Abstract
The harmony thesis claims that a virtuous agent will not experience inner conflict or pain when acting. The continent agent, on the other hand, is conflicted or pained when acting virtuously, making him inferior to the virtuous agent. But following Karen Stohr’s counterexample, we can imagine a case like a company owner who needs to fire some of her employees to save her company, where acting with conflict or pain is not only appropriate, but necessary in the situation. This creates a problem for virtue ethicists because the virtue/continence distinction cannot easily be drawn in the case. One solution offered by Stohr is to claim that a virtuous agent will respond with an intensity of feeling corresponding to her correct judgment, whereas a continent agent will miss the mark: he will feel too much or too little pain in response to his correct judgment of value. This demarcation, I argue, is too strict because it entails something like a mean resembling a moral virtue or vice regarding pain, being inconsistent with our ordinary understanding of continence. In dealing with the difficulty, I argue that Aristotle’s (largely neglected) virtue of endurance is better suited to account for the problem case. The following move explains why the case of the company owner is problematic: the company owner was missing a virtue on which we did not have the conceptual resources to elaborate. This points to a deeper problem in virtue ethics (there being an incomplete account of the virtues) that needs to be addressed.
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Notes
See Stohr (2003).
Virtue ethicists commonly subscribe to the additional claim that a virtuous agent should also take pleasure in acting virtuously. But I believe this to be a separate issue, and see no reason why the harmony thesis needs to be committed to this requirement. In this paper I will take the viability and force of the harmony thesis to stand independent of the stronger pleasure requirement.
See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1984a, 1149a20–25).
See McDowell (1979).
See Stohr (2003: p. 344). Stohr describes the inner conflict of the company owner as entailing both the presence of familiar virtues like compassion, kindness and sympathy as well as some deeper virtue or virtues distinct to continence.
See Stohr (2003: p. 347).
Stohr uses the terms noble and shameful interchangeably with choiceworthiness and baseness. But there are notable difficulties regarding the noble and the base in Aristotle. For example, murder, adultery, and theft are base in a different way than bodily pleasures. The latter might be better categorized as ignoble. In this paper I restrict myself to the terms choiceworthy and non-choiceworthy to avoid some of these interpretive difficulties.
See Aristotle (1984a: 1099a10–25).
See Aristotle (1984a: 1104b1–15).
In the situation presented, it is stipulated that the agent cannot perform both A and B, but is required to perform one or the other, where the performance of one excludes the performance of the other. It is also the case that the situation is not dilemmatic; A is clearly the better choice over B (continue to increase the value of A and decrease the value of B if needed to arrive at this conclusion).
An important clarification is in order. I am not claiming that a perfect mean or moral virtue regarding pain is impossible or incoherent, but rather that a discussion of continence is unable to do the work or properly capture this perfect mean or moral virtue. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics for pointing out the importance of this clarification.
For an in depth discussion on the defect of the incontinent agent see Rorty (1980).
See Aristotle (1984a: 1125b5–11).
See Aristotle (1984a: 1125b25–30).
Aristotle (1984a) ultimately reduces the pleasures of taste to touch, making it one sense rather than two. (See 1118a25–1118b1) For convenience, I am treating taste and touch as two distinct senses, with their objects being food, drink, and sex, respectively.
See Aristotle (1984a: 1118a1–16).
See Aristotle (1984a: 1119a1–5). It should be noted that Aristotle also claims that taste and touch are unique in being the most bestial of the bodily pleasures (1118b1–5), but this is not very helpful in understanding why continence/incontinence should to be limited to objects of these senses.
Aristotle (1984a) provides support for this claim when he says, “Now there can be too much of bodily goods, and the bad man is bad by virtue of pursuing the excess, not by virtue of pursuing the necessary pleasures (for all men enjoy in some way or other both dainty foods and wines and sexual intercourse, but not all men do so as they ought). The contrary is the case with pain; for he does not avoid the excess of it, he avoids it altogether; for the alternative to excess of pleasure is not pain, except to the man who pursues this excess.” (1154a15–21)
This will not necessarily follow for choiceworthy goods, only non-choiceworthy goods.
I am taking εγκράτεια to be equivalent to continence in this passage. But other interpretations are possible. The passage continues: “Again, lack of self-control and softness are not the same thing. For softness and the soft person is he who does not undergo pains—not all of them, but such as any one else would undergo, if he had to; whereas the incontinent man is he who is not able to endure pleasures, but succumbs to them and lets himself be led by them.” (1202b32–36)
I should acknowledge that my disagreement with Stohr, to her credit, could be viewed as a disagreement over which terminology to use. I argue that endurance best captures the problem case. Stohr argues that continence best captures the problem case. But we both arrive at very similar conclusions: mainly that an agent who fails to feel the appropriate amount of pain in the case is morally defective.
See Aristotle (1984a: 1151b32–1152a5).
References
Aristotle. 1984a. Nicomachean ethics. Trans. W.D. Ross. In The complete works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1729–1867. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Aristotle. 1984b. Eudemian ethics. Trans. Joseph Solomon. In The complete works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1922–1981. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Aristotle. 1984c. Magna moralia. Trans. St. George Stock. In The complete works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1868–1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Foot, Philippa. 1978. Virtues and vices. In Virtues and vices and other essays in moral philosophy, ed. Philippa Foot, 1–18. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1999. On virtue ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McDowell, John. 1979. Virtue and reason. Monist 62: 331–350.
Rorty, Amelie. 1980. Akrasia and pleasure: Nicomachean ethics book 7. In Essays on Aristotle’s ethics, ed. Amelie Rorty, 267–284. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stohr, Karen. 2003. Moral cacophony: When continence is a virtue. Journal of Ethics 7: 339–363.
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Schroeder, N. The Problem of Continence in Contemporary Virtue Ethics. J Ethics 19, 85–104 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9189-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9189-7