Moral character and virtue were requirements of a good life according to the philosophy of Aristotle as well as his mentor Plato and as expressed by Socrates. The idea has a firm grounding in ancient wisdom and philosophy. The most important virtues and elements of a sound moral character in Aristotle’s opinion were justice, courage, and temperance. All of these virtues can be acquired by regular men without training in metaphysics. The idea that regular men could practice habits that constitute a high moral character and are virtuous was of great importance to Aristotle in making his philosophies accessible and relevant (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Acknowledging his teacher and inspiration, Plato, Aristotle sought to explain why there are cases when men do not behave morally and seek the high ground of moral happiness. He wrote of the struggle to be moral that it is, “concerned with pleasure and pain; because of pleasure we do bad things and for fear of pain we avoid noble ones. For this reason we ought to be trained from youth, as Plato says: to find pleasure and pain where we ought; this is the purpose of education” (Arist. Nico. II.3). This quotation may be taken to mean that pleasure and pain are gauges of virtue and vice respectively, but not necessarily. One of the basics of having a good life is being virtuous and behaving as a man of good moral character. When men do not conduct themselves in a virtuous manner they are not leading a good life, and therefore will never know true happiness. Aristotle acknowledged that at a baser level sometimes vice is pleasurable and “because of pleasure we do bad things” (Arist. Nico. II.3). The temporary pleasure offered by vice makes it difficult for some men to become and to remain virtuous. However, for men of good moral character virtuous actions are far more rewarding than those of vice and therefore highly pleasurable and satisfying in and of themselves. The longer and stronger a man lives a life of high moral character the easier and more enjoyable it will be for him to continue virtuous. Kantian deontology discusses Aristotle’s virtue-ethics in dense and challenging passages that affirm ethic’s place in the lives of regular men and reinforces Aristotle’s contentions that it is the responsibility of men to strive for good moral character. Kant calls this a duty. Aristotle and Kant are not far from each other in their assessment of ethics but there are subtle differences in what each philosopher defines as the highest good. Kant did not believe that Aristotle’s virtue-ethics should be fused with any other philosophy. Kant believed that the best examination and use of Aristotle was via broad interpretations and perspectives. In debates about philosophy and the highest moral good, Aristotle’s virtue ethics is continually revisited. Some philosophers choose to use the idea as an institutionalized assumption that they then argue against. Others continually seek to re-evaluate and apply the ideas about moral character and virtue according to Aristotelian principals in view of modern events and situations. In this way they are continually testing Aristotle’s relevance. Many philosophers have contended that extending the theory beyond its original application and inspiration distorts it. Robert B. Louden is a philosophy professor at the University of Southern Maine and a long time expert on Aristotle. To Louden, because Aristotle’s theory derived from a socio-cultural milieu in which virtues were concerned metaphysical things independently. Those things could be converted into concrete actions and behaviors. The application of the metaphysical to real life is a sophisticated philosophical endeavor. It requires a high degree of abstract thinking to treat a theoretical thing as a tangible object (Louden, 1997, 475-476). This may have made virtue and unreachable goal for some men, those of lesser natural intelligence. Aristotle proposed specific definitions of virtue, “virtue, is of two kinds, intellectual and moral; intellectual owes its birth and growth to teaching while moral virtue comes to us through habit. None of the moral virtues arises in us by nature for nothing in nature can change its nature; we are adapted by nature to receive them and by habit, perfect them” (Arist. Nico. II.1). In this way Aristotle is differentiating between men who have the advantages of a birthright that includes formal education and those men who learn to behave morally through example, habit, and as a result of introspection. These ways of attaining the two different types of virtues are not mutually exclusive and both forms may be found in men of good moral character and intelligence. These men in turn have the responsibility to act as role models. Introspection in a regular man should not be underestimated. As part of Aristotle’s concluding arguments in favor of the attainability of good moral character and ethical conduct by regular men he wrote that contemplation is “the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity” (Arist. Nico. X.7). By this, Aristotle is reaffirming his position that regular men through introspection and contemplation can achieve a high state of good moral character and virtuous action. Direction about the good life comes from ones socio-cultural milieu. Louden asserts in another work that in contemporary times, advising a person on what he or she should do is not helped by Aristotle’s virtue-ethics theory because the theory is circular and not based on logic. Aristotle’s theory does contain concrete examples of the virtues. The descriptions offered are made using the Aristotelian and Platonic assumptions that deep inside all people know what is right and wrong. In “Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” Louden declares that Aristotle knows what is right based on extremes thereby making his theory impractical as far as real life situations. Training in these types of analysis is not useful for the contemporary population (1997). Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser are philosophy scholars who concur with Louden. They wrote that Aristotle’s theory of virtue-ethics cannot be stretched enough to make it useable in applied ethics today (Pojman and Fieser, 56-59). According to scholar Stephen D.Carden, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre proposed an alternative to Aristotle’s virtue-ethics theory by seeking to accommodate the disagreements in contemporary society’s approach to morality. He explained that opposing moral stances today have different historic origins. Therefore, they are not based on rational evaluations but rather on moral agreements formed in possibly inimical socio-cultural milieus. Modern thinkers from different cultures do not agree on a single notion of morality (Carden, 89). As can be seen from Aristotle’s discussion about the practical function and behavior of a moral men the “virtue of a thing relates to its proper work. What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire. Since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, both good reasoning and proper desire must be present if the choice is to be good” (Arist. Nico. VI.2). So by looking at virtue ethics as a function, not as merely theoretical and necessarily constrained by time and culture, one can determine what character attributes make a person good. In this way, Aristotle’s virtue ethics is less about doing what is right and not doing things that are wrong, but rather about situations and choices that are made by men of good moral character. Louden's claims that Aristotle is irrelevant to the twentieth-century contradicts Louden's comparison of Aristotle and Kant in his other publications While explaining that Aristotle and Kant have similarities Louden launches into many discussions about the work of his colleagues. Louden’s theory is that morality in contemporary society deals with actions against oneself and not as it was in Aristotle and Kant who contemplated actions against others. In this way, Louden seeks to re-focus away from actions and onto self-evaluation. Louden’s career has spanned many years and his writings that are discussed in this paper were done almost fifteen years apart. The span of time may account for Louden’s conflicting statements. In his criticism of Aristotle in “Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” Louden indicates that there are inherent problems when trying to reconcile the value of a moral theory with the inherent human need to take control of one’s life in the present. In modern times, many speak of the importance of justice as a virtue. This is a reference to individual actions and by extension social justice. John Rawls (1971) in particular views justice as relating to “social institutions” (3). This implies that justice as a virtue should be applied to and sought by individuals and social institutions. The main thrust of this argument by Rawls is that justice most rightly should be assessed through the introspection of individuals. Rawls theory embraces Plato’s Republic contention that justice is the all-encompassing virtue of both individuals and social institutions. In the twenty first century, justice is not so all encompassing of an idea. For example, comments on people who cheat on their taxes or their spouses do not conjure images of an unjust person. Justice in modern terms is usually a debate over money or property. Robbery is unjust. Not paying the contractor for home improvements is unjust. Unfortunately modern discussions of justice as virtuous in regards to individuals have been obscured by the emphasis on legal justice. it does seem to have some implications about which actions are right and wrong, however. For example, since honesty and benevolence are virtues, then presumably it would be morally wrong to lie to someone in order to harm them, just for fun. However, even this inference makes the assumption that there is a connection between virtue and right action, namely that if an action is not virtuous, and then it is not right. Some virtue theorists have claimed that we ought to do away with the notion of right action altogether, and simply talk about virtue instead.
Works Cited
Aristotle and H. Rackham. Aristotle: the Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1945. Print.Carden, Stephen D. Virtue Ethics: Dewey and Macintyre. London: Continuum, 2006. Internet resource. Louden, Robert B. Kant's Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Internet resource. Louden, Robert B. "On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics.” Virtue Ethics / Edited by Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. (1997). Print. Pojman, Louis P, and James Fieser. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Print. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet resource. Retrieved from plato.stanford.eduWareh, Tarik. “How to cite Aristotle.” Union College, Schenectady, NY, 2014. Internet resource. Retrieved from http://www1.union.edu/wareht/aristotle/how_to_cite_aristotle.pdf
