Sermon for 2 April 2006, 1^st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois

 

VIRTUES AND VICES:  CLASSICAL VIEWS

Ronald J. Glossop

 

I.  Introduction

    A.  Qualities of character which we regard as desirable, as excellences, are called "virtues" while those we want to avoid, or regard as deficiencies if we have them, are called "vices."  

    B.  There are many qualities of character which almost everyone would regard as virtues, such as being kind rather than cruel and being industrious rather than being lazy, but there are others where differences of opinion arise such as having faith rather than being skeptical or being obedient to authority rather than being resistant to authority.

    C.  Furthermore, even where there is general agreement about which qualities of character are virtues and which are vices, there can be disagreement about what degree of kindness is desirable or about why kindness is a virtue.

    D. A month ago I was planning to discuss the ideas of eight different philosophers about virtues and vices with special attention to their theories about human nature and the basis for classifying certain qualities as virtues or vices.  I have now decided it is more realistic to deal with only four classical or ancient views today and take up four modern views next month.  

 

II.  The first philosopher whose ideas about virtue I want to discuss is Plato, a student of Socrates in Athens in the 4^th and 3^rd centuries B.C.E. whose ideas were central to Western philosophy for over 1500 years. Plato had the greatest contempt for the irrational mob mentality that led to the condemnation of Socrates for questioning the religious beliefs of his day and for "corrupting the youth," that is, for teaching young people to think for themselves.

    A.  Plato has a dualistic view which supposes that intellectual realities connected with the immaterial soul or mind are unchanging and good while material things connected with the physical world are constantly changing and consequently are of less value. 

        1.  According to Plato the eternal, intellectual part of the self must constantly struggle to keep from being dragged down to the physical level of the ever-changing body. 

        2.  In addition to the intellectual part of the self, there is a lowest passionate or appetitive animal part (what Freud would later call the "id") as well as a middle part of the self, the "will" (what Freud would later call the "ego"), which chooses what one will actually do.  

        3.  Being virtuous is a matter of keeping the three parts of the soul or self in the proper relationship with each other.  Plato then proceeded to show how the four important virtues generally praised in the Greek culture of that time could be explained on the basis of his tripartite view of the soul.

            a.  The virtue of being wise depends on developing the top-level intellectual part of the self, that is, on gaining knowledge about what is eternally true.  

            b.  The virtue of courage depends on having the will, the second-level part of the soul, being guided by the top-level intellectual part; one's behavior needs to be guided by what is really and eternally true rather than by views distorted by too much attachment to passions such as fear or or lust or passing opinions based on sense perceptions.

            c.  The virtue of temperance depends on having the passionate or appetitive lowest part of the self completely under the control of the will.  The vice of intemperance occurs when the passionate or appetitive part of the self breaks loose from the control of the will resulting in irrational behavior.

            d.  The virtue of justice refers to a situation where each of the three parts of the self is doing its own job well.  The intellect knows the truth, the will is being guided by the intellect, and the passionate part is subordinate to the will.

    B. For Plato virtuous persons are those who develop their intellects, live according to the truths they have come to know, and subordinate their passions to their knowledge.

        1.  It is important to see that Plato did not go to the extreme of some other philosophers of his day who advocated living an ascetic life-style, a life where any kind of pleasure was to be avoided.

        2. For Plato experiencing pleasure was not bad, but reason had to remain in control.  The ideal person is a rational person, what psychologists today would call a mature person.

 

II.  Aristotle was a student of Plato but did not slavishly follow his views which emphasized the reality of an unchanging world of Essences or Ideas or Forms.  Aristotle was more down-to-earth, more sensitive to the realities of the physical world.  His views came to dominate scientific and philosophical thinking in Europe prior to the 18^th-century Enlightenment.

    A.  Aristotle realized that for the Greeks the word "virtue" did not apply only to human behavior but could be applied to anything.  If the function of a knife was to cut, then a virtuous knife was one that cut well.  If the function of a cat was to catch mice, a virtuous cat was one that did that well.

    B.  Furthermore, the definition of something indicates its essential function.  For example, a thermometer can be defined as an instrument for measuring temperature, so a virtuous thermometer is one that does that job well.

    C.  The definition of a "human being" is "an animal which is rational."  Consequently, one can readily see that a virtuous human being is one that is good at being rational, one that uses reason well.  Up to this point Aristotle is in agreement with Plato.

    D.  But Aristotle breaks from Plato in noting that one needs to distinguish between two different ways that reason works in human life.  One job of reason, what we can call its theoretical function, is to figure out what is true and what is false.  The other job of reason, what we can call its practical function, is to guide behavior, to decide what we ought to do, to figure out what is good and what is bad, both in general and in particular circumstances.

    E.  Since reason performs two different tasks for humans, there are two different kinds of virtue.  Being able to distinguish what is true from what is false is intellectual virtue while knowing what is good and acting accordingly is moral virtue.

    F.  For Aristotle intellectual virtue was even more important than moral virtue because it is more divine, more God-like, and not entangled with the vagrancies and uncertainties of an ever-changing physical world.  Intellectual virtue is also independent of relations with other people.  It is important for humans to discover what is really true and not to be content with believing things that are false no matter how many others happen to believe them.  This emphasis on believing what is true is a focus with which Unitarians should feel comfortable.

    G.  When dealing with moral virtue, Aristotle focuses his attention on knowing what is good because usually people act in accord with what they believe they ought to do, but unlike Plato he realizes that this is not always the case.  Sometimes people are aware that they ought to do something but nevertheless fail to do it.  This phenomenon Aristotle calls "weakness of will," the failure to do what we know we ought to do.  Moral virtue requires both knowing what ought to be done and then actually doing it.

    H.  For Aristotle moral virtue consists basically of hitting a mean between two extremes, both of which would be vices.  For example, being courageous is a matter of hitting the mean between the extreme of foolhardiness on the one hand and being too timid or cowardly on the other.  For another example, having proper pride is a mean between the extreme of empty vanity or arrogance on the one hand and undue humility or a feeling of worthlessness on the other.  For a third example, being generous with one's wealth is a mean between being stingy on the one hand and foolishly giving away more than one can really afford on the other.

    I.  What makes moral virtue particularly difficult to achieve is the fact that the mean can vary from person to person and even from time to time.  The very same act may be foolhardy for one person but courageous for another who has more capability to deal with that situation.  The notion that everyone should always give 10% of their income to charity is ridiculous.  For some people in some situations at a particular stage of life 10% will be too much while for others it will be too little.   Furthermore, something such as the virtue of generosity involves not only giving the right amount of wealth at the right time but also giving it to the right person in the right way at the right time for the right reason.  Moral virtue consists of behaving in particular circumstances as a person with good practical reason would act in that particular situation.

    J.  Aristotle focuses on what it would be like to be a perfect person, one who is lacking nothing and whose various potentialities all get realized, an ideal that has come to be known as "the Renaissance man." That is the reason that Aristotle's view is usually described as a "self-realization" ethic.  He realizes that no one is going to actually achieve that goal and that luck as well as virtue plays a role in our lives.  Nevertheless he believes that self-realization should be the aim of everyone.

    K.  As appealing as Aristotle's ethic may be for us, we should realize that it can be very depressing for the unfortunate of the world; it just rubs in the huge discrepancy between what their lives might be and what they actually are.

 

III.  The third view about virtue and vice which I want to discuss is the view of the Stoics, an ancient school of philosophy which includes men such as the slave Epictetus and the emperor Marcus Aurelius and which was an influential movement roughly from the 2nd century BCE til the 3rd century CE, that is, during the period of Roman dominance of the Mediterranean.

    A. The Stoic viewpoint is often described as an ethic of self-discipline because of its strong focus on not giving in to the desire for one's own pleasure and the need to accept without complaint or resentment whatever situation one finds oneself in.  In everyday speech, when we advise someone "to be philosophical about it," we really mean "be Stoical about it."

    B.  Stoicism is based on a particular view of the world which combines a thorough-going materialism (including no life-after-death for humans any more than for other animals) with a religious-like pantheistic belief that the universe is providentially guided not by a divinity outside of the universe but by some kind of ordering organic force within the universe itself such as one sees in living things, especially plants.

    C.  Virtuous persons are those who on the basis of these beliefs accept without complaint whatever role they have been given.  The situation is similar to having a role in a play.  The actors are to do whatever the part requires.  The only decision for these actors is whether they will willingly and virtuously subordinate their own individual desires and goals to what is required by the play or whether they will complain and viciously focus their attention more on what is good for them individually rather than what is good for the production as a whole.

    D.  For the Stoics what is unique about humans compared to other life forms is that we have the rational capability of comprehending nature and seeing the providential guidance at work in the whole but at the same time we may be tempted to believe that we can control nature to accomplish our own individual or collective ends, that we can appropriate the role of God.  This desire to change the world in order to advance our own limited interests represents the greatest depth of vice as well as of  stupidity.  It irreverently questions the reality of providence in the universe, and at the same time it reveals an immoral and self-centered desire for a degree of power to change the way the universe works which we can never have.  

    E. For me an interesting consequence of this Stoic outlook, which its followers recognized,  is that it promotes the idea of citizenship in the whole world instead of identification with some more limited community.  It also advances the idea that we are a part of a wider natural world and not just the human community.  I suppose that some of you have already noted that the two views which I have just mentioned are identical with the sixth and seventh principles of the UUA which are on the back of the order of service.

    F.  The two big questions that concern me about the Stoic view point are (1) whether it is true there is some kind of providential guidance in the universe assuring that everything is moving in a good direction and (2) whether it encourages too much passiveness with regard to dealing with problems.  If one is convinced that everything is going to work out O.K. in the end, it seems to undercut any activitism to try to deal with real problems.  On the other hand, one could even view our readiness to be active in dealing with problems as simply one more manifestation of the providential force at work in nature, a force which has given us humans the role of dealing with these problems.

 

IV.  The fourth and last view to be discussed today is that of Thomas Aquinas, a 13^th century Christian theologian who was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church just 49 years after his death.  His ideas have been the main base of most Roman Catholic theology ever since.

    A.  In a general way one can say that Thomas Aquinas taught that Aristotle took human thought as far as it could go without being supplemented by ideas from revelation.  Aquinas always refers to Aristotle simply as "the philosopher." But Aquinas emphasizes that beyond what can be known by scientists and philosophers there are important truths that are known only from divine revelation such as that God is a trinity and that the highest good for humans is the beatific vision of God and that the moral law has a divine origin.

    B.  In the area of ethics, Aquinas claims that there is a moral law (manifest in the Golden Rule and the ten commandments) based on what is required of people to live peaceably with each other in community. This moral law can be known by reason (in which case it can be called "conscience"), but it is also given to us in revelation.  Revelation also teaches us that this moral law has a supernatural base.

    C.An important part of being a virtuous person is living in obedience to the moral law even when we may have strong inclinations to act otherwise.  Ignorance of the law in general is not a good excuse when one acts immorally because such knowledge is inborn, but ignorance of the details in a particular case may excuse one from moral guilt.

    D.  The moral law is absolute and not relative to one society at some particular time.  The moral law comes from God and thus is not subject to human modification.  It cannot be changed by human governments, even democratic governments based on majority vote.

    E.  As we have noted, for Aristotle there are two kinds of virtue, intellectual and moral, based on the two kinds of reason found in humans.  Above and separate from these and also from the four classical natural virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice) discussed by Plato, there are the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.  Aquinas did not originate the idea that there are these three theological virtues, but he did argue that they are virtues known to be so only through revelation and not on the basis of philosophical reasoning.

    F.  Furthermore, Aquinas argued that there is an order in the existence of these virtues.  Faith (the belief in the existence of a personal God and the supernatural realm) gives rise to hope (the possibility of being with God in eternity), and hope gives rise to love (the readiness to care for others and when appropriate to put their welfare above one's own).  This order of generation, however, does not indicate an order of importance, since love is the culmination of the theological virtues.

    G.  The notion of an unchanging moral law seems to neglect the fact that what is morally good can change with situations.  An example is the Biblical command to "Be fruitful and multiply."  At an earlier period in human history when there was a great need to produce many offspring to help gather and produce food and to avoid the possible extinction of the species, such a commandment made good sense.  But in modern society with the very different problem of limiting the human population on the planet, it simply is no longer appropriate to produce as many offspring as possible.  In fact, that behavior is now harmful to our human society. The idea that moral laws can never change is not acceptable.

    H.  We should note that an important addition which Christianity made to previous ideas of virtue is the idea of the importance of love, the humanitarian caring for others whether they are members of our own group or not.  It is not that other philosophies and religions never mentioned that virtue.  Nevertheless one must recognize that historically the Christian religion with its emphasis on the virtue of love has been an important factor in the building of many hospitals, orphanages, schools, and hospices and other institutions and programs for humanitarian assistance and the education of children.  It also seems that many individuals responsible for these advancements in human welfare were motivated by faith.  As Unitarians we are part of this Christian tradition with its emphasis on love and compassion for all.

 

V.  I have tried to provide you a quick overview of what I regard as some significant ideas about virtues and vices.  I hope these ideas have been interesting to you and that you might even want to incorporate some of their insights into your own thinking.  Today I focused on four classical views: the views of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Thomas Aquinas.  Next time I will discuss the views on this topic of four more recent philosophers:  David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, and Friedrich Nietzsche.