Philosophy 051-01

January 30, 2002

 

1. The virtuous-person criterion is problematic.  Instead: The doctrine of the mean.  II.5-6.  Virtue is not a feeling, since feelings are neither good or bad as far as they go, but are only good or bad in a context, whereas virtue is always good.  Sometimes anger is good and sometimes anger is bad.  Virtue is not a capacity for some specific feeling either, for the same reason.  Moreover, feelings are not the sort of thing one decides on.

·        Virtue is a state: “what we have when we are well or badly off in relation to feelings.”  It is a state.

·        Note: We are talking of virtues of character, not intellectual virtues, which is why Aristotle doesn’t consider the possibility of virtue being a thought.  The only three options he sees for virtue is feeling, capacity for feeling and state, because this kind of virtue is in the appetitive part of the soul, since it is this part of the soul that directly drives action (with its desires hopefully being ruled by reason).

·        By definition, virtue is what makes a human being function well.  Then, virtue, Aristotle says, is an intermediate state between two unvirtuous extremes.  Not being too angry and not being not angry enough.

·        Aristotle makes a crucial distinction between something being “intermediate in the object” (or “objective intermediate”) and “intermediate relative to us” (or “contextual intermediate”).  If ten pounds of food is a lot, and two pounds are too little, then the “objective intermediate” is six pounds.   But maybe that is the wrong amount for us.  Different people need different amounts.  So you need to look at the contextual intermediate, i.e., what is neither too much in your context or too little in your context.  And that might be five pounds, say.

·        Virtue is the contextual intermediate, it is what is neither too much nor too little in the circumstances.  (Note:  Aristotle believes in absolute morals.  This means that in the same circumstances the same thing is going to be virtuous, whoever is doing it.  But there are some things that are right in some circumstances but not in others.  (And there are some things that are wrong in all circumstances: E.g., torturing children just to hear them scream.))

·        Some people think that Aristotle just means to measure the extremes and find what is between them.  They are wrong.

·        Virtue is the contextual intermediate state, one tied to decision, and defined by reason, the reason of a phronimos.  (Explain.)

·        Individual virtues.  II.7.  Aristotle says to look at the chart.  I made my own version of the chart.

·        Some terms have built-in valuations.  E.g., murder, courage, etc.  The “mean” is best understood as doing the action in the circumstances which are right for it, avoiding the “excess” of doing it in too many circumstances and the “lack” of doing it in too few circumstances.  There are, however, no circumstances when murder is wrong or adultery is acceptable.  There is no such thing as being murderous “in the right way” or committing adultery “with the right woman.” 

o       However, Aristotle has no problem with such facts, because the word “murder” already carries in the implication that the killing is of the wrong people and hence is not in the mean: legitimate self-defense is not murder.  “Adultery” already includes in it the claim that the act is done with the wrong person, and hence is not the mean which is, presumably, sexual union with one’s spouse—adultery is “too much sex” and there can’t be a “just the right amount of too much”.  Likewise “the virtue of courage” carries with it the implication that we are already at the mean, and hence cannot be carried to an extreme.  For, “courage” is “the right mean between cowardice and foolhardiness” and you cannot be “too much just right or too much in the mean”, since the mean is already, by definition, the mean.

·        But there is a bigger problem with some things like truth-telling.  Aristotle’s brief account of it is rather unhappy.  Suppose you’re asked what shape the earth is and you say “round”.  What is that virtuous act of yours a mean between? 

o       Aristotle says that truthfulness is the mean between self-deprecation and boasting.  But if you say the earth is “round”, that is surely not between self-deprecation and boasting.

o       Note, however, that the account works better if we think in terms of character traits.  For instance, the character trait of truthfulness in regard to the earth’s shape is a mean between erring in the direction of the more amazing (the earth is actually donut shaped) and erring in the direction of the less amazing (the earth is flat).

o       Or maybe honesty is a mean between blabbering everything you know—telling too much truth, including secrets—and telling too little truth, namely telling falsehoods.

·        A problem that came up in the middle ages for this doctrine was with reconciling it with Christian ideas that one should love everyone as much as possible.  That certainly seems an extreme, and hence Aristotle might rule it out as a virtue.  Discussion.  Three options: Reject Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, reject the idea that one should love everyone, or construe love as a mean in a different way: e.g., the good one does for someone should be a mean between rendering them unhealthily overdependent on one and not helping them in their need.

2. Aristotle, NE, Virtue and bravery.

• Even though virtue is not a feeling, it has to do with feelings.  Virtue is a permanent state that makes one have the right feelings in the right circumstances (II.5).
• III.6ff.  Aristotle doesn’t just define bravery as a lack of fear.  Sometimes, he says, fear is appropriate.  It’s appropriate to be afraid of doing bad things to women and children, he tells us.  (Compare C. S. Lewis’s point that none of the instincts is always bad and none of the instincts is always good.)  According to Aristotle, the same goes for emotions.
• Rather, the brave person “stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right purpose, in the right way, at the right time, and is correspondingly confident” (1115b15-20).
• The brave person knows what things are really worth and his feelings and actions are in accord with this knowledge.  Thus, he knows that a death in battle is not really as bad as shamefully running away, and so he does not really desire to run away.  Though, if the danger is great, he does feel fear, and this is appropriate because death is indeed a bad thing, and bad things should be reacted to with fear.  However, this fear should not make him run away, because cowardice is worse than death.
• The brave person is willing to face death, but not for cowardly reasons, such as avoiding pain.  (Euthanasia was cowardly according to Aristotle.)

4. Decision, deliberation and the voluntary.  “Involuntary” = you wouldn’t want to do the action, you do not contribute anything to the action at all because you are forced or the action comes from ignorance, from you not knowing what the action is (giving poison thinking it is water).  III.1.

·        The case of “forcing” is one where you do not at all have a role in the action.  Your body is just an instrument in someone else’s action.  Say, you’re standing behind somebody who is standing over a cliff, and someone pushes you.  Then your body pushes the victim’s body over the cliff.  But you haven’t done anything.

·        Aristotle distinguishes “forcing” and “compelling”.  If I say: “If you don’t do such and such, I will kill you,” I may be compelling you to do it.  But I am not forcing you, because your body isn’t just an instrument.  You still control it.  You can resist if you choose.  You are free to choose to suffer the consequences or not.  It may be that the right choice is to do an action that otherwise you would not do.  But it was still you who did it.  Another example was throwing cargo overboard in storms.  Though normally the captain would be criticized for it, under the circumstances this was the right thing to do, and the captain might even deserve praise for it.

·        Aristotle notes that there are some things that one should never do, regardless of what compulsion is brought to play.  He gives the example of killing one’s mother—Alcmaeon did that, to avenge his father’s death which his mother had a hand in.

·        Aristotle says that some conditions “overstrain the human nature”.  Then, the compelled action is still wrong, but one should forgive or pardon the person who did it.

·        Moreover, he adds, it’s sometimes hard to judge what goods one should preserve at what cost.

·        Aristotle says that there is a distinction between an action being done in ignorance and it being done by ignorance.  By: ignorance is the cause of your action.   In: you are ignorant.  If you get drunk and do something bad, then you are doing this bad thing in ignorance—you don’t know what you’re doing.  But you’re not doing it by ignorance.  Ignorance is not the cause of this.  Getting drunk is.  So you are to blame, Aristotle says, because you chose to get drunk.  He notes a law which prescribes double penalties for this.  Explain.  Is this a good law?

·        [Nonvoluntary vs. involuntary.  This is an action done in ignorance but not out of ignorance.]

·        Voluntary action: When you wish for an end, and deliberate about and decide what promotes the end, and then do those things that promote the end because they promote the end.

·        By this condition, when you throw the cargo overboard you are acting voluntarily.  But if you’re pushed against someone, you are not acting voluntarily.