Virtues of character

Is Aristotle right to think magnificence is a distinct virtue from generosity, and that magnanimity is distinct from the virtue concerned with small honours? (2020 Q6)

• No, they seem to be the same, and it’s stronger for Aristotle’s account if he treats them together.
• Both discussed in IV, just after generosity.
  • Magnanimity (megalopsychia) is an adornment on the virtues; it’s when someone believes they’re worthy of greatness and really are.
    • Also involves moving slowly, talking in a deep voice.
  • Magnificence (megaloprepeia) is fitting expenditure on a grand scale.
• [maybe do more exegesis on what Aristotle’s view is; defending/explaining it?]
• Recall that virtues are situation-specific responses, involving a mean, and between the corresponding vices of excess and deficiency.
  • So the question is: are the vices of wastefulness/ungenerosity different from vulgarity/stinginess? Similarly, are vanity/pusillanimity different from overambitiousness/unambitiousness?
  • It seems like not really. The failing is fundamentally the same, the difference is just in where the mean lies in absolute terms.
    • Could give example thought experiment case etc
  • But Aristotle says the mean is defined relative to us. So really it is the same underlying mean for a rich person and a poor person, just that the fitting expenditure (etc) is much larger for a rich than poor.
• Two corollaries of Aristotle’s view:
  • Only the rich can be fully virtuous.
    • He does accept that external goods like money / wealth can turn on virtue. But it does seem a little surprising that one must be wealthy (not merely comfortably-off) to attain full virtue.
  • There are some vices which aren’t worthy of criticism
    • He says that vanity and pusillanimity don’t bring reproach because they do no harm to neighbours [but could be descriptive rather than prescriptive]
    • More substantively, it suggests there are hierarchies to the virtues of character, which gets in the way of unity of virtues

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Steelman Aristotle more.
  • Magnificence requires a special kind of expertise, tastefulness / the ability to observe “like a craftsman” what is fitting.
  • And it concerns a different kind of good to generosity – public expenditures like religious dedications, public buildings, etc.
  • Magnanimity likewise is about great honour, and requires different character dispositions (e.g. stateliness etc)
• Note that Aristotle takes bravery in everyday fear as the same virtue as bravery in war, even though the latter is paradigmatic.
  • So this could challenge how he treats generosity/magnificence.
• Rebuttals Aristotle could make
  • Magnificence isn’t just more generosity; it’s qualitatively different.
    • In particular, it needs good taste/craftsmanship about how to spend large sums.
• Another worry, related to external goods: magnanimity requires actually being worthy of great things, which might depend on prior ability/capacities
  • Similar to how magnificence needs wealth.
• Can comment on whether Aristotle’s methodology struggles here, e.g. starting from endoxa leads to views that reflect Greek social world rather than modern views.

‘In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.’ (SUSAN SONTAG on the 9/11 attackers, The New Yorker, Sept 17th, 2001) Is Aristotle right to hold that courage is a moral virtue? (2021 Q5)

• Yes, he is right. This fits with the natural understanding; Sontag is using words incorrectly here to describe courage as a “morally neutral virtue”.
• Terminological point: we can have different conceptions of courage in mind. It’s obviously possible to define “courage” to be the morally neutral property of willingness to stick to one’s beliefs despite physical danger to oneself, but that’s not interesting. I’m going to focus on the idea of courage in common use; similar to how Aristotle starts with endoxa.
• Empirically, at least, after terror attacks politicians will often condemn the perpetrators for “cowardice”.
  • The idea here seems to be that it is cowardly to target the innocent / blameless. But this seems to be wishful thinking from the politicians to satisfy a desire to make the perpetrators appear vicious in every way possible – prima facie, it does seem the opposite of cowardly to risk one’s life for a cause, no matter how repugnant we may think it to be.
    • (You might say that the masterminds of the attack were cowardly, for delegating their scheme to others rather than risking their own lives.)
  • It may well be that this is what Sontag was responding to.
• On Aristotle’s view, it doesn’t make sense to talk about a morally neutral virtue. I think this is the natural reading of “virtue”.
  • Virtue is a state which decides, with reference to reason. It consists in the mean and aims at the fine – that is to say, for an action to be in accordance with virtue, it must be what the virtuous agent would’ve done in the circumstances. But certainly causing the deaths of thousands is not that.
  • Compare cleverness (deinotes) with practical wisdom (phronesis). The latter requires virtue of character; the former is morally neutral precisely because it is instrumental reasoning towards any end.
• So Aristotle’s courage (or, bravery): needs to be about the right thing, for the right end, held firm. And it involves active – not merely passive – suffering. The corresponding vices are cowardice and rashness.
• There probably is a dual of courage that doesn’t involve the right end; perhaps we would call it “boldness”. Here, I agree with Sontag that the perpetrators were bold.
  • But Aristotle is right to stipulate that they were not courageous; courage is indeed a virtue and virtue requires the right end.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Defend Sontag’s view a bit harder.
  • One interpretation of her view is whether morally neutral virtue means something that is in a respect admirable.
    • So one thing is that the attackers stood by their beliefs; possibly this is what makes it virtuous.
  • The attackers truly believed they were serving the fine, like the brave person who endures pain for the fine. Does that matter?
    • Aristotle would say no; he has an objective view of the fine (defined by the virtuous person as “standard and measure”), and vicious people are (at least partly) responsible for their flawed conception
• Can reference III.8 on the cases of apparent but non-veridical bravery; which category (if any) do attackers fall into?
  • Perhaps the citizen-soldiers, acting from fear of legal/social sanction.
    • Not really the professionals who run away; not out of spirit; not from ignorance; not from overconfidence.
  • But they were likely acting for their conception of fine. So it is harder for Aristotle to dismiss out of hand.

‘Magnanimity, then, would seem to be a sort of adornment of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them.’ Is Aristotle’s account of magnanimity compatible with the doctrine of the mean? (2021 Q6)

• It’s compatible with the DoM, but it poses problems for his account of the unity of the virtues.
• DoM: introduced in II, underlying theoretical framework for treatment of all the virtues of character in III.5-V. Two formulations (Young).
  • Location: virtue is a state of character along a particular dimension which is located between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.
  • Intermediacy: virtue is a state of character which generates situation-specific actions and feelings intermediate between those that the corresponding vices generate.
• On first pass, it looks perfectly compatible.
  • The dimension of character is something about greatness and how worthy you think yourself to be.
  • He says magnanimity (megalopsynchia) is the state of being worthy of great things and thinking oneself to be thus.
  • There are corresponding vices of excess and deficiency: vanity and pusillanimity. And magnanimity has intermediate actions / feelings: e.g. how worthy you think yourself to be, your gait and tenor of voice, etc.
  • One wrinkle: he says that the vices paired with magnanimity don’t bring reproach because they harm nobody.
    • But this might be more of a descriptive claim: the law obviously wouldn’t punish people for that, even though it would be better, as he argues, to have the virtue than the vice.
• The problem is that it undermines unity of the virtues.
  • Aristotle argues from both directions: you can’t have phronesis without complete virtue of character (virtue makes the goal right; practical reasoning aims at practical truth which needs right desire as well as the right means) and you can’t have any virtue of character without phronesis (you need judgement; it’s a state which decides).
  • But then if, as Aristotle suggests, one can have all the virtues yet not magnanimity, the unity is undermined.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Should properly engage with the main thrust of the question, that it’s incompatible with DoM.
  • The worry is that as an adornment, it’s not a mean on a single dimension, but rather something that adds on to all the other virtues.
  • At least motivate the case against, before arguing it’s compatible.
• Other peculiarities about magnanimity
  • It requires actually-great worth, not just correct calibration, which strains location thesis.
    • Someone of small worth who correctly judges himself so is not magnanimous; they’re sophron.
    • So not only a mean about self-assessment, but an extreme about worth.
  • The great/small pairing seems ad hoc.
    • Aristotle thinks that we have magnanimity as the mean about great honour, and a nameless mean for ordinary honour, in parallel to magnificence/generosity for wealth.
    • But the DoM doesn’t naturally generate these.