Are human beings to be blamed for flaws of character if their environment does not support suitable processes of ethical habituation and cultivation? Does Aristotle’s theory of responsibility account for such cases in satisfactory manner?

Essay

No, human beings ought not to be blamed for flaws of character (or the actions that flow from those flaws) if they are the result of environmental conditions unsuitable for ethical habituation and cultivation. Blaming individuals in such circumstances goes against the strong intuition we have that blame and praise are only appropriate when agents bear responsibility for the action under evaluation. Aristotle’s theory of responsibility does not provide a satisfactory account of how to deal with these cases, instead claiming that humans are always to be held responsible for their character, an unintuitive conclusion which results from his unduly weak conditions for an action being voluntary. In this essay, I first explore the general principles for when praise and blame are appropriate according to both non-consequentialist and consequentialist ethical theories, drawing out the connections between freedom, moral responsibility, and praise- or blameworthiness. I then apply these principles to two paradigmatic examples where individuals’ flaws are the result of adverse environmental conditions, showing that in each case they should not be blamed. Next, I set out Aristotle’s theory of responsibility and voluntariness, before showing that it does not adequately account for our intuitions in those two cases (or in general). Finally, I consider whether the aims and intended audience of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics can explain why he holds the positions he does, concluding that although this context is important for understanding his theory of responsibility, it does not fully address the theory’s shortcomings in accounting for cases of adverse environmental conditions.

Much of the discussion in ethics about the appropriate conditions for praise and blame depends on metaphysical questions about the nature of free will. While this essay is not the place to conduct an analysis of free will, it is worth briefly examining these general principles before focussing on our specific problem of when to blame individuals for their character flaws. After Watson (1982, pp8-11), we can sketch out the relationship as follows:

As Crisp (1997, p141) notes, a consequentialist would not necessarily accept P2. For them, praising and blaming are actions just like any other, with their rightness solely a function of the consequences produced: if blaming somebody for something they had no responsibility for leads to better outcomes, so be it. In treating praise and blame as mere instruments, however, this approach seems to unacceptably trivialise their moral significance. Moreover, it collapses the philosophical question of whether it is right to blame individuals for their character flaws into an empirical one of simply tallying up the costs and benefits in a particular situation. For these reasons, in the remainder of the essay I will focus exclusively on theories according to which moral responsibility is required for blame and praise to be appropriate.

So, using the argument presented above, if we can demonstrate that a human does not bear moral responsibility for character flaws acquired in an adverse environment, then that will suffice to show that they ought not to be blamed for those flaws.¹ Intuitively, it certainly seems the case that it is unreasonable to hold somebody responsible for circumstances outside their control. Consider, for instance, the example of Jeremy:

Even if we hold Jeremy responsible for the actions he took while securing rations for his family, extending that responsibility to the character traits gradually developed as a result seems unwarranted. He did not, in any relevant sense, freely choose to develop this selfish character, and so he ought not to be blamed for it. A similar thing can be said in the case of Rebecca:

The development of a flawed character is, again, not something it seems fair to hold Rebecca responsible for – one might even say that it happened to her, not because of her. Character traits are relatively stable, in that if one becomes (for instance) a habitual liar there may be no way out, since even being honest on rare occasions goes against your settled disposition. When vices come about as a result of challenging material conditions or a morally-tainted upbringing, then, it is not appropriate to blame individuals for having them.

Let us now turn to Aristotle’s account of responsibility. Defending his conclusion that “being decent or base is up to us” (III.5, 1113b14) is important for Aristotle for two reasons (Sauvé Meyer 2006, p138). First, he wants to demonstrate that virtue and vice are appropriate objects of praise and blame respectively, and doing so requires showing that we have responsibility and agency over them. Second, Aristotle denies that the consequentialist’s rejection of P2 has any practical implications, and therefore thinks that laws are only effective at incentivising good behaviour when they reward or punish people for actions that they do in fact bear responsibility for (III.5, 1113b21–30). To reach this point, he starts by distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary actions, with an action being voluntary only if its origin lies in the agent, and the agent is informed about the particulars of the action (III.1, 1111a22-24).² For Aristotle, the category of involuntary actions is extremely narrow: one must either be acting in ignorance, or perform (insofar as one can be described as performing) the action without any cognitive input at all, even to the extent of moving one’s limbs deliberately (III.1, 1110a1-4). As a result, being coerced (but not literally physically forced) into carrying out an action, like Jeremy’s pushing forward in the queue and Rebecca’s lying as a child, would be classed as voluntary (III.1, 1110a12-13; Nielsen 2007, 281). It is somewhat unclear whether Aristotle thinks voluntariness is sufficient for responsibility – his claim that children can act voluntarily but cannot make decisions (III.1, 1111a24-6) suggests that he might add a further condition of deliberation occurring, implying that Jeremy, but not Rebecca, is responsible for their actions. With his distinction between the voluntary and involuntary established, Aristotle then makes a fairly straightforward move to defend the idea that we can hold people responsible for actions done due to character: since habituation means that your actions form your character, and you are responsible for your actions, transitivity of responsibility implies that you are responsible for your character itself (III.5, 1113b7-12; Sauvé Meyer 2006, p154).

As Sauvé Meyer (2006, p156) notes, Aristotle had a very particular audience in mind for the Nicomachean Ethics: well-educated male citizens who have been brought up “to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from [their] youth” (II.1, 1103b22-25). In fact, he is explicit that certain virtues are inaccessible to individuals without the appropriate material conditions – “a poor person could not be magnificent”, he claims, since “he lacks the means for large and fitting expenditures” (IV.2, 1122b27-29). Given that Aristotle repeats several times the qualification that to be virtuous, one “must be finely brought up and habituated”, it would be strange for him to view those who lacked such an upbringing to be somehow blameworthy for their misfortune. Indeed, when considered in conjunction with Aristotle’s conviction that flourishing consists in being virtuous, he might even pity individuals who, like Jeremy and Rebecca, are unable to attain the good life because of difficult environmental conditions.

So, to conclude, it is not reasonable to blame agents for flaws of character or their behavioural consequences when those flaws are the result of an impoverished material or moral environment. Aristotle’s account of responsibility is predicted on an overly narrow view of the involuntary, and it therefore attributes responsibility to people in cases where it should not. However, his apparent oversight of the role played by upbringing is understandable when set in the context of the Nicomachean Ethics being a work aimed at well-off male citizens, for whom the assumption of a suitable early environment was a justifiable one.

References

Crisp, Roger. 1997. “Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism”; 2003 republished in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Nielsen, Karen Margrethe. 2007. “Dirtying Aristotle’s Hands? Aristotle’s Analysis of Mixed Acts in Nicomachean Ethics III 3”, Phronesis 52, 270-300.

Sauvé Meyer, Susan. 2006. “Aristotle on the Voluntary”, in Kraut (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Nicomachean Ethics, 137-157.

Watson, Gary. 1982. “Introduction”, in Watson, G., (ed.), 1982, Free Will, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tutor’s feedback

This is a well-argued and concise essay, which succeeds at demonstrating good knowledge of Aristotle’s theory of the voluntary and praise- and blameworthiness and at discussing the essay question in a creative and fruitful way. Framing the issue partly by relying on contemporary ethical theories’ perspectives on moral responsibility seems like a useful strategy here. Your overall argument, that humans should not be blamed for character flaws resulting from unsuitable environments and that Aristotle’s theory does not adequately account for this, is well developed and pursued throughout the essay. The examples you choose are largely instructive, your description of Aristotle’s theory is well-supported with textual evidence, and you taking into account the historical context and audience of the Ethics rounds out the analysis in a nuanced way.

I wonder to what degree the essay assumes that Aristotle categorically blames people for bad character in all cases. Perhaps thinking about what other external constraints are recognised by Aristotle would change your position as developed in this paper. Moreover, you argue that Aristotle sets the bar too low for voluntary action, but we should remember that he distinguishes different degrees of voluntariness, for example in mixed actions. In particular the case of Rebecca might be an unclear case for Aristotle. Since he denies that children have full responsibility (III.1, 1111a24-26), if Rebecca’s actions as a child don’t count as fully voluntary, would Aristotle hold her responsible for her adult character? You do mention the issue, but it could have been discussed more deeply.

While the framework of modern ethical theories serves your essay well in giving it a succinct structure, we might ask whether there also are shortcomings of this approach. Do we frame Aristotle’s discussion in terms that are alien to his intentions by adopting such a perspective? Is Aristotle’s interest in blame and responsibility similarly motivated as that of modern ethical theorists? This could be an interesting question for our tutorial discussion.