Abstract
The globalism objection poses two distinct challenges to Aristotelian views of virtue. On the one hand, the consistency thesis demands that a virtue is behaviorally expressed in a wide range of trait-relevant situations. On the other hand, the evaluative integration thesis suggests that the presence of one virtue increases the probability of other, similar virtues, posing a problem for Aristotle’s reciprocity of the virtues thesis. I show that, by contrast to contemporary Aristotelian views and views attributed to Aristotle, Aristotle’s own theory of virtue escapes the globalism objection. I address the consistency thesis by showing that each of Aristotle’s moral virtues are narrower than commonly assumed. I then address the evaluative integration thesis through a discussion of practical wisdom (phronēsis), showing that Aristotle believed one could fall short of perfect virtue (the perfect possession of each virtue united by practical wisdom), while still being fully virtuous (where one’s possession of practical wisdom may be local). The upshot is that, despite idealizations of virtue throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle held a realistic account of virtue, one that is different from contemporary Aristotelian views, and one that is empirically adequate insofar as it allows for more than a few virtuous people.
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Notes
Owen Flanagan describes the minimal requirement for psychological realism in this way (1991, p. 32).
Further, many theorists in the Aristotelian tradition unambiguously hold that virtue is possible (cf. McDowell (1996) and Annas (2011). By contrast, see Blum (1994) for the kind of view where virtue is limited to a select few, but that, as an ideal, can be reflected upon in order to improve one’s state.
This is not to ignore the fact that virtue is often idealized, especially in EN. But, that Aristotle makes use of virtue as an ideal should not overshadow the fact that he does have a realistic conception of virtue that is less stringent. Much hinges on this realistic conception and I take this topic up in Sect. 3.
Cf. Miller (2013) for discussion of the studies.
Kamtekar (2004) takes this approach, arguing that integration of character is an achievement of practical wisdom.
Aristotle and many Aristotelians hold that virtue is rare. See Russell (2015) for an exception.
Cf. EN 1156a20, 1156b13, 1156b19, 1157a14, 1158b5, 1158b10, 1159b5-10, and 1164a12-13.
Hence the title of his article: “The Nonexistence of Character Traits” (2000).
(pp. 18–23). Doris presents the objection in full, though it is mentioned previously by Gilbert Harman: “Aristotle... describes the ordinary conception of such character traits. They are relatively long-term stable dispositions to act in distinctive ways” (1999, p. 166). More recently, Doris has acknowledged that a deeper analysis of Aristotle’s texts might evade the criticisms, but claims this is unimportant since current views labeled Aristotelian do not (2015b, p. 108).
Her possession of courage will also not tell us anything about whether she possesses other traits like justice. Doris sets aside questions of evaluative integration given that most contemporary Aristotelians reject it, but he does claim that the available evidence undermines this feature as well.
Miller is just one example of a philosopher who thinks psychological situations are more explanatory of people’s traits and behavior than nominal situations. He argues that taking into account how a situation appears to a particular person is more significant and accounts for global traits—a person will exhibit cross-situationally consistent behavior if we consider her emotional state or what is psychologically salient to her. For example, if two people are in the same garden, they occupy the same nominal situation. But, if one of these people has a fear of garden snakes, he will be in a different psychological situation. See also Snow (2010) and Sreenivasan (2002) who argue that psychologically salient situations are more predictive and explanatory of behavior than nominal ones. This approach was inspired by the work of Shoda, et al.’s on developing the Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS). See Shoda et al. (1994) for discussion on this model.
Cf. Doris (2002, pp. 17, 66, and 115) for examples of broader local traits.
Unless otherwise specified, I use “global traits” to refer to those traits that are on the extreme end of the local–global spectrum, such as courage as a trait that involves facing financial ruin, illness, physical and moral harm, embarrassment, etc.
I would like to thank an anonymous referee for making this point.
The “forgotten minority” of empirical studies does not solve this problem. For example, of those seminarians who were in a rush, having been told they were late for the second part of the experiment, 10% did stop to help the person in distress, while 63% who were not rushed offered assistance, and 45% who were told they were on-time for the next part of the experiment offered help (Darley and Batson 1973, p. 105). Ten percent may seem like a reasonable number of virtuous agents, and indeed other studies on helping behavior indicate similar percentages. But one should bear in mind that the expected helping behavior in each study required minimal effort in low-cost situations. So the failure of ~ 90% of people indicates that only approximately 1 in 10 had a very minimal level of virtue—so little one might wonder whether it makes sense to call it a virtue at all. Certainly, the level of virtue here would not qualify as virtue on Aristotle’s account, which indicates that almost nobody has Aristotle’s virtues, if anyone at all.
Consider Julia Annas’ description of this worry: “Still, part of the attraction of an ethics of virtue has always been the point that virtue is familiar and recognizable by all, so it would still be a damaging result if virtue is hopelessly unattainable by all but a few” (2011, p. 173).
It is common to call this the unity of the virtues thesis. But for the sake of distinguishing it from the thesis that all virtues are one [global] state, as endorsed by Socrates and Plato, I follow Irwin (1988) and others in calling this the reciprocity of virtue, where one virtue implies the presence of all others.
Kamtekar does acknowledge that some virtues are narrow, namely magnificence and magnanimity, since they are narrower instances of generosity and due pride (2004, p. 479). But, she concludes that whether the virtues are broad or narrow does not matter since Aristotle sees the virtues as guided by one global state, practical wisdom (phronēsis) (Ibid., p. 481). While the idealistic conception of practical wisdom is indeed global, I will argue that Aristotle acknowledges that one can fall short of the ideal and have practical wisdom to a lesser extent without falling short of moral virtue.
“Broad” and “global” are interchangeable terms when referring to character traits. Each refers to the stability of traits and their cross-situational consistency.
Cf. EN 1119b1 or 1138b6 for examples other than courage.
Wealth can include anything that can be measured in money, such as property.
See Kamtekar (2004, pp. 479–480), who makes this observation about magnificence and magnanimity.
All translations of EN are from Irwin (1999).
Slingerland (2015, p. 143) argues similarly that the Confucian virtue xin is the closest to the virtue honesty and is usually translated as “reliability” or “trustworthiness.” He claims it is used narrowly to refer to professional behavior towards colleagues and toward one’s superiors or inferiors. Further, he believes that if we consider other traditional virtue terms, we would see that they are used in a quite narrow context. He argues that this is true of other Confucian virtues and further says, “I suspect this is true of virtue terms derived from Aristotle or later Western virtue ethicists, though I am not qualified to assert this with any confidence” (p. 143). This paper validates Slingerland’s suspicion.
Aristotle does not say “universal” or “particular” justice, but rather describes justice (dikaiosunē) as (1) perfect or complete (teleia), (2) the whole of virtue (holē aretē), or (3) a part of virtue (tēn en merei aretēs). The first two are commonly referred to as “universal justice,” and the third as “particular justice.”.
Hereon, Rhet.
All translations of Rhet. are from the Roberts (1941).
Certainly, the person who has a high degree of temperance will lack any excessive desires. But because traits are categorized as local or broad in relation to the number of situations in which they arise, the mean for temperance will be relative to features of a person’s situation, such as the kinds of pleasant food that are present. And this means that those situations in which the trait is activated will be of a narrower set. See Brown (1997, p. 86) for discussion of this kind of relativity of the mean for which Aristotle allows.
The often cited “helpful-when-in-a-good-mood” trait is an example of a trait that is expressed in a narrowly defined, psychologically salient situation. One might subsequently worry that defining Aristotle’s virtues in relation to psychologically salient situations risks implying that a person’s virtue relies on being in a good mood rather than having the right motivation, which is clearly not Aristotle’s view. But, this worry reduces all traits that are defined with respect to a psychologically salient situation to those that depend on mood. Other types of traits depend on a subject’s construal of a situation that arises in the context of not only her mood, by also her thoughts, attitudes, goals, values, desires, or fears. So, my claim that a virtuous person’s traits arise in psychologically salient situations does not imply she acts on the basis of a good mood.
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this analogy.
Cf. Cooper (1998) for discussion of this view in Aristotle.
See also Reed (2017) on degrees of virtue in EN.
Cf. Badhwar (1996).
The importance of this for Cooper is that character friendship may exist for those who are not perfectly virtuous. But he may only be suggesting that these instances of friendship are based on character because the friends love each other’s good qualities. He may not be making the stronger claim that those good qualities constitute full virtue. Indeed, his 1998 piece on the unity of virtue discusses Aristotle’s view as one that endorses the view that the possession of one virtue entails the possession of all others.
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting I clarify and further defend the inference from Aristotle’s recognition that virtue may be possessed imperfectly to the claim that the virtues can exist independently of one another.
Cf. Badhwar and Jones (2017, p. 15).
Cf. Irwin (1988).
For instance, Aristotle claims that virtue allows a human to perform his function well (EN 1106a23-24) and is an extremity in the sense that it is the best condition of the soul and produces the best results (EN 1106b8-9). He also claims that friendships between virtuous people are enduring since virtue is enduring, never issuing in base actions (EN 1159b5-6). And he states that the life of moral virtue is secondary because it requires so many external goods to exercise each of the virtues (EN 1178b5-8), indicating that full virtue is global in the sense that it requires one to exercise all of the virtues.
Indeed, Badhwar (1996) argues that since practical wisdom comes with experience, no one has it globally.
According to Aristotle, we can certainly be praised and blamed for states other than virtue and vice, such as continence and incontinence. Here I am only concerned with the idea here that experience matters in the production of states.
It is certainly possible that a person’s experiences could be limited so much that she lacks the opportunity to develop the virtue at all. Here my point is only that Aristotle can allow for cases where a person’s practical wisdom is limited on account of her experiences, yet still meets the minimal threshold for full virtue.
Cf. Rhet. 1390b22-23 on the distinction between being true to one’s good birth (to gennaion) and the well-born (eugenia). This distinction and the discussion that follows indicates that there is an added responsibility to capitalized on one’s good birth in order to become noble.
I have intentionally avoided phrasing this in the following way: “that she would fail to recognize the call to be generous towards members of other races.” I do not think Aristotle is as concerned with counterfactuals as modern ethicists are. He recognizes that a lot of what goes into our character is the result of our upbringing, but this does not mean we are any less responsible for our character simply because we would have developed differently under different circumstances (cf. EN 1114b1-12). The generous person under consideration is generous given what she does in the circumstances within which she operates. If she does fail to acknowledge the humanity in certain others, she has a vice that excludes her virtue. But, the question of whether she would fail to behave virtuously if her circumstances change does not tell against her current possession of the virtue. It only means that she may not have virtue to a high enough degree to sustain itself over a change in circumstances. Similarly, Aristotle claims that the vice of excess corresponding to generosity, viz. wastefulness, is not as bad as the vice of deficiency, viz. stinginess, since with age or poverty one might become generous (EN 1121a21). That one would be generous if she were older or had fewer resources does not mean that she is not currently wasteful. Nor would it mean that she is generous. Now if, by contrast, she willfully avoids situations for which generosity is called because those situations involve persons of other races, then she indeed has a vice that indicates she does not really have the virtue of generosity.
I would like to thank an audience member of the 2017 meeting of the Illinois Philosophical Association for this example.
One might still lack a corresponding local virtue in other contexts. For example, she could be continent or incontinent when it comes to being generous when lending her possessions to friends though she is generous when hosting parties. Cf. Wolf (2007) who makes a similar argument, though her argument applies only to incontinence or continence when it comes to different virtues rather than across contexts related to a single virtue.
Cf. Kamtekar (2004, p. 461) for examples of non-obvious ways a situation might impede practical wisdom.
I do acknowledge that full virtue might also pick out those who have every virtue to lesser degrees than the perfectly virtuous. My point here is that one can be good with the qualification that one is good only in relation to one virtue. This involves possessing one of the virtues fully, lacking other virtues, and may even involve having some vices.
Consider Martha Nussbaum’s seminal piece “Non-relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach” (1988) where she argues that the virtues are universal, but how they are specified is culture-bound.
This idea is similar to Badhwar’s idea of the unity of virtues within a domain (1996). But, she sees this as a departure from Aristotle’s view, while I have argued that Aristotle can accommodate this. And her view is importantly different than the one I set forth here since my view allows that a person’s character may not be integrated within a single domain.
This may mean that a reconstructed view allows for a vice to exist alongside the corresponding virtue given the range of situations that our modern understanding of the virtue includes. For instance, one might be stingy with her time, but quite generous with her money.
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Linn, M. Aristotle and the Globalism Objection to Virtue Ethics. J Ethics 23, 55–76 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09281-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09281-7