From the beginning, the implication of virtue and politics was obvious to the ancient Greeks: in authors from Homer to Thucydides, virtue was understood competitively and its end was power. With the merging of the competitive and social virtues and the emergence of the ideal of virtue as an internal, characterological excellence at the time of sophists, the connection between virtue and politics changes. As we have seen Thucydides recognizes that social solidarity and trust are only possible if there is the appearance of virtue. Likewise, for the Greek philosophers from Plato on, cultivation of the proper ethical attitudes was a political problem. Plato frequently pointed out that the lawgiver's mandate was not so much to govern as to make people better. Xenophon makes a comparable point about Agesilaus toward the end ofhis biography: Agesilaus did not so much pride himselfon ruling over others as for ruling himself; he did not aspire to lead his people against the enemy, but to lead them to virtue (10.2).
Aristotle took up the point in his Nicomachean Ethics, which was avowedly written as a prologue to his Politics (Eth. Nic. 10.9.8-23) (Adkins 1984: 29-49). While he is concerned in this work to describe how individuals become good, ‘‘to secure the good of one person only is better than nothing, to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement. Therefore our investigation is in some sense the study of politics’’ (Eth. Nic. 1.2.4-8). Or again, ‘‘lawgivers make citizens good by training them in the habits of right action - this is the aim of legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure; this is what distinguishes a good form of constitution from a bad one’’ (Eth. Nic. 2.1.5).
The central problem in discussions of virtue henceforth will be education. The problem remains as much alive today as it was in ancient Greece. Few modern parents would admit that they are indifferent to the ethical instruction of their children. The question of who should be allowed to contribute to this education and how it should be accomplished, however, is a contentious issue. Certainly most would agree that ethical instruction is a matter for the family or for religious groups. Many believe that in addition schools should play a part in molding the characters of students; programs of ethical instruction, however, are chiefly to be found in religious and private schools. The modern state has generally shied away from becoming involved in moral pedagogy. The administrators and instructors of modern public schools and universities are accustomed to define education in terms of a content imparted, rather than of a disposition formed, as though it would be better to tell students what justice is, instead of instilling in them a love of justice. From the perspective of the secular state, ethical instruction has come to be generally regarded as the proper province of the family or church, not of the state. The idea that state-sponsored schools should presume to ‘‘condition’’ children to embrace a particular ethical or aesthetic sensibility not only offends the old Enlightenment strictures about the separation of church and state, but conjures up the more recent specter of totalitarianism. Up until the eighteenth century, by contrast, it was widely accepted that the chief function of education was character formation. Public political disengagement from the project must in my view be understood in relation to various related trends since the nineteenth century, notably the secular solution to the problem of multiculturalism and the plethora of value systems that come with it, problems which emerged with the rise of vast, heterogeneous nations, and the emergence of relativizing historicism as the dominant intellectual movement in the academy.
The question now, as then, is how to instill virtue. If virtue is an internal quality, manifest only through actions, how is it to be inculcated in the young? Obviously we can compel action; but how do we instill not just the forms of morality, but the love of virtue? The ancient historians taught by example. For most philosophers, from Plato on, virtue comes from knowledge. For Aristotle the problem is more complex (Depew, this volume, chapter 26). In the Nicomachean Ethics the question of the relative educational value of historical narratives and philosophical speculations is posed.
Granted that social groups and institutions can exercise an ethical influence on people, whether they aspire to do so or not, what is the ethical function of writing? Would it be unreasonable of me to aspire to improve readers through this essay? Does an essay have the potential to make people better? And how frequently do authors write for that reason? I wonder, for instance, how many contemporary academic ethical philosophers write in order to improve the ethics of their readers?11 For Plato, at least, the writing of ethical philosophy should ideally have an improving function, because, he argued, there was a link between understanding and moral behavior: people who behave badly do so out of ignorance; for those who know, it is impossible to behave other than rightly. Thus a writing that promotes understanding also promotes virtue. The argument doubtless remains an inspiration for many philosophers.
By contrast, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle argued that philosophy never made anyone virtuous. Windy speculation is a refuge for loafers and imposters - diddlers who are complacent enough to imagine that cloistered meditation and polite academic disputations can somehow substitute for the bloody school of action. As though the empty wagers of the lecture hall recreate the stakes and consequences entailed in a conscientious life! People do not become virtuous by discoursing windily about temperance and justice, or by listening to others cavil. As Aristotle tells us in the second book of the Nicomachean Ethics, we become virtuous through practice, not speculation: ‘‘by doing just acts one becomes just; by doing temperate acts one becomes temperate’’ (Eth. Nic. 2.4; cf. 10.9.1-7).
He makes this point paradoxically in the context of a general, philosophical discussion of virtue, and wakeful readers must wonder what he imagines he is doing by writing. If philosophy cannot teach virtue, if the Platonic equivalence of knowledge and moral excellence does not hold, what is the point of reading or writing about ethics? Aristotle’s explanation is not well developed. Part of the answer is doubtless to be sought in his unexpressed assumption of the ancient ideal of philosophy as a vocation, not simply a quest for knowledge; in this regard, philosophers themselves are not just teachers, but moral exemplars. First, he insists that his purposes in writing the Nicomachean Ethics are chiefly practical, not theoretical: he is less concerned to provide a rigorous definition of virtue than to make his readers better (Eth. Nic. 2.2). He does not write for those who lack virtue: for a person inadequately prepared, it would be as unimproving to read his discussion of the virtues as it would be for a criminal to memorize laws (Eth. Nic. 1.3). Virtues, he says, are habits (Eth. Nic. 2.4 and
2.1- 6 passim), and we acquire them in the same way we might learn to ride a bicycle: not through theoretical discussion and abstract diagrams and prescriptions, but by wobbling over the pavement, falling, skinning our knees, and getting back in the saddle (Eth. Nic.
2.2- 3). People are not born virtuous; they learn to be virtuous through discipline, including even the cruel school of the belt-strap (Eth. Nic. 10.9.10). We learn ethical excellence in the same way we might learn to play the guitar or build a house: through imitation and repetition (Eth. Nic. 2.1, 10.9). Virtue then begins with the conditioned disposition of the organism rather than the deliberate choice and reflection of the conscious mind; it is an attitude so ingrained as to be reflexive, like the manual dexterity of a virtuoso pianist or the efficient and economical motions of an expert sculler. It is acquired through practice, and a person with this ‘‘practical wisdom’’ is virtuous (the idea of ‘‘practical knowledge’’ is developed at length in Eth. Nic. book 6). It is for such people that Aristotle writes, in the expectation that general and critical consideration of virtuous dispositions and actions will be useful for the virtuous - who are, in any event, the only ones in a position to profit from such reflection (Eth. Nic. 1.3).
The idea that ethical knowledge is initially communicated in the same way that bears are taught to dance in carnival sideshows will offend the sensibilities of most philosophers. It is not, I think, that anyone doubts that it is practically possible through such conditioning to mold the tastes and dispositions of people, whether this means their appetite for certain foods or their contempt and admiration for certain qualities; rather we believe that to be virtuous, actions must be voluntary, consciously considered. Aristotle agrees. Reflex may be a necessary foundation, but it is insufficient for the realization of virtue. No action is ethical in itself; a deed only becomes good or bad when viewed from the perspective of the state of mind of its perpetrator: ‘‘Though actions are entitled just and temperate when they are such acts as just and temperate men would do, the agent is just and temperate not when he does these acts merely, but when he does them in the way that a just and temperate man would do them’’ (Eth. Nic. 2.4.6). For an action to be virtuous the agent must act with knowledge, choose the act deliberately and for its own sake, and the act must spring from a permanent disposition (Eth. Nic. 2.4.3) (Williams 2006a).
How then do people make the transition from enforced routine to deliberate performance, from Pavlovian salivation to self-aware pursuit of virtue? Aristotle does not develop an argument, though he intimates that the answer must lie in the association of the affections with ethical ideals. One must learn from one’s earliest age to love what is good, and hate the shameful (Eth. Nic. 10.9.8; cf. 1.4, 1.7, 2.1); it is essential to be trained from childhood to like and dislike the proper things (Eth. Nic. 2.3). Love and hatred are enlisted in support of ethics, are even the essence of ethics, especially through their association with our earliest and most elementary role models: our parents. As children love and fear their mothers and fathers they also take them as examples and model their behavior after them. Aristotle makes this point briefly in his account of the authority of the lawgiver:
Paternal exhortations and family habits have authority in the household, just as legal enactments and national customs have authority in the state, and more so on account of the ties of relationship and the benefits conferred that unite the head of the household to its other members: he can count on their natural affection and obedience at the outset. (Eth. Nic. 10.9.14)
The point might have been made by Freud - in fact, it was made by Freud: there is a link between the affection with which we regard exemplary individuals and the cultivation of a self-governing ethical sensibility; so conscience (the superego) is fostered by love and fear for the father, as the affection of patient for analyst (transference) can be exploited in treatment (cf. e. g. Wollheim 1990: 166-70, 223-33). It is for this reason among others, as I argued above, that the praise and blame are the proper languages for the representation of virtues and vices: the logic of morality is exemplary.
Philosophical writing, then, can only be a kind of supplemental instruction, useful for those who come to it with a firm practical grounding in virtues. Aristotle’s discussion of the formation of habits in virtue suggests that other narrative forms of writing may play a more effective role in the production of ethical individuals. One of the most important ways in which we learn in our early years, he suggests, is through imitation. Our love and admiration for certain examples motivates us. The first examples of virtuous behavior are the parents. It is our recognition of something transcendent in the behavior of these exemplars, something in which we can potentially share, that provides us with the common ground: let us call these transcendent qualities ethics. As Aristotle remarks, since virtue is a quality of character it cannot be directly perceived. We can know it only as it is instantiated in exemplary actions. The mutual dependence of character and action is recognized by Aristotle throughout the Nicomachean Ethics (see esp. 1.8 and 2.1). Character is prior to and determinative of actions, yet it is the nature of the virtuous disposition to act virtuously; a person who does not act cannot be virtuous: as at the Olympics, the prize does not go to the strongest, but to the strongest competitor.
There is a fundamental difference between philosophical argument and exemplary illustration, despite the fact that the one often includes the other. The opposition can be seen in philosophical discomfort with examples, which are often seen as extraneous to the rigors of argument, digressions that are as often weaknesses as clarifications. At its most basic the argument boils down to a formal dichotomy: metonymy versus metaphor. Philosophical argument is systematic, discursive, whereas exemplary description is descriptive, narrative.
Aristotle’s remarks suggest that narrative, in its formal similarity to the lived experience of exemplarity, has a more basic part to play in the moral formation of people’s characters than does philosophy. The ethical effectiveness of narrative was widely acknowledged by the ancients, and continued to be assumed by philosophers as late as Rousseau.12 The qualities of heroes and villains, the very logic of the story, including the resolution of conflict and the sense of an ending, convey and instruct people in profound questions of cultural standards of good and evil, and just or unjust resolution. And even if these lessons are not as nuanced or self-reflective as philosophers might like, the moral paradigms of stories are generally accessible, far more so than abstract philosophical arguments. Jesus’ parables and Grimm’s fairy tales remain far more accessible than Kant’s categorical imperative has ever been, even to philosophers.1 The most banal Hollywood action film teaches moral lessons about good and evil, courage and self-sacrifice: the morality plays of Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger assuredly have a greater impact on the ethical lives of contemporary Americans than academic philosophy for the simple reason that their lessons are easy to understand and apply. We all have learned ethical lessons, but very few of us have learned them from philosophers. While we may reasonably be interested in philosophical reflection about ethics, if we wish to understand how people became ethical in ancient Greece or how we become ethical now we can more profitably consult Herodotus than Aristotle. Aristotle seems to have agreed with this point.
World History
