Virtue and the mean

‘Someone who repeatedly does the virtuous thing but does it unvirtuously, will simply develop a habit of doing virtuous things unvirtuously. How could this be a way of acquiring virtue?’ Discuss. (2014 Q3)

• This is a challenge to Aristotle’s account of habituation, but not an unescapable one. The reply from Aristotle would be that the virtuous way of doing the action reveals itself over time, and the hardest step in the process is to begin doing the virtuous thing.
• Need to first explain how it is possible to do the virtuous thing unvirtuously
  • For Aristotle, an action is virtuous iff it’s what the V person would do. But only done virtuously if stems from the right motivation, aligned with correct desire, etc. [more precise?]
• Consider someone who is moved by a desire to do the right thing, whatever that may be, but lacks phronesis
  • They might bring the situation to an AI chatbot, ask for its advice, and then implement it.
  • One possible chain of events is the person does this throughout their life, and becomes dependent on the chatbot for all their decisions
  • But another chain of events is that they are aware that this should only be a temporary phase, and deliberately try to wean themself off it
    • In that case, it seems like they might indeed be able to acquire virtue.
    • But they’d need to attend carefully to the models’ reasoning, observe the consequences in the world, etc
• Burnyeat three-phase model:
  • Start off by mimicking
  • Then begin to take pleasure in doing the right action
  • Finally get phronesis and understand why the action is right
• The reason that the dependent-deferrer does badly can be seen more vividly in the following example of someone who takes virtuous actions for the wrong reasons
  • Say, because they believe that by taking virtuous actions they’ll attract the romantic attention of someone they’re interested in
  • Seems highly unlikely that such a person is going to develop virtue. It’s not very plausible that one inevitably begins to take pleasure in the fineness of virtuous actions by doing them, and moreover cultivates an understanding of why they’re right
    • But maybe Aristotle would maintain this.
• He doesn’t need to argue that doing V action always leads to virtue though. He’s clear that we need suitable initial conditions. (moral education, brought up finely)
  • So the motivational state of the agent at the moment they start performing virtuous actions seems like it’s a perfectly reasonable candidate, too

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Remember that Aristotle’s own account of how we get virtue draws on an analogy with the crafts.
  • You start off by e.g. chancing upon a grammatical sentence; then you get the knowledge of grammar
  • The three conditions for someone to be acting virtuously: the action must be chosen for its own sake, done in knowledge, and from a firm & unchanging state
• Two senses of unvirtuously:
  • Not-yet-virtuously – the agent who is mimicking but on the way to acquiring virtue
  • Viciously – like the romantic, or someone doing the virtuous action for profit (or to later exploit someone), etc
• Habituation is all about pleasure and pains; remember that!
  • A complaint you might have: habituation reinforces whatever {outward act + internal motivation} actually produced the action. But if you do the virtuous act from a defective motivation, then how does that motivational component get reshaped?
  • Aristotle replies: it’s the pleasure or pain that supervenes on the action. Initially, this comes from someone external (the legislator, a teacher / parent).
    • They attach praise/honour/reward to good actions.
    • And the idea is that this retrains the agent’s perception of the situation (i.e. what they find pleasant/salient/choiceworthy), not only the action they take.
  • This seems like it might work in the developmental case, but not the perverse one.
    • While developing, the agent’s pleasure isn’t anchored to anything apart from the virtuous act (they don’t have a firm conception of the good, etc). So perception can develop so they view the fine as pleasant.
    • But for the romantic, their pleasure would more likely attach to their faulty conception of the good, and they’ll stay unvirtuous.
  • In any case, Aristotle really just asserts that with suitable initial conditions the pleasure reliably migrates from external reward onto the act’s fineness.
• Can mention the enkrates as a useful example.
  • But Aristotle doesn’t really explain psychologically what happens to make them desire the right action / how they bring the appetitive part to agree with reason
  • And moreover, the enkrates doesn’t seem to fit neatly into Burnyeat’s model – they’re far beyond needing external guidance, and they mostly do understand the because of why to take the right action.
    • So, the decisional side is mostly in place.
    • The problem is with their motivation; they don’t take pleasure rightly.

What, in Aristotle’s view, makes an action right? (2015 Q2)

• Although Aristotle doesn’t explicitly present a theory of right action in Nicomachean Ethics, the most plausible reading of his position is that an action is right insofar as it aims at and achieves the fine. The most reasonable alternative is that right actions are exactly those which the virtuous agent would take, but this both seems to introduce redundancy and introduces difficulties with correctly identifying the intuitively-right action in certain situations involving unvirtuous agents.
• In this essay I will argue for my interpretation of Aristotle’s account of right action, present an alternative account and illustrate two problems with it, and finally explore how theories of right action fit alongside the remainder of the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Distinguish between a means of identifying right actions, and what the right-making property of those actions is.
• Throughout NE, Aristotle talks about how the actions of the virtuous agent are done for the sake of the fine, given to the right person, at the right time, in the right way (for example, in his discussion of generosity).
• It seems like fineness is the primary right-making feature.
  • One might mistakenly think that the right-making feature is that these actions constitute eudaimonia. But that gets the priority the wrong way round. These actions aren’t good because they lead to flourishing; flourishing just is doing the human function, which is acting virtuously i.e. doing the fine things.
  • Similarly, you might think that the fact of being a mean makes an action right. But again, this seems to be reversed.
• Alternative view: uses the textual support of the virtuous agent is the “standard and measure”, seems like what rightness is because it’s what the virtuous agent does.
• Two problems:
  • Redundancy – why is it that the virtuous agent does it? This is a problem for all agent-prior views, where right action is defined in terms of what the virtuous agent does, but the virtues themselves are grounded in something further (e.g. eudaimonia)
  • Incorrect verdicts: the right action for an unvirtuous agent can differ from the right action for a virtuous agent – e.g., ethical development.
• A better way to read that: Aristotle is talking about how in practice we acquire moral character / what external reference to have for habituation.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• There are more candidates for the right-making property than I describe here.
  • The fine
  • What the virtuous agent would do / promote
  • The mean
    • A better way to dismiss this: the mean is in turn defined “with reference to reason”, so it can’t be the fundamental right-making property
  • What constitutes / promotes eudaimonia
    • But this has circularity worries
    • Plus it doesn’t really fit with Aristotle always saying that right actions are done for the sake of the fine, not for eudaimonia
  • What accords with right reason / what phronesis prescribes
    • But this can’t explain the enkrates being worse than the virtuous agent
    • Also, Aristotle explicitly distinguishes between “in accord with reason” vs “from reason”, which suggests that right reason is necessary but not sufficient
    • This is because phronesis requires pre-existing virtue of character (“virtue makes the goal correct, and prudence makes what promotes the goal correct”), so then we’re presupposing a standard of correctness
• The question is getting at the fact that there’s a circularity vs ungroundedness worry.
  • Aristotle explains the quality of agents in terms of the quality of their feelings and actions.
  • But then how do we determine the quality of feelings and actions?
  • If there’s no account of that, then we might lack a firm grounding for rightness. And if he gives an account that refers us back to things that promote happiness, which in turn is defined as a life of virtuous activity, then we’re going in circles.
  • Cf 2022 Q4.
• Remember the points from revision notes
  • Even if we take to kalon to be an irreducible grounding property, we don’t know (i) what accounts for fineness in activity, and (ii) how it is grasped by the practically wise
  • Also, if fineness is a brute property, we don’t really need the function argument

What does Aristotle mean by the claim that the virtuous person chooses virtuous activity for its own sake? Can this claim be defended? (2016 Q2)

• He means that the virtuous person intrinsically values virtuous activity. Note that at the same place in I.7, he says they choose it for the sake of happiness, and also (throughout the NE) that the virtuous person acts for the sake of the fine.
• So we owe an account of what “for the sake of” means.
  • Constitutive reading: i.e. that virtuous activity constitutes (is necessarily, essentially connected with) eudaimonia. Obviously not applicable in this case of choosing for own sake; it’s trivially true that virtuous activity constitutes itself.
  • Causal production: e.g. like how someone might be brave in order to produce the fine. Seems like Aristotle thinks this doesn’t always obtain: “bravery is pleasant insofar as it attains the fine”, but the causal connection might fail e.g. due to bad luck, etc.
  • Motivated by: where the agent’s desires stem from.
• In his definition of what it is to do an act virtuously, there are three conditions: act chosen & for its own sake, done in knowledge, from an unchanging state.
  • Consider e.g. a romantic who chooses to take virtuous actions because they think it will make someone they’re interested in more attracted to them.
  • They’re not choosing the virtuous activity for its own sake; it’s instrumental.
  • And intuitively, being motivated by that rules out them being virtuous.
• Two difficulties with Aristotle’s account though:
  • Within Aristotle’s own account there are tensions: you might think the virtuous person is in fact acting for the sake of eudaimonia
    • We can defend against this. First, it’s perfectly possible to choose something for its own sake and instrumentally towards something else.
    • But moreover, Aristotle isn’t even committed to virtuous activity being instrumental towards eudaimonia! On a wide account of virtuous activity, including theoria, then every reading of eudaimonia involves virtuous activity. Even if we only look at practical virtuous activity, it does form part of inclusivist versions of eudaimonia.
  • The bigger problem: the agent is insufficiently outwardly-oriented in their motivation.
    • We might think that you should choose virtuous activity not because it is virtuous, but for whatever actually makes it virtuous – i.e., the right-making features that, say, it’s responsive to the demands of the world, etc.
    • Someone who does a virtuous act “because it was the virtuous thing to do” – e.g. visiting friend at the hospital – looks like they’re being moved by the wrong sort of reasons; it’s a fixation on doing virtuous things.
    • This is a residual problem, and limited defences available. It relates to the difficulties Aristotle has in specifying a non-circular theory of what makes actions right.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Should dig into the “for the sake of the fine” tension.
  • The resolution: fineness is an intrinsic, formal property of the virtuous action. It’s not an external end.
  • Choosing the act qua fine means choosing the act for what it is, i.e., choosing it for its own sake.
    • In X.6, Aristotle contrasts serious virtuous activity with play, which is chosen for the sake of relaxation (something else besides itself).
  • Remember the argument that the fine is what’s prior, and the agent detects it – so they’re moved by the fineness in the act, which just is choosing it for its own sake.
• Name where the motivation challenges come from: Williams with one thought too many; Stocker with hospital-visit example.
• A way to dissolve that objection: as noted above, we can read “for the sake of the fine” as something intrinsic to the virtuous action, grounded in the particular features of the situation.
  • And then, the agent is moved by the things we want; the right-making features of the world.
  • The remaining problem is circularity & grounding: can Aristotle say what fineness consists in? He can’t define it as “whatever the phronimos chooses”.

Should a virtuous agent ever do a shameful act? (2019 Q3)

• A virtuous agent would never do an action which is deserving of shame – but there are circumstances where they would (rightly) do an action which might both attract public shame, and in general be worthy of it.
• Note that the virtuous agent always does what is right in the circumstances: virtue is a state (hexis) which decides, consisting in a mean (meson) relative to us, defined by reference to reason.
  • The virtuous agent is one who has a stable disposition to do the right thing (the fine), moved by correct desire.
  • So we can collapse the “should” into “would”.
• An act is shameful when it is deserving of shame. But this can come apart from whether it indeed attracts shame.
  • Example: an unjust practice is social custom among some aristocrats. One of their kind criticises it. They are shamed and publicly rebuked. But this was clearly a noble, praiseworthy thing to do.
  • (Conversely, acts worthy of shame may not in fact be subject to public censure.)
• Would a virtuous agent ever do an act worthy of shame?
  • Here’s one way to see the answer is no:
    • If it were worthy of shame, then the virtuous agent would feel shame (since the mean is about feelings as well as actions).
    • But Aristotle explicitly says the virtuous agent never feels shame.
    • So by modus tollens, the answer is no.
  • It’s useful to understand more carefully why this is true.
    • Unlike the utilitarian, Aristotle doesn’t think that praise/blame/shame are merely actions like any other, which are deserved exactly when expedient. He thinks there’s a deeper moral explanation about them – and in particular, shame is appropriate when someone does a base act.
    • But the virtuous person never does do base acts. So it just isn’t appropriate for them.
• But a virtuous agent might be subject to shame; this is what Aristotle is getting at in III when he talks about how sometimes we endure shame for a fine thing.
  • The endurance is of the receipt of public shame; not enduring deserved shame.
  • Nielsen’s analysis of putatively-mixed actions helps us understand the context better.
  • There are some circumstances where a decision is made voluntarily, which in other settings would be worthy of shame (e.g., according to Aristotle, cross-dressing). But in these particular circumstances (say, under threat of a tyrant to kill one’s family), the thing at risk is sufficiently weighty that it’s correct to do the usually-shameful thing.
  • As Aristotle says, doing a usually-shameful act is not justified in cases of a trivial end.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Could be worth saying that the virtuous agent never does some acts whose names include baseness. And likewise that there are some actions where it would be absurd to be forgiven (e.g. Alcmaeon killing his mother).
• Recall that although Aristotle thinks shame isn’t appropriate for the decent adult, it is fitting for those who are young and developing/habituating.
• The virtuous person acts for the sake of the fine. You can mention this in the explanation of why the thing at risk is sufficiently weighty
• Key points: II.6-7 (about virtue and feelings) and IV.9 (on shame explicitly)
  • “shame is not a virtue” (II.7), but virtue involves “having the feelings at the right times about the right things towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way” (II.6)
  • Shame is more becoming to the youth, because they live by feeling and commit more errors; it is conditionally good, but not unqualifiedly so since it only arises from voluntary actions that were bad, and a good person would never do this. (IV.9)

How useful is the doctrine of the mean to the ethicist? (2020 Q5)

• Not very useful, either as a theoretical framework or a guide to action. The doctrine of the mean is either trivial or false, and in either case does not provide much support to finding the correct actions to take.
• Two main things an ethicist might care about for a theory:
  • Knowing what are the right actions in a situation (extensional goal)
  • Understanding what makes those actions right (explanatory goal)
  • And then, they also care about how we should actually make decisions.
• Superficially, the DoM, introduced in II, helps with both.
  • DoM says: the mean is a particular situation-specific response involving both feelings and actions, intermediate between the extremes associated with two corresponding vices of excess and deficiency.
  • So one might think that we are able to (a) identify the right action by looking for what action is intermediate between others, and (b) explain this rightness in terms of its intermediacy.
• But DoM has a dilemma between triviality or falsity.
  • Triviality: if we say the right action is simply the one that is neither excessive nor deficient in some quantity, then that smuggles in evaluative content. This just restates the idea that virtue gets things right, and presupposes a prior account of what the right amount is.
  • Falsity: if there’s the substantive claim that for each virtue there are exactly two corresponding vices, then this just doesn’t work.
    • E.g. the person deficient in bodily pleasure “hardly occurs and is not human”.
    • Magnificence and magnanimity, again, struggle.
    • And justice fails to be a mean.
• It’s also not action-guiding.
  • When Aristotle discusses the individual virtues of character in III to V, he doesn’t rely on the conceptual machinery of DoM at all.
    • Instead he uses endoxa about praise and blame, then largely vindicates those.
  • If you’re an unvirtuous person, you lack the phronesis to find the mean anyway, so you’re just reliant on mimicking – say, of the lawgiver, or some virtuous parent, etc.
  • And Aristotle argues that one extreme can be worse than another.
• More positive note: what we can extract from DoM is the idea that it’s difficult to do the right thing, and there are a great number of ways in which one can be in error.
  • (Hursthouse, hitting the bullseye; the admirability of virtue)

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Good to have specified what an ethicist might care about.
  • The “action-guidingness” is more about what a moral agent would be interested in, rather than an ethicist. (But I think I could still make the argument)
  • Other qualities which might make a theory useful to an ethicist:
    • Has taxonomic value (e.g. to organise the virtues)
    • Provides constraints on ethical theorising
    • Gives a criterion for evaluating other theories
• Some ways in which DoM might be useful is ruling out certain theories:
  • Virtue is about feelings as well as actions; rules out purely act-focused theories.
  • Gives a taxonomic framework that for each virtue there’s a pair of vices.
    • So we can rule out theories which only have one vice etc
  • Context-sensitivity of the right action, but not subjectivity

Is Aristotle a ‘virtue ethicist’ in the modern sense? (2021 Q2)

‘If Aristotle’s theory of habituation is true, no one becomes virtuous by reading a treatise like the Nicomachean Ethics. Therefore, Aristotle’s project in the Ethics is pointless.’ Discuss. (2021 Q3)

• NE would still help with one’s acquisition of virtue, and Aristotle’s primary goal is not in any case teaching individual readers to be virtuous.
• State the theory of habituation
  • You acquire a character, which is a stable state (hexis) by performing actions of a particular type & in a particular way repeatedly.
  • So, the kinds of actions we take shape the character we’ll possess in future.
• How does it connect to virtue?
  • The virtuous person does right actions, and moreover desires to do them. For that to happen, they need to have the correct conception of the good, and take pleasure in the right things.
  • But both of these are shaped by one’s character, i.e. habituation is important for it.
  • And especially, early-life habituation: to be adequate students of the political science, we need to have been brought up in fine habits.
• Burnyeat provides a helpful exegesis of Aristotle’s account of how one acquires virtue:
  • 1. Mimicking – you copy actions you’ve been told are good.
  • 2. You start to take pleasure in the right actions and develop a disposition
  • 3. You understand what makes them good & right (phronesis)
• Does it mean that nobody becomes virtuous by reading a treatise?
  • Well, you can’t get there exclusively through it, but it might help!
    • Study alone cannot get you to virtue, obviously, because you need to practise it. And moreover you need to have the right external conditions / history.
  • Understanding the mechanisms of habituation and suchlike could help (though Aristotle claims only someone totally insensible could be unaware of it)
  • Aristotle is sceptical of the power of moral persuasion (X.9), but reading the treatise might cause you to reflect on how to correctly fill out the end you’re pursuing (e.g. of eudaimonia), and change your actions accordingly.
  • Besides, it contains practical guidance useful for the first stage, e.g. about what true bravery consists in.
• Besides, this is not Aristotle’s sole project in the Ethics.
  • He’s interested in political communities and what makes for a good one, like other Greek philosophers (e.g. Plato’s Republic)
  • So his conclusions about the lawgiver, etc, are useful; similarly establishing what the human function is.
  • And maybe most important is the section on moral education at the end – e.g., if you are a parent, then reading the treatise might help you to raise a better child, and more generally society to bring up young people correctly.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Can explicitly connect NE to stage 3 of Burnyeat’s model: Book VI on phronesis and II-V on DoM & individual virtues help understanding what makes actions right.
  • And be aware that the opening of Book I says the inquiry is practical and aims at action. So he would like to teach individual readers to be virtuous.
  • Indeed, I.3 says “the end is not knowledge but action”.
• Also, flag that Aristotle is trying to take the already-habituated to full virtue – and that X.9 suggests that for those with a prepared soul, argument does have strength.
  • A more precise gloss of his view is that he’s sceptical argument alone can override bad habituation, but holds that argument does work on the well-habituated.
• Remember that in Book X, Aristotle is committed to the view that sophia is the highest activity of the soul, and therefore (some argue) the dominant part of eudaimonia
  • So philosophical contemplation actually does directly contribute to virtue, as well as (indirectly) the development of ethical character.
  • But, beware! Paradigmatically, sophia is about necessary, eternal, unchanging objects, whereas ethics (and hence NE) deals with what admits of being otherwise – the domain of phronesis. (That’s why you shouldn’t expect mathematical precision in the political science.)
• Aristotle talks about exactly this, in II.4:
  • “[most people] take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.”

Does Aristotle ever explain what makes virtuous acts virtuous? Explain the significance of your answer for Aristotle’s ethics. (2022 Q4)

• Not explicitly. But there are two main candidates implicit in what he says:
  • (i) Because they’re done for the sake of the fine (to kalon)
  • (ii) Because their performance is what distinguishes an excellent human
    • This seems somewhat circular though – a bit like saying “because they’re what the virtuous/excellent person does”
    • It’s closer to the motivational structure he presents, though, that virtue is closely connected to human function
• For (i), you might complain that it punts off the question of what ultimately grounds it.
  • But things need to bottom out somewhere, and we can use endoxa to think about what is fine / noble / admirable.
• The main residual problem is that there’s a dilemma between self-effacingness or egoism.
  • The virtuous agent presumably is not motivated by what makes the virtuous acts virtuous, at the time of acting
  • Contrast with Swanton’s non-eudaimonistic VE, where virtues are about meeting the demands of the world / beneficence

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• A good frame for the essay is about direction of explanation / what grounds what.
• Need to engage with DoM.
  • Virtue is a mesotês state because it hits the mean (meson) in action and feeling
  • So Aristotle explains the quality of agents with reference to the quality of acts and feelings, not vice versa
  • But then we’re owed an explanation of what makes acts and feelings virtuous.
• A fuller list of candidates for what makes virtuous acts virtuous (cf the earlier essay plan too!)
  • Hitting the mean
    • But this is perhaps trivial
  • Being what the virtuous person would do
    • They are, after all, the standard & reference of what’s right
    • But this is clearly circular
  • Promoting eudaimonia
    • But eudaimonia gets defined as a life of virtuous activity.
    • So it’s just a longer circle
  • According with reason
    • But Aristotle thinks that this isn’t enough; it can’t explain the enkrates being worse than the virtuous agent
  • Being for the sake of the kalon
    • This is the best non-circular candidate
• Then, taking the kalon candidate, point out that virtuous acts aren’t fine because the virtuous choose them; they’re chosen because they’re fine
  • Virtue of character is not the source of ethical value
  • But the cost of bottoming out at to kalon is that we leave the source of ethical value unanalysed.
• Alternatively, McDowell (particularism/uncodifiability) suggests that there is no reductive criterion, and it really just is what the phronimos would do
• This matters for at least three reasons:
  • Whether Aristotle has an agent-prior theory (like Hursthouse), or a kalon-prior theory and isn’t really a virtue ethicist in the modern sense
  • The possibility of moral knowledge and action guidance (if there’s no standard, then how can we get epistemic access?)
  • Moral realism

‘For it is not merely the state in accord with the correct reason, but the state involving correct reason, that is virtue.’ Explain Aristotle’s point. Is it plausible? (2022 Q8)

• This gets at why an act in accordance with virtue need not be an instance of acting virtuously.
• There are three conditions for acting virtuously: acting from knowledge, choosing the action and doing so for its own sake, and acting from a firm & unchanging state.
  • He thinks that being virtuous is a state (hexis), a stable disposition towards producing the actions and feelings which are appropriate for the situation
• The state that is merely in accord with virtue might fail on the first two conditions.
  • E.g., if you act without deciding upon it. (although is this really a state?)
• The enkrates is relevant to this, potentially
  • They lack correct reason, because phronesis aims at practical truth, which involves correct desire
  • (but is this state even in accord with correct reason?)
• → who/what is Aristotle trying to rule out here?
• Is the idea that virtue requires a decision & deliberation, not merely a reflex?
  • I think this is connected to the claim (C) that an action can be in accordance with virtue without being virtuous. Specifically, it’s one reason why (C) holds, among others (e.g., that desire must also be correct, etc.).

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• This is from VI.13, at the end of the unity-of-virtues argument connecting phronesis and ethike arete
• The contrast between accordance (kata) and involvement (meta) is at the level of the hexis, not the act.
  • So, this is analogous to the act-level distinction in II.4 (in accordance with virtue vs virtuous), but it’s not the same
  • The point of the distinction is that the internal motivation needs to be a particular way: right actions issue from & are driven by your own reason; it’s not that they’re generated by some sub-rational process which happens to align with correct reason (e.g. natural virtue, blind habit).
• Aristotle has in mind (above all) natural virtue here. It’s a state that is kata but not meta.
  • Recall Aristotle thinks that natural virtue is e.g. like a strong body moving without sight
    • So this fails to be meta because it doesn’t have phronesis on account of lacking the cognitive / rational component
  • The enkrates can come into it too, but they’re secondary.
    • They lack phronesis because of a failure of the desiderative part.
• It does seem at least prima facie plausible.
  • A disposition that is just conforming with what’s right without understanding is brittle; wouldn’t handle novelty.
  • So probably we wouldn’t describe it as excellence – seems less admirable, more just luck.
  • The reason needs to be the agent’s own for them to be praiseworthy for it.
  • And this lines up with the function argument, that it’s rational activity which constitutes the human good.
• The unity of virtues is at stake here.
  • The titular claim is crucial for that because it’s what demands an agent possess phronesis to be virtuous
    • (We still need the claim in the other direction, that phronesis requires full virtue of character. That’s the harder part; comes from the “virtue makes the goal right” and aims of practical truth.)
  • Also, it’s a distinguishing feature of Aristotle that he thinks that reason is constitutive of virtue, not merely regulative – e.g. it’s contra Hume.
• Against the thesis, the usual arguments against unity of virtue
  • It denies that e.g. someone with limited rational capacity can be virtuous in any way. But couldn’t someone e.g. be brave yet intemperate?
  • There’s also the bootstrapping / acquisition puzzle (and then Burnyeat developmental model to address it)

Is Aristotle’s account of virtue as a mean sufficiently action-guiding? Why or why not? (2024 Q4)

• Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is not sufficiently action-guiding, because it smuggles in evaluative content in a way that prevents not-yet-virtuous agents from comprehending where the mean actually lies. But, his broader account of virtue and its acquisition is moderately action-guiding, in that he does present a plausible account of how a non-virtuous agent might acquire the intellectual and ethical excellence required to be virtuous.
• What is the DoM.
  • Introduced in II.5-6. Virtue is a state which decides, consists in a mean relative to us, defined by reference to reason.
  • Two claims (following Young):
    • Location: every virtue of character is located between two vices along the same dimension of character, one of excess and one of deficiency.
    • Intermediacy: the virtue is a mean in that it’s a stable disposition to generate situation-specific actions and feelings which are intermediate between those generated by each corresponding vice.
• Notably, it is not yet specified how someone finds where exactly the mean lies.
  • Milo & the trainer; the mean isn’t calculated arithmetically, it depends on the situation.
• Later, in VI.6, Aristotle presents his account of the unity of the virtues, which helps us understand how someone arrives at the mean: by having prudence to weigh the morally-relevant features of the situation correctly.
• But then the doctrine of the mean is not very action-guiding at all, as Hursthouse herself concedes.
  • Simply knowing that virtue consists in a mean is of no help to a currently unvirtuous agent.
  • And indeed in II Aristotle notes that sometimes we ought to aim towards the opposite vice than the mean itself, because we might miss.
• However, taken as a whole his account of virtue does provide some action guidance.
  • We habituate ourselves into our character, and when done well, through experience, we can obtain prudence
  • Burnyeat, three-stage account of mimicking, then taking pleasure, then knowing why.
  • So one action-guiding thing might be to follow instructions from a lawgiver / etc.
  • But, it’s only action-guiding for a certain kind of agent! If you’re already badly-habituated, not brought up in fine habits, Aristotle thinks you can’t attain virtue anyway.

Post-Claude & examiner report notes

• Say explicitly that Aristotle takes the prudent person to be the standard and reference.
  • Giving the definition is good, but in the Milo and trainer section, can really push on the problem!
• It’s worth talking about how Aristotle gives a more detailed treatment to specific virtues.
  • E.g., for courage he emphasises that it’s about active suffering, especially in war; examples of what is not in fact courage (the citizen-soldiers who stand firm only for honour / to avoid penalty, etc)
  • For justice he talks about the proper way to distribute things, etc.
• As well as us needing to sometimes aim for one extreme, Aristotle also says that the mean itself can lie closer to one vice than the other.
  • E.g. at II.8, he thinks rashness is closer and more similar to bravery than cowardice is.
• You might argue that it’s a feature of the theory that it doesn’t prescribe too closely what to do.
  • Cf McDowell on particularism; Aristotle in I.3 about the appropriate precision and his analogy to the Lesbian ruler in V.10 (which bends to the shape of the stone).