Abstract
I sketch and respond to Ryan Byerly’s distinction between a Value-Based Approach to assessing proposed accounts of a virtue-here, humility-and what he calls a Counterexample Based Approach. My first section, on method, argues that, though distinct, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive and answer different questions. Engaging his claim that the former approach is superior to the latter, I suggest that we apply Byerly’s own idea that there are different kinds of value to show, contra Byerly, each approach may be better than the other in different ways, and for different purposes. Adapting and applying a point from Aristotle and Aquinas, I suggest that Byerly’s core question--what kind of values a virtue has--may rely on a mistake, that of misunderstanding a virtue’s work of making people and things good as its possessing goodness itself. My latter section, on results, points out difficulties for Byerly's altruistic conception of humility and defends my own view, developed in an earlier “Philosophia” article, that humility is essentially a matter of remaining unimpressed with oneself. I conclude by (apologetically) engaging and rebutting Byerly’s contention that his analysis of humility best captures a certain religious view.
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Notes
Byerly 2014
Garcia (2006), “On Being Unimpressed with Oneself.”
Drawing on recent literature, Byerly distinguishes instrumental from non-instrumental value, derivative from non-derivative (non-instrumental) value, and special from non-special value. He also distinguishes monistic from pluralistic conceptions of (again, only non-instrumental) value. This summary of purported distinctions within types of value strikes me as generally clear and informed. Unfortunately, Byerly seems not consistently to remember that the monistic/pluralistic contrast is not really a distinction among types of value, but among types of value-theory. He promises at the outset, for example, he will “articulate five important distinctions concerning ways a trait may be valuable,” and also “distinguish between [sic] several ways in which traits virtuous may be valuable” (Byerly 2014, pp. 890, 891). Of course, to differentiate monistic conceptions of what has value (think of the early utilitarians’ hedonism, for example) from pluralistic ones (think of Moore’s plurality of things supposedly bearing intrinsic value in chapter six of Principia Ethica.) is not to distinguish differing “ways a trait may be valuable.”
An anonymous referee suggested to me this way of interpreting Byerly.
I cannot help observing that, though my article serves as Byerly’s Exhibit A for CBA, my fourth section there takes pains to acknowledge various good points in the accounts I reject, sometimes including ways in which the traits they advance may hold benefits.
This formulation could, I suppose, instead suggest that trait T1 became a virtue along a different causal route from that taken by T2.
Byerly’s talk of a trait having “multiple versions” sounds to me like expressing in what used to be called ‘material mode’ (i.e., about things) a point that philosophers more commonly express in ‘formal mode’ (about words) by saying a certain trait-term has multiple senses. So understood, his position is not at all unusual, and it would be absurd to think her using a method that relies on counterexamples commits someone to denying it. Byerly’s terminology, however, leaves open the interesting possibilities that some “versions” may not correspond to any use of the relevant word, and may even have no corresponding term in our language. More problematically, the material mode raises the question what so unites the various (sub)traits as to make them different “versions” of the same trait.
Envious of science’s prestige, some philosophers have recently repudiated conceptual analysis and its appeal to intuitions and endorsed empirical and therein inductive, methods. (I draw here on a talk I heard from Stephen Stich, presented at the 2014 Rutgers Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy.) Some of this work is embarrassing, marred by poor procedures: inadequate sample sizes, faulty survey “instruments,” failed attempts to randomize, egregiously overstated conclusions, and so on. Even without that, much of it merely attempts to show our pre-theoretic intuitions about ethics, language, grammar, knowledge, truth, etc., can be influenced by altering the subject’s circumstances, a feature such intuition shares with sense perception, as the Gestalt psychologists used to show. In having recourse to such intuitions, then, philosophers, need to show due caution, as we all should in believing what we see or hear. It is difficult to see such meager results of ‘X-phil’ as significant findings.
Where those flaws are avoided, there remains the deeper puzzle of why these philosophers eagerly trade apriorism, which brings with it the luster of association with the nonpareil rigor and apodicticity of mathematics and logic, for the dubious ways of such ‘soft sciences’ as quantitative psychology–which usually don’t attempt, and never achieve–even reliable nomological generalizations of human behavior.
“[V]irtue is not called good because it itself is good, but because by it something else [i.e., what possesses it] is good. That is why virtue need not be good by another goodness, as if it were informed by another goodness” (Thomas Aquinas 1999, art. 2, ad 2) Aquinas seems here to anticipate and explicit reject Byerly’s idea that a virtue must itself value of one or more kinds. Rather, in the saint’s view, we merely call virtues ‘good’, by which we mean that they are good-making (whether causally or constitutively). It’s worth noting that he doesn’t criticize this usage, though it has potential to mislead. (In fact, he makes this point in the course of defending Augustine’s understanding of virtue as “a good quality of mind whereby we live rightly, which no one misuses, and that God works within us without us.”)
Aquinas’ point seems to me persuasive, and it helpfully removes the temptation to pursue the, arguably, blind alley of inquiring into the types of goodness by which a virtue is good. For the virtue “need not be,” and is not, thus “good by another goodness.” A follower of Wittgenstein might well regard the project Byerly undertakes in his article as an example of the philosopher’s bewitchment by language against which their leader warned.
Aristotle is explicit that it is “the excellence of the eye [that] makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. Similarly the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and good at running and at carrying its rider [etc.]” (N.E., 1106a30; Ross’s trans.). So, its virtue, then, makes this eye a good eye, i.e., good as an eye, and its work, seeing, to be good, that is, good seeing. Likewise, its possessing such virtues-of-horse as speed and stamina make this horse to be good qua horse. We should take care not to be misled by Ross’s translation, which has Aristotle say that its virtue makes the horse “good in itself.” What The Peripatetic means is that its virtues are what make the horse good as what it is, i.e., make it (to be) a good horse. He further affirms that possessing that virtue/excellence also makes the horse’s running and carrying, its characteristic work, to be good running and good carrying.
Note that this further point about an adjunctive use of ‘good’ underlying virtue-discourse blocks any attempt to save Byerly’s larger point by allowing that, when he says a certain virtue has instrumental value, we construe him as asserting it equips its bearer to attain other goods. For such equipment is not a way of making her a good human being, good qua human being.
I sketch such a role-centered account of virtues-based moral theory in several writings, most recently, Garcia, 2015.
I suppose he would say that the way I sketch of showing the trait with which I identify humility to be a moral virtue constitutes an argument for its “instrumental value.” I’m reluctant to accept that designation, since my point is not that humility, so conceived, has a certain kind of goodness itself, but that having it causally contributes to its possessor being a good F (e.g., a good friend), where being a good friend cannot be analyzed as being a friend that possesses goodness.
The author’s so-called “ameliorative” value is better, more illuminatingly, classified as corrective or reparative because after all, any good-making feature will tend to make its bearer better, improved, and therein ameliorated for having it. The point here is whether it improves specifically by redressing or fixing some defect, flaw, or fault.
Byerly does his work on virtues no favor by relying on Nancy Snow’s recourse to people who have no faults. Even if such humans are possible, appeal to them cannot explain how openness to shame or guilt feelings, inclination to apology, remorse, reparation, self-reform, etc. are admirable features, since none of these makes sense in someone faultless.
Note that, in my “Being Unimpressed with Oneself,” I cited the very Scripture passage on which Byerly’s argument here relies, viz., Philippians 2: 3–7, though my own reference was only parenthetical and in a note.
Note that the heavenly blessed can still be (and, I believe, are) unimpressed with themselves, for other reasons–their consciousness of their failures in earthly life, their cognizance of God’s help, their awe at God’s infinitely greater goodness, etc.–though not from awareness of their current flaws. This accords with the core of my own account to humility, so they would pose no counter-example to it, even if it were extended to cover humans’ afterlife.
“Have this in mind among yourself, which was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. And being found in human form, he humbled himself . . .” (R.S.V.)
I note that, in the recent English translation of a work written a decade before his ascension to the Petrine office, then-cardinal Bergoglio contrasted humility with “corruption,” of which he writes, “Corrupt people are those who have built up their self-esteem . . .” He adds that they are “wrapped up in their self-sufficiency” and “feel comfortable and happy” (Bergoglio 2014, pp. 12-13). That, again, sounds like the future pope was saying that people without humility are impressed with themselves. (Intending no argument from ecclesiastic authority, I leave it to the reader to complete this piece of reasoning.)
Let me add a few additional points in closing. Pace Byerly, it’s hard to see how the (pre-incarnate) Christ could be humble by Byerly’s own standard, since God (the Son) has no good (i.e., thriving, flourishing) to subordinate to others’, as his account of humility demands. Rather, it would seem that, if the pre-incarnate Christ really is humble, it is more in His accepting His lowly, humble station as a mortal man than in His altruistically putting others’ good above His own. Additionally, it is widely acknowledged that we describe humans and God in the same terms only by analogy, not employing them univocally. So, even if we can properly call both some merely human beings and also Christ humble, we should not expect a philosophical analysis of humility exactly to fit both us and God (the Son). In any case, this passage of St. Paul’s plainly cannot be read literally, since in it he also tells us all to regard others as superior to, i.e., better than, ourselves. Since it obviously cannot be true of everyone that other people are better than she is, we read the Apostle here literally only if we take him to be urging logically false belief on us.
References
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Byerly, R. T. (2014). Values and varieties of humility. Philosophia, 42(4), 889–910.
Driver, J. (2001). Uneasy virtue. Oxford University Press.
Garcia, J. L. A. (2006). Being unimpressed with ourselves: Reconceiving humility. Philosophia, 34, 417–435.
Garcia, J. L. A. (2015). “Roles and virtues,” In M. Slote and L. Besser-Jones (Eds.) Routledge handook of virtue ethics. Routledge. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415659338/. Accessed 07 Feb 2015.
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Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford University Press.
Aquinas, T. (1999). Disputed questions on virtue. Trans. Ralph McInerny. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Editor, Asa Kasher, for his encouragement, and to Mr. Matthew Ray and Ms. Carlin Menzin for assisting my research. An anonymous referee also offered suggestions.
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Garcia, J.L.A. Methods and Findings in the Study of Virtues: Humility. Philosophia 43, 325–335 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9582-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9582-x