On this second walk, Monty and I discuss the ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle, along with other Ancient philosophies that focus on the idea of happiness and the nature of the good life. We also examine the idea that morality is a special kind of sense or feeling possessed by people.
‘Heath or graveyard?’
Graveyard. But you promise not to be morbid, and start composing your epitaphs again?
‘It’s just a bit of fun. A hobby. A chap needs a hobby.’
Our local graveyard really is quite beautiful. Some parts are well manicured and as neat and regular as a couplet by Alexander Pope. Other areas have gone wild and, should my domestic situation deteriorate drastically, I’ve had vague fantasies of living there in a shelter made from bent willow boughs, and sleeping on a bed of bracken, with Monty for warmth and a bottle of methylated spirits for company. We don’t have many major celebrities, but we do have the inventor of mouthwash, Joseph Lister, buried under a plain granite slab. And it’s true, I spend a lot of time in there composing my own epitaphs, and imagining them neatly carved on my own plain slab.
Beneath this stone
There lies poor Tone;
Once flesh, now bone,
He died alone.
No, not morbid at all.
There was a bench at the far side of the graveyard, nestled among hawthorn and elder scrub. Blackbirds and chaffinches sang in the thickets, and, if I was lucky, a green woodpecker would fly heavily down (they always look as though they’ve just eaten a pie and had a skinful of ale) and start probing for ants in the grass. It was a good place to philosophize. Or it was once Monty had gone on a quick rampage, scampering along the rows of graves in pursuit of whatever it was that had left the scent: fox or tramp. Finally, he came back and scrambled wetly onto my lap.
‘That hip of yours feeling better?’
Just the odd twinge. Anyway, where were we? he said, stifling a yawn.
‘Late night?’
That was a yawn of excitement. It’s a dog thing. Maybe you can give me the bullet point version.
‘Sure.
Got it, thanks.
‘There have been many attempts to give an objective basis for morality, but you can divide them fairly neatly into, let me see, five different strands of ethical thinking.’
Worth listing them for me?
‘OK, but it won’t make much sense before we go into the details. First, we have the extreme moral realism of Plato – realism in this sense just means that he believes that the Good, for example, is a thing that really exists as a separate, objective entity. Second, we have the idea that humans possess a moral sense, akin to our sense of vision or smell. Third, we have Aristotelian virtue ethics, and other ethical systems based on the idea of living a good life. Fourth, we have deontological ethics, or ethics as a form of rule-following, particularly focusing on Immanuel Kant. And finally, we have utilitarianism, or ethics based on maximizing happiness. Got that?’
I think so. Sorta. As you say, at the moment it’s just words. But a quick question about some of those words. You sometimes say ‘moral’ and you sometimes say ‘ethical’. Are they the same thing?
‘Good dog – now you’re thinking like a philosopher. It’s very important to make sure that we’re using words in a consistent way, and that their meanings are made clear. Up until now I’ve been using the terms a bit randomly, to mean, broadly, concerned with how to tell right from wrong. However, usually, ethics means the code of behaviour that exists in a particular setting or organization – so you’d talk about business ethics, meaning the sorts of behaviour deemed acceptable in that context. But it would also include the code that exists in a whole society. Morals usually means the set of principles by which a person lives their life. But there’s a slight woolliness in the distinction, so let’s just assume that when I use either I’m using them in that sense of issues to do with deciding right and wrong.’
Check.
‘So, these five strands… I’m going to begin with what I take to be a couple of duds – ways of thinking about ethics that don’t really help us at all. Then we’ll look at the good ones, and we’ll find out if any foot fits the golden slipper.’
It’s a plan!
‘I’m going to begin again with Plato. Although, as I said, he’s the most revered of all philosophers, and pretty well invented the subject, controversially I’m a little of the opinion that he gets almost everything wrong.’
Eh?
‘We’ve already seen that Plato has, in some dialogues, associated virtue with happiness. But what he means is that virtue will result in happiness, and vice in unhappiness. He’s not saying that they are the same thing. So what then is virtue for Plato? To answer this fully we’ll need to look into Plato’s metaphysics—’
His what?
‘… and particularly his ontology—’
His who?
‘OK, I really am going to talk much more about those things later on, but for now, metaphysics and ontology are the parts of philosophy that deal with the ultimate nature of reality.’
Okaaaaaay…
‘Plato is the supreme objectivist in ethics. He believes that Virtue or Goodness are real things, types of entities he terms Forms, existing in a special, transcendent realm with other similar concepts such as Beauty, Justice, Equality and Courage.
Plato’s theory of Forms is one of the most famous, but also difficult, of all philosophical theories, but for now think of the Forms as the Ideal, the perfect, timeless template for things that are copied crudely in the world around us.’
Struggling a bit, if I’m honest.
‘You will do, it’s hard. But it’ll become clearer. Just stick with me. The reason why the poor citizens in the early dialogues were so bamboozled, unable to satisfy Socrates’ question “What is X?”, was that they did not know the true nature of Goodness, etc., but only saw the various confusing examples before them, poor reflections of the true Good. Plato believes that if a person knows what is right, he or she will always do it. Wickedness comes only from ignorance. And so the path to virtue is through knowledge. And that knowledge is knowledge of the Forms.
So, an act is good if it resembles or partakes in the Form of the Good. On another walk we’re going to examine the problems with Plato’s theory of Forms at considerable length, but for now it’s enough to point out that it is very difficult to show plausibly how we can come to know the Form of the Good, given that we do not have direct access to the transcendent realm where the Forms dwell. But even if we could, somehow, discover this objective Good, there is the question of the relationship between the Form of the Good and any individual act of goodness. How does a huge blob of perfect goodness somewhere in this transcendental realm, a place beyond perception, help me to decide if I should put a pound into this busker’s hat, or grab the hat and run laughing to the nearest pub?’
Don’t look at me, I’m just a small blob of imperfect dog.
‘Plato’s answer is that it all becomes clear as soon as we come to know the Form of the Good. The Platonic system sets up a triangular structure for any moral judgement. There is the Form of the Good, there is the act in the world and there is the moral judgement. We look at the act, check it against the Form and make our ruling. Simple.’
Sounds reasonable.
‘But there is a serious problem here for Plato. The great eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume had a profoundly troubling insight into the language of ethics. He saw that there were two very different types of statement involved in moral claims. There are is statements, and there are ought statements. Is statements tell you about matters of fact, things that exist in the world. Ought statements make moral judgements, or tell you what ought to be the case. Hume points out that there is no logical way of getting from one to the other.’
Huh?
‘Hume says that whenever he reads other philosophers or moral thinkers, he finds that they will use the language of is and is not, and then they’ll suddenly move on to the language of ought and ought not, without ever explaining or justifying that transition.
Now let’s assume that it is a statement of fact that the Form of the Good exists; but how can we go from this descriptive statement to the prescriptive statement that you should behave in a certain way? There is, it appears, simply no compelling reason to make the leap between them. Do you follow?’
I think so. You have this Form of the Good thingy, and then you have some people doing stuff. And you want to use the Form Thing to show that what the people are doing is right or wrong. But why should the Form Thing, even if it exists, be a reason for you to say that what the people are doing is right or wrong? Is that it?
‘Roughly. Or woofly.’
But then isn’t this a big deal for all these theories about right and wrong? Don’t you always have this gap between the is and the ought?
‘Excellent point. And you’re right. Hume’s exposure of the gap between the is and the ought, between statements of fact and assertions of value, is a problem for any objectivist theory of ethics, and its shadow looms over this whole discussion. In fact, most of the moral theories we’ll be examining are designed to overcome that gap. Hume’s own solution was that the is/ought gap can never be bridged using logic or rationality. What happens is that custom and habit simply lead us to connect certain facts (stealing the busker’s hat) and the moral judgement (Stop, thief!). However, Plato needs more than that. He wants to establish a necessary connection between the existence of the Form of the Good, and the moral demand that we imitate it.
A more fundamental problem is that the very existence of the transcendental Forms is highly contentious – and we’ll be contending that most vigorously on a later walk!
Before moving on to some of the other ethical systems, I should point out that Plato’s most detailed working-out of how we should live doesn’t actually explicitly entail the theory of Forms. In the Republic, Plato describes his ideal society, which in its organization replicates the structure of the human soul. For Plato the soul is made up of three parts, spirit, appetite and reason. Spirit is the fount of courage, as well as anger. Appetite, unsurprisingly, is the source of lust and hunger. Reason is the boss, the charioteer harnessing and guiding the energies of the other two.
In the state, there are also three classes: the rulers – those Guardians we met right at the beginning, who are like faithful dogs, looking after the inhabitants of the house and seeing off intruders—’
They sound like fine fellows!
‘You may come to reconsider that… Then we have the soldiers (or Auxiliaries) and, finally, the workers. The Guardians, who correspond to reason in the soul, would be trained from childhood in wisdom, a wisdom that would enable them to know and understand the Forms, and govern the state in accordance with them, bringing human life into a harmony with the underlying beauty and perfection of the universe.’
What could be better?
‘In the state, as in the soul, justice comes from each part or class performing its own proper function, without interfering with the others. The job of the Guardians is to rule, the Auxiliaries to fight and the workers to work. It is a rigid regime, embodying Plato’s own distrust of democracy and the disorder he believed it brought.
One of the more modern-sounding and attractive aspects of Plato’s state is the relative equality it affords to women. Women could be Guardians, and Plato explicitly argues that they are just as capable as men of attaining the required wisdom and knowledge. The children of the Guardians were to be brought up collectively, preventing favouritism or family ties from interfering with the correct governance of the state. And for the same reason the Guardians would be prevented from owning any property. Famously, Plato banned most art, music and literature from his perfect city. Art, being a copy of a copy, takes us further away from reality; music, other than certain military marches, corrupts. Literature lies…
And talking of lying, perhaps the most sinister aspect of the system is the concept of the Noble Lie, or pious fiction, depending on which translation you read. To dissuade the workers from thinking that they might be worth something more than toiling all day for their betters, Plato suggests that they be told something he admits is untrue – that each class is formed from a different type of metal, the workers from iron and brass, the Auxiliaries from silver and the Guardians from (of course!) gold. The only defence for this dishonesty is that it promotes social cohesion and patriotism.’
You’re not really selling it, you know.
‘I know. We’ve got a state with an elite ruling over the masses with force and lies; a place with little art, and not much pleasure. Its closest real-world embodiment was Sparta, democratic Athens’ old enemy. Unsurprisingly, Plato’s ideal state doesn’t have many advocates today. He was included by Karl Popper – who we’ll meet on a later walk, when we discuss the philosophy of science – among the enemies of what he calls the open society. But there are ways to offer at least a partial defence. Most of us agree that expertise is important in all sorts of areas. Plato himself uses the example of the captain of a ship. Given a choice between sailing with a captain who had trained for years, acquiring all the skills necessary to navigate safely, and someone who just said, “Yeah, I reckon I’ll give that a go” without acquiring any of the skills needed, then you’d walk up the gangplank with the guy who’d earned his Captain’s hat, wouldn’t you? The same would apply to brain surgeons or bridge builders. Is it really so strange, then, to expect the most important job of all – leading the state – to be in the hands of experts?
Plato yearned for stability and order – unsurprising, given the chaos his home state suffered for most of his life. Democracy for him signalled havoc. The other systems of government, based on a single ruler (kingship, or tyranny) or on a group distinguished only by their wealth (oligarchy) or inherited privilege (aristocracy), seem worse, if anything.
But it’s no good. Plato’s Forms are a failure when it comes to finding a workable moral theory, and his state, despite being based on ethical principles, the search for virtue and truth, feels like an anticipation of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.’
So that’s Plato kicked into touch. What’s next?
Don’t worry, Plato will be back! Our second attempt to build a solid foundation for ethics has some things in common with the objectivism of Plato. It begins with that intuition that many of us have that we just know what is right and what is wrong. I feel it in my guts, you might say, about some action that you know to be wrong. If pressed about where this might come from, you find yourself repeating I just know it, perhaps accompanying the statement with a frown, or a hand laid on your breast.
This conviction that each human has an unfailing moral sense, akin to our other natural faculties, was first set out by philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746). It might be given a religious emphasis – that knowledge of good and evil is planted in us by a benign God – or it could be given a more humanist spin – we are by our natures benign and kindly creatures. If sometimes this light of goodness is dimmed, that is because of the corruptions of so-called civilization.’
I’m liking this one, so far. It’s nice to think that you lot might just know what’s right.
‘One version of this conception of morality (and humanity) was put forward by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). For Rousseau, humans naturally have just two moral sentiments. The first is a perfectly rational sense of self-preservation, which he terms amour de soi. The second is a horror at suffering experienced by others, which he calls pitié (compassion). The process of civilization takes away our ancient freedom, and replaces it with all the familiar vices of the modern world and corrupts amour de soi to amour propre – the very different self-love of “modern” man, a self-love driven by envy, and the desire for power and wealth.
The most recent version of the idea that we have an in-built moral sense was put forward in the twentieth century by G.E. Moore (1873–1958). Moore argues that good is a simple entity, a thing we recognize instinctively without having to define it. Indeed, we can’t define it, other than by pointing at it. We simply grasp the good when we see it (or feel it), as an intuition. In this way it is like a colour. You don’t need a complex theory to explain red – anyone with normal colour vision can see it. (Of course there is a scientific definition of red, having to do with light waves at a certain frequency, but that is never what we mean when we say “The car is red”.) So, in the same way, we see the good. Or perhaps a better comparison is taste. The good is like a sweet taste; the bad like a sour one.
There’s an initial plausibility to this view, and it was very popular among artists and intellectuals (though not many philosophers) in the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed the emotivist argument outlined on the last walk was originally devised to counter it.’
Really? I don’t quite get that.
‘The G.E. Moore line was that as long as your moral sense is working correctly, the judgements it makes will have an objective rightness, in the way someone with normal colour vision will be right in saying an apple is green and the sky blue. The emotivist agrees that it’s a feeling that you may well have, but says it does not correspond to any objective truth. It’s purely like your preference for tea over coffee.’
OK, with you.
‘So we must enquire a little more closely into what these good things are that Moore claims we perceive so readily. It is not really very surprising that Moore and his friends regarded as good those things that happened to be most in fashion in their group, the Bloomsbury set. They valued friendship, love, art, nature. They disapproved of laws or rules that interfered with the enjoyment of their particular pleasures.’
Sounds OK. So what’s wrong with it, then?
‘We can pick away at each of the various strands of Moore’s version of the moral sense theory. The first, that the good is indefinable, rather begs the question. (Remembering that if the good is definable, then our intellects can pick it out, without the need for the moral sense.) There have been endless attempts to define the good. We’ll come across many more of them as we go on. Moore’s response to any definition is to say, “Oh, that’s just not what the good really is. These are things that may be associated with the good, but the good is something else, this other thing that I can see, and you, dear boy, appear not to be able to see.” Moore’s theory therefore replaces argument with assertion: we are not given reasons for the statement that the good is a simple, obvious quality, like colour. We’re just told that if we don’t see it, it’s down to a lack of intelligence or education, like someone not getting opera or the ballet.
But a more fundamental challenge to both types of moral sense argument (I’m lumping together here Moore’s objectivism and the earlier views about morality being a capacity within us) is presented by those who simply dispute the benign conception of humanity and society it presents.’
What, you’re going to tell me that people aren’t naturally good? Pardon me if I don’t faint with the shock.
‘Plenty of philosophers have found humans to be anything but benign. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) famously saw life in a state of nature as being a war of all against all, with human existence being nasty, brutish and short, and no hint of a moral sense in the heart of the ignoble savage. Hence his belief that we need a strong, undivided sovereign to keep the peace. In The Fable of the Bees (1714) Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) shows us a vision of humanity driven by selfishness and greed. He even turns the old clichés about the innocence and naturalness of children on their head. Yes, he says, we can find humanity in its purest form in the hearts of children… and it is a ruthless, selfish thing, egotistical, craving, gorging, violent. The irony is that Mandeville sees these things not as humankind’s ruin, but its salvation. Society needs the selfishness, violence and ambition of people to function. Without thieves, the lawyers would be out of business, and without the lawyers, sundry other trades would disappear, throwing thousands into destitution. The vain and lecherous libertine employs tailors, cooks, hairdressers and others to pander to his depravities. The commercial success of a society is driven by the greed and selfishness of the individuals who make it up. All of these private vices add up to a public benefit.
So, the inner-sense school of ethics fails because it looks too much like a simple justification for certain preconceptions, rather than an objective basis for making ethical choices. Its view of humanity is naïve and simplistic. Another criticism is that relying on some inner sense of right and wrong or on a simple perception leaves no place at all for reason. For many philosophers, morality, in order to count as morality at all, has to be a rational process, something arrived at using the highest human faculties, not some matter of appetites or perceptions. This is a view we’ll soon see brilliantly argued by Kant.
However, before Kant, we’re going to go back again to the Classical world, and the ethics of Plato’s great pupil, Aristotle (384–322 bce).’
Is Aristotle one of the, er, dog-friendly philosophers?
‘If you mean is he easy to read and understand, sadly, he can be a bit dry and technical. That’s because almost everything we have by him – and it’s quite a lot – has come down to us in the form of his lecture notes. So, unlike Plato, we don’t have polished works of art, but bare outlines, which he would have elaborated on and illustrated during his lectures. But he’s one of the philosophers still very much alive and kicking, ideas-wise.’
OK. I’m all ears.
‘Aristotle’s thinking is representative of a number of other ethical systems in the Ancient world, all based around the idea of living a good life. And by a good life, Aristotle means a happy one. The Greek term used by Aristotle when discussing the good life is eudaimonia, which is famously hard to capture in translation. It means in some sense happiness, as we use the term, but is rather wider than that. Eudaimonia includes the idea not only of being happy, but of living well, of fulfilling your promise, of flourishing. So it has a material element, as well as a psychological component. The happy tramp, contented on his park bench, would not, for Aristotle, be enjoying eudaimonia. And nor is eudaimonia limited to your own direct experience. Harm to your reputation after your death would have an impact on your eudaimonia, as would misfortunes occurring to your family.
I sometimes think the English term that comes closest is doing well, in the way that we’d reply “he’s doing well” when asked about our child, off at university or starting a new job. Doing well, meaning that, yes, he’s happy, but also things are progressing acceptably in a material way, and that he hasn’t been arrested yet for dancing naked in the street with a traffic cone on his head.
Aristotle argues that the aim of ethics is to help us to achieve eudaimonia, that expanded type of happiness. An approach to ethics such as Aristotle’s is called teleological, coming from the Greek words telos, meaning goal or end, and logos meaning (in this case) a reason. We perform good acts not for their own sake, but in order to achieve something else.’
So like when I sit and come and whatnot, just to get a treat?
‘Exactly. That’s teleological behaviour. As I said, Aristotle’s was not the only Ancient ethical system geared towards attaining eudaimonia. Two of the Ancient world’s most profound and subtle philosophies also had that goal in mind. The Epicureans, named after their founder, Epicurus (341–270 bce), thought that happiness came from pleasure, and so they have been caricatured as indulgent hedonists, seekers after the easy gratification of physical delights. There certainly were such philosophers in Ancient Greece – one group, the Cyrenaics (not to be confused with the Cynics), really did think that the only thing that mattered in life were the pleasures of the flesh. The Cyrenaic school was founded by Aristippus (c.435–356 bce), a follower of Socrates and a contemporary of Plato. The hedonism of the Cyrenaics stemmed from their belief that the only things that really exist are physical sensations. It follows that the only thing that matters is physical pleasure, and the only way to experience it is now. Grab every sensual experience you can, gorge yourself, booze, love. Don’t put it off. Tomorrow is an illusion. There is just now, and this sensation. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.’
What’s not to like?
‘The Epicureans were influenced by the Cyrenaics, but were profoundly different. Happiness may come from pleasure, but pleasure itself is a complex business, and certainly not best achieved by the reckless indulgence of our basest instincts. For Epicurus pleasure was the only good, but he defined pleasure not as a positive quality, but as the absence of pain. The goal of life is not to cram in as many hedonistic delights as possible, but to reduce stress and discomfort. The pleasures he advocated were quiet reflection, friendship, conversation and the practice of philosophy itself – a long way from the orgiastic feasting of the Cyrenaics.’
Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
‘Yeah, well, I guess the dog way is the path of the Cyrenaics – how many times have I had to rescue you from death by chicken bone?’
One time! Maybe twice. Three at the most.
‘Whatever, not a good way to go. Epicurus actually believed that the greatest source of discomfort to any person was the terror of death and the punishment that might well follow. And so he was one of the first thinkers to argue that death should not be feared, because there is no afterlife, and so nothing left of us that could be punished. Only pain is to be feared, and death brings an end to pain. (Epicurus’ defusing of the death bomb was one of his many subtle attacks on Plato, who had warned evil-doers that terrible and fitting punishments awaited them beyond the grave…)’
Can I just say that I’m not a hundred per cent convinced by that line?
‘Go on…’
I like dinner. It gives me a lot of pleasure. What I’m afraid of isn’t choking on a bone and then going to a place where the dinners are horrible, or where some nasty version of you shows me a nice sausage and then eats it himself. What I want is to carry on eating dinners here forever. The thought of no more dinners makes me sad.
‘You make a good point, little dog. What Epicurus would answer was that the future version of you can’t be unhappy or in pain or hungry, because the future version of you doesn’t exist. And so it makes no sense for you to worry about what you’ll be feeling then, because there won’t be a you to feel. But I see that that isn’t really an answer to your argument. Your argument is that your life is pleasurable, and it is irrational not to want that pleasure to go on for as long as possible. But I guess that Epicurus would come back and say that there might be a point when old age and illness mean that you aren’t enjoying your life any more, and in that situation, you shouldn’t fear what is to come.’
OK, can we change the subject?
‘The Epicureans’ main rivals at the time were the Stoics, who also taught that death should not be feared.’
I thought we were changing the subject.
‘Relax, that was just a stepping stone. Perhaps more than any other Ancient philosophy, Stoic ethics was bound up with their view of the nature of the universe. For the Stoics, the universe is an orderly, benign system, in which every event is determined by a divine law, or rational principle. This divine law, which could also simply be seen as God, formed the material universe from fire, and continued to shape its development and destiny. As the spirit that determines every event that happens is good, then everything that happens must be good. All apparent evil is an illusion, and the illusion disappears as our understanding of the universe deepens.’
Really? So every time you step on an upturned plug or Lego block, that’s really a good thing? You’d never know from the howling.
‘They obviously didn’t have electric plugs or Lego back then. Chrysippus (who we left pondering those grains of sand…) argued that every seeming evil is necessary for the existence of a corresponding good. There can be no courage without cowardice, no pleasure without pain. The same senses that scream out in agony when I step on a plug rejoice in the pleasure of stroking you. When seen in this light, the evil becomes necessary, and melds into the greater good. The philosopher’s task is to understand nature, and that understanding will bring peace, even in the face of terrible suffering. The Stoic goal is to face death and disease and other calamities with calmness; a calmness made possible, not just by courage, but by the knowledge that everything, ultimately, is going to be OK. Such was eudaimonia for the Stoic.’
Do we like the Stoics?
‘That’s a tough one, and I think their usefulness depends on your situation. If things truly are hopeless, and you’re in a position that cannot be remedied, then I think the Stoic mindset is exemplary. One always imagines a just man, wrongly accused and imprisoned. Each day he is tortured and tormented by his guards. The Stoic says, I will endure. This is the way the world is. Viewed under the aspect of eternity, my sufferings are trivial, and in any case they are part of a plan that if I only understood it, I would see is for the best. And more than one Stoic got the chance to put their faith to the test. Seneca the Younger, implicated in a plot to kill Nero that in reality he had nothing to do with, was ordered to commit suicide. He calmly opened his veins and then dictated his last letters and a will as he lay in the bath.’
Respect.
‘On the other hand, Stoicism tends towards conservatism and the placid acceptance of whatever state of affairs you find yourself in. There are times when accepting fate is a type of moral cowardice.’
And how do you know which is which?
‘It’s our human duty to make these choices. But we can probably take the best of Stoicism, and say that if you can change it, change it, and if you can’t, then put up with it.’
Sounds like a plan. What happened to Aristotle?
‘Oh, sorry, we wandered a bit. Aristotle’s analysis of eudaimonia begins with the obvious truth that human beings desire all kinds of goods. We want food, and pleasant company, and the esteem of our community, and good health. However, Aristotle says that all of these things are the means to an end: they are intended to achieve some other goal, some higher or ultimate good. This ultimate good must meet three criteria: it must be desirable for itself; it shouldn’t be desired to enable you to achieve some other good; and the other goods that we desire should be desired in order to achieve it.’
An example…?
‘Take wealth. Wealth is a good, but generally it is a good because it enables you to obtain other goods, not simply for itself. Just sitting on a pile of banknotes would be crazy, wouldn’t it?’
I guess.
‘So, what can this ultimate good be, the thing to which all the other goods are directed?’
Buying a softer bed?
‘Hah, very funny. Aristotle thinks that there is only one candidate, just one good we desire for itself: happiness. You don’t want to be happy to achieve something else. On the contrary, all those other goods are simply a way to help you become happy. He barely even feels the need to justify this: he thinks it’s simply obvious that we all want to be happy, bearing in mind, of course, that we are talking about the extended sense of happiness.
So, Aristotle has established happiness/eudaimonia as the ultimate good. But that doesn’t quite tell us what happiness means, for humans, and without knowing that, our quest will be blind. To zone in on this, Aristotle next enquires into what the purpose or function of a person is. What are we good for? What are we best at? He compares us to other living things. We have many qualities and abilities in common with animals and even plants. All living things grow and reproduce and move and perceive. Or, as Aristotle puts it, our souls have nutritive, locomotive and perceptive capabilities. However, humans are unique in also possessing a rational part of our soul. This, then, is our function, our one unique distinguishing quality: we can use reason to control and direct our activities. Therefore the good life for us must involve our reason. Reason can help us select those qualities that help us to live the highest life a human is capable of. These qualities are the virtues.
Here we get to the meat of Aristotle’s thinking on moral philosophy, and the part of his theory that has been most influential. Aristotle stands at the beginning of the tradition of so-called virtue ethics. The virtues are those moral guidelines or qualities that the good person must follow in order to achieve eudaimonia, defined as living the highest, most rational life that a person is capable of. For the Stoics, the virtues that were most prized were those that helped the ideal sage meet with the pains of experience: courage, fortitude, resolution. But Aristotle’s idea of happiness requires other qualities.’
Which are…?
‘What Aristotle did was to examine various areas of conduct, or types of feeling, and show how the way people behave could go wrong either by displaying an excess of a quality, or an insufficiency. And right smack in between those extremes we find what he termed the golden mean – the sweet spot, which is virtue.’
Er, examples might help here…
‘Of course. In a battle, there are those who show an excess of fear and a tendency to run away. That is the vice of cowardice. But there are also those who are excessively confident, who rush into fatal situations without any regard to the chances of success. That is the vice of rashness. But between the two, we find the mean of courage. The courageous man will be aware of, but undaunted by, danger, and will perform his duty. He will not be without fear, but will face it with calmness and resolution. Aristotle has a whole table of virtues, showing the excess, the deficiency and the mean. With regard to physical pleasures (which few Ancient Greeks ignored), we have the extremes of licentiousness and insensibility – one displayed by a person enslaved by his desires, the other the fault of someone blind to the authentic pleasures of the flesh. In the middle, we have the person who is temperate, who does not overindulge, but is moderate in his enjoyments of food and drink and the other bodily delights. (Interestingly, Aristotle says that the person deficient in this quality is so rare as to not even have a name. The Greeks were evidently a fun-loving people. We, of course, do have such a name: Puritan.) Turning to what Aristotle calls self-expression, we have braggarts on one side, who always exaggerate their accomplishments, and those who deliberately understate on the other, ironically self-deprecating. Aristotle takes this to be another form of vanity, and he has a little dig at Socrates, who was always claiming to know nothing. And then there is, at the mean, the sincere and truthful person.
Not all the virtues examined by Aristotle are particularly exalted. As we’ve seen, the Greeks liked to talk. On one side we have the buffoon, who descends to vulgarity to get a laugh. On the other side there is the sour-faced bore, who takes offence at everything and ruins everyone’s fun. And between them our witty person, who entertains all without straying from good taste. Aristotle imagines all these qualities existing on a continuum, and most people will find themselves on it at some point. Knowing the mean enables you to strive towards the ideal.’
This all sounds quite good. I like this formula. You get big ugly dogs, and little runty dogs, and perfect me-sized dogs in the middle.
‘Aristotle’s way of identifying what counts as a virtue has a lot going for it. In most situations we can see that there are excessive extremes and a sensible middle path. Generosity manifests itself not simply in reacting against meanness, but by steering clear of vulgar and excessive recklessness.
It’s possible that we could find some virtues that don’t quite seem to work in this way. Is honesty really the mid-point between lying and telling too much truth? But for many of them, Aristotle’s scheme is persuasive. And it’s worth pointing out that Aristotle himself said that ethics and politics were not sciences, offering the same sort of secure truth that geometry or (he claimed) metaphysics could deliver, but “soft” sciences, in which we can only hope to get somewhere near the truth.
And how do we acquire the virtues? Education education education. We become virtuous, says Aristotle, by practising virtue. If we inculcate the young with good habits, they will become second nature. Much like training a, er, dog.’
Woof.
‘Aristotle’s vision for achieving the good life – that we all aim for a version of eudaimonia, that our rationality is bound up with happiness and that we achieve the best life through exercising the virtues – is an attractive package, and has been hugely influential. The Ancient philosophers gradually focused on the virtues of wisdom (or prudence), courage, temperance and justice, and these then were handed on to Christianity as the cardinal virtues. But some early Christians felt that these pre-Christian qualities needed to be supplemented, and so the four became seven, each virtue balancing a corresponding vice: chastity/lust; temperance/gluttony; charity/greed; diligence/sloth; patience/wrath; kindness/envy; humility/pride. And rather than Aristotle’s worldly happiness, the goal was to share in eternal happiness with God. What Aristotle’s ethical system does is to ground the way we ought to live in an idea of the kind of creatures we are, social and rational, and find a way for us to live together.’
And now the downside?
‘The way that the virtues could be adapted, changing with the needs of the evolving culture, is both a strength and a weakness. True, it means that the ethical code can stay relevant, but it also means that the virtues simply look like a list of the things that are valued by whatever society you happen to be in. If we asked Aristotle why courage is a good thing in itself, his answer would be that it and the other virtues he describes are simply what we, as rational, social beings, need to live well in the typical Greek city state. There is no deeper grounding than that. So, if Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union under Stalin, requires different qualities for living well, Aristotle can offer no critique.
Another problem with the virtues is that it’s possible to think of situations in which we might well not see them as virtuous. Is courage in pursuit of an evil end still a virtue?’
I hear you. You get brave bad dogs.
‘However, the main criticism that I can see is that in some ways Aristotle’s ethics aren’t ethical at all, in the sense that we usually understand the term. For Aristotle, and the other Classical eudaemonists, it is your own happiness that is your central concern. The happiness of others simply isn’t your business. Living ethically is the psychological version of going to the gym or eating well: you’re looking after yourself. Even though the virtues are social in nature, the justification is always egotistical: this is the best thing for me. This is how I should live to get the most out of my life.’
I noticed that Monty was shivering a little.
‘Talking of ethics, I’m thinking it’s a little unkind to keep you out in this damp. Anyway, I’m peckish. You?’
I wouldn’t say no to a biscuit.
So we walked back through the old monuments to the dead who were loved, or feared, or just rich enough to be commemorated in marble. There were angels, and there were draped urns, and there were ziggurats, as though an exiled Babylonian potentate had washed up in West Hampstead.