trained their desires to enjoy what is good and most noble. That person seeks what is good for this particular practice and what is good in general. The former is hierarchically ordered towards the latter and if anyone pursues external goods for their own sake ‘they would be making a mistake about what is good for humans’ (Keat 2008, 47).