Imagine
the same moral action performed by two people. Let's say they're walking along
together and come across a wallet. The moral thing to do, they both realize, is
to return the wallet to the person whose ID and credit cards are still inside,
along with $1500 in lovely, new, crisp bills. The first person, Aris, has an
easy-going, friendly personality. He's also a very thoughtful, considerate, and
generally self-aware person. Besides being well brought up, he's also
consciously, on his own, decided to form in himself the habit of doing the
right thing. So, he's naturally disposed to act morally, it just comes easy to
him. The second person, Imma, has skated along through life without giving much
thought to anything other than her own self-interest. She's not been well
brought up, and has had mostly bad influences in her life. In fact, she
sometimes has a nasty habit of behaving like a jerk just because she has a
generally unpleasant personality; it might not have been overcome by proper
training or discipline anyway. However, she's gone through some life
experiences that have made her seriously reconsider her ways, and she's
recently decided to give her whole life a 'moral makeover'. She wants to start
doing the right thing, because, like Aris, she's come to the conclusion that
it's a better way to live. The problem is, when she tries to act right, it's
always a struggle: sometimes because it's contrary to her self-interest,
sometimes because she's just always had that nasty side to her personality that
enjoys being bad.
So,
to make a long story a little longer, they return the wallet. For Aris, it was
easy; he walks away with that gentle little glow that the wallet owner's smile
gave him, and otherwise thought little of it because, of course, it was just
the natural thing for him to do. It's a very different story for Imma: she's
really struggling financially right now, and that money will pay the rent, a
couple of bills, and allow her to get nice and high on her lunch break... oh,
wait, she's not supposed to do that either. Sigh. This is the first time since
her 'moral makeover' that she's really had to do something good that was so... 'big'.
The fact that the wallet's owner lived in a fancy house, drove a fancy car, and
probably didn't really need the money anyway made the struggle so much more
difficult, and as they approached the house to turn over the wallet, Imma was
so tempted to turn back that the strain was physically painful. In the end, she
returns the wallet, still struggling inside, still not resigned, but she knows
it was her duty as a moral person. So now we come to the point of this story,
an illustration of a classic philosophical puzzle: who is the most virtuous?
Which of the two is most morally praiseworthy for returning the wallet: Aris,
the habitual do-gooder, or Imma, the reformed reprobate who conquers herself to
do the right thing? Who is the most moral person: he who does right easily, or
she who struggles? I think most would say that the answer to one of these
questions holds the answer to the other: that the person who performs actions
that are individually most morally praiseworthy, is the most virtuous person overall.
However, I'm going to take what seems a funny position: Aris is the most
virtuous person; but, in returning
the wallet and in the other individual moral actions that Imma struggles to
perform, she performs the most virtuous actions.
As
you may have guessed by now, Aris represents the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle’s moral view: virtue is a habit, a state of mind, a way of living
that must be realized throughout the whole of one's life. Moral actions are those performed by virtuous
people. Therefore, Aris' action is the most morally praiseworthy, and he is also
the most virtuous person. Imma's represents Immanuel Kant's view of moral
action as duty: performed because, first, you have the good will to do it, and
second, because it is a
duty, never because you feel like it. (This good will is something that Imma
adopts rather than having it be a natural part of her personality as Kant would
wish it to be, but I'm sure Kant would approve of her change of heart.)
Therefore, Imma is the most virtuous person, because she performs the most
morally praiseworthy actions: because she should do them, not because she feels
like doing them. Kant would say these kinds of actions done against one’s
inclinations, for duty’s sake, are the only moral actions. (I realize
I'm using the terms 'moral’, 'virtuous', and ‘good’ more or less
interchangeably; their meanings are close enough for our purpose, and I trust the
way I use them is true to Aristotle’s and Kant’s views, so I’ll use them as it
seems best.)
While
Aristotle's theory of virtue as habit represents an admirable ideal for many of
us (and a lovely theme for a self-help book), our modern Western cultural
viewpoint tends to make us more sympathetic to Imma’s and Kant's attitude of
self-mastery and duty. For one thing, there's the Christian influence. After
all, Christians say, we are all naturally sinners, and Jesus came to show us
how to be good. Of course, this will always be a struggle, since our own sinful
nature and the temptations of the devil will try to keep us from being good;
but, if we struggle against sin, we conquer it, just like Jesus. For another
thing, there's the tradition of the 'self-made’ person who struggles against
hardship and succeeds, just like the pioneers, the frontier families who struggle
against nature and carve out a living for themselves, the revolutionaries who
fight against the wicked king and overcame, those who pulled themselves up by
their bootstraps to rise out of the poverty in which they grew up. It's just a
good old American tradition to root for the underdog, especially the one who
wins in the end. So, these two views of virtue and the virtuous person, the
Aristotelian and the Kantian, seem to contradict one another. This is because
the Aristotelian view seems to value just the goodness of people who’ve had it
easier all their lives, because they’ve enjoyed a good upbringing, and because
they happened to be born with the sort of personality that’s naturally drawn to
virtuousness. In fact, it even seems a little elitist, and leaves out of the
picture those who want to become better people and overcome their past. So how
can I take both sides at once? Or, rather, take a piece from one side's view,
and a piece from another, and patch them together in such a seemingly
contradictory way?
Well,
for one thing, I don't think that the one part of Aristotle's view necessarily
leads to the other: that since the habit of being good makes a person virtuous,
each of the habitually virtuous person's actions must be the most good too. This
could be seen as committing the classic 'fallacy of division': that each part
of a thing must be just like the whole thing. In this case, it would mean that
if a whole life is the most virtuous, each action done in that life is the most
virtuous too. Now, I think that Aristotle would say since habit is necessary to
virtue, if it’s not habitual, it's not virtuous. While I admire the importance Aristotle
places on making morality an essential part of your everyday life, I think that
if we limit our definition of morality the way he does, it can be more harmful
than helpful. That’s because it goes too far too cutting off from the moral
community those who try to do better, to become virtuous even if they weren’t
before. Where's the room for the 'reformed reprobate' like Imma in his view?
And doesn't Aris seem a little morally uninteresting, sort of a flat character?
I think that most people have a strong sense that morality is supposed to ask
more of us than just that which we feel like doing, whether it’s good or bad,
helpful or harmful. Otherwise, what’s the point? I think, instead of defining
virtue as habit, we should call the habit of virtue a virtue in itself. We
could go so far as to say that it's one of the most important virtues since it
leads to so many other virtues, in ourselves as well as the example we give to
others when we’re good most of the time. And since this habit of being good
applies directly to a whole life, it makes the whole life more virtuous. So
here’s where I get the Aristotelian part of my conclusion: Aris is the most
virtuous person, since morality is a habit for him; it's an essential part of
who he is. He does good all the time, and inspires others to do the same.
That's why we admire him.
Yet,
most of us admire those who struggle to do right, such as Imma, the most, and
most of us can see ourselves in her shoes more often than in Aris’. We do so
instinctively, and I think this is based on more than just our cultural values.
I think it's because most human beings see morality not just as habit or a way
of life, but as a human achievement too, even the greatest one. That's because
we don't feel like doing right thing all the time; sometimes because it's
against our self-interest, sometimes it’s because we’re being lazy or
thoughtless or short-sighted, sometimes it’s because we of our bad habits or
personality flaws. Yet without morality, human beings can't live together, or do
great things, or help each other out, or keep from harming each other to get
what we want. That's so the insight Kant has about morality is right in line
with our view of virtuous actions as achievements, and those achievements that
are the most admirable of all are often those done in the face of adversity.
However, Kant
makes a mistake by going too far with this idea. He thinks that the only actions we can admire for their
goodness, or those we can call moral or virtuous, are done in spite of
adversity, in acting against our inclinations. This means he would say visiting
a sick friend out of love and concern is not virtuous; only visiting them out
of a sense of obligation is. But who can take this seriously? Let’s go back to
our idea of virtue as achievement. Think of the musical achievements of two
great violinists. One was a naturally talented child, patient and quick-learning
by nature, who had the best teachers growing up, the fanciest instruments to
play on, and most nimble fingers. Therefore, being a great violinist was not
all that hard to do. The other was poor, with stubby fingers, who scraped
together the money by working nights after school, who taught herself to play
from old cassette tapes borrowed from the library on a rickety old violin
borrowed from school, and did so only with great difficulty since she has ADD.
If we applied Kant’s basic idea of virtue to this metaphor, we’d have to say
that only the latter of the two
violinists deserves our admiration. (Aristotle might say only the first one
does). Yet, that doesn’t make sense to most of us. We recognize that both of
them achieved something great.
So Kant’s view,
of limiting virtue only to what’s done out of duty and not according to our
inclinations, doesn’t make sense according to our view of virtue as achievement,
because it indicate that the only achievements that matter are those
done out of duty or in spite of hardship, but never the ones achieved out of
love, or enthusiasm, or pride. This goes against much of what we consider good
and moral. For example, that happy little glow that Aris enjoyed when he
returned the wallet: most people would consider that a good, morally
praiseworthy feeling. The emotions that make us want to do good help make virtue
a habit, which leads to more acts of virtue, and here's where we return to
Aristotle. But before we return to our attention fully to him, let's give Kant
the credit he's due for helping us understand why we admire each of Imma's
moral triumphs so much. His view shows reveals to us the great moral value of
the struggle to be good, and helps us see why it’s so important not to give up.
Most of us find it hard to be good all of the time, and many of us find it hard
to be good a lot of the time, but according to Kant’s view, virtue is not
limited to habit, but available to all of us to decide to do the right thing.
Just as Aristotle’s view reveals that the habit of virtue is one of the
important, Kant’s view reveals that self-mastery is one of the most important virtues
too. And since this self-mastery applies to each individual struggle to do the
right thing, rather than to the whole life (since remember, it’s not a struggle
if it’s a habit), then this virtue applies to each moral action. And that’s what
I base the Kantian part of my conclusion on: each one of Imma's moral actions,
done after a struggle, is more virtuous, and what’s more, anyone can do the
same, at any time in their life, so long as they try. And if they fail, they
can try again.
So
Aristotle's theory of virtue helps us in the way that it shows how important it
is that we do good all the time, because the more good we do, the more we can
do. It also gives moral value to good inclinations and positive emotions, because
they help us form the habit of virtue. However, his theory stops working so
well when it seems to limit virtue only to those who are always or almost
always good. Kant's theory of virtue helps us realize how important it is for
us to do good even when we don't want to, and it includes among the virtuous to
all who want to change their lives for the better, and who makes the effort to
do so. However, his theory doesn’t give credit to those that make a habit of
virtue. It also fails to give moral credit to the feelings of kindness,
generosity, tenderness, empathy, and so on, that help us act virtuously. In the
end, all of those who do the right thing such as Aris and Imma are good
examples to all of us, whether we find doing good easy or difficult, and
Aristotle and Kant both have something important to tell us when we ask how we
can best live a virtuous life.
