Aristotle remains one of the most influential philosophers of all time. His work continues to serve both as inspiration for new ideas and as an example for criticism. One area that has continued to defend and develop Aristotle’s work is that of ethics, specifically the tradition known as eudaimonistic virtue ethics. I have discussed some of Aristotle’s ethics before. In this essay, I want to focus on some of the practical advice that Aristotle gives. The reason for this is that it has been argued by some that virtue ethics, though providing a robust psychological theory of ethical motivation, does not provide us with action-guidance. Here, I will briefly discuss this criticism and then move on to discuss the practical advice that Aristotle provides in The Nicomachean Ethics (TNE). My point is that virtue ethics does provide action-guidance, but it is somewhat different from alternative ethical theories. To make my point, I will focus on Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean.
I hope to help clarify the nature of virtue and provide some helpful advice.
Critiquing Virtue Ethics’ Lack of Action-Guidance
We can understand the criticism of not providing action guidance by looking at the sorts of ethical principles alternative theories arrive at. Take utilitarian and deontological ethics. There is, of course, more to them than merely their final maxims. Nonetheless, they can be somewhat summarised as follows:
- Utilitarianism: Act such that you maximise the possible pleasure for the largest number of people or minimise the possible suffering for the least number of people.
- Deontology: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law / Act in such a way that you treat humanity never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end.
These sorts of maxims or action-guiding principles are precise and meant to be universal. They, although it might be tricky sometimes to figure out, provide you with exact instructions on how to act. They act as a sort of moral formula, where a person can input the details of the situation or decision and arrive at a moral conclusion on how to act. But now consider virtue ethics, with its recommendation that people cultivate the virtues such as honesty, courage, wisdom, and temperance. That is much more general, and it does not exactly tell you what honesty is, when honesty is more important than kindness, how they should interact, or anything about what genuine and well-motivated honest action looks like. The problem seems only to be compounded when we learn that wisdom is required to know what the mean between the extremes of vice is so we can identify virtue. Furthermore, it seems a bit problematic to tell the non-honest person to be honest, for what are they supposed to do with that information? They don’t know what they don’t know, hence why they are dishonest. In contrast, any person can presumably implement the moral principles or rules of deontology or utilitarianism as they are simple and direct.
Clarifying The Action-Guidance of Virtue Ethics
Now, in one sense, this is a valid point in that Aristotle, and virtue ethics in general, does not provide people with precise action-guiding principles. But, it is not a valid criticism, as this is not a weakness of virtue ethics but a strength. As Aristotle puts it (TNE, 1094b19-28):
“Therefore in discussing subjects and arguing from evidence, conditioned in this way, we must be satisfied with a broad outline of the truth; that is, in arguing about what is for the most part so from premisses which are for the most part true we must be content to draw conclusions that are similarly qualified. The same procedure, then, should be observed in receiving our several types of statement; for it is a mark of a trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits; for demanding logical demonstrations from a teacher of rhetoric is clearly about as reasonable as accepting mere plausibility from a mathematician.”
It is for this reason that Aristotle actually spends very little time on practical advice and chooses to rather investigate and explicate the nature of the various virtues. For Aristotle, understanding the nature of virtue – having that knowledge – is an important part of choosing exemplary people, selecting virtue-conducive situations, and identifying when your behaviour strays.
More importantly, to act virtuously, a person should not merely do the right thing but must also do so for the right reasons and with the right motivations. So, merely telling someone they ought to act a certain way or only follow a rule is not enough, as they are not acting for the right reasons. For example, telling someone they ought to go see their friend in the hospital is certainly telling them what they ought to do. But were this person to go visit their friend and explain to them they are visiting because that is what a friend ought to do, the friend might not take that very well. But if the person explained to their friend they are visiting because they are concerned for their friend’s well-being and missed them, then these genuine and appropriate motivations would certainly help their friend judge them as a good friend. Motivation matters as much as action. A simple action-guiding rule cannot capture this.
But, as I said, this does not mean there is no practical advice, nor that putting all of this together does not allow you to identify appropriate behaviour better. For this short(ish) essay, we will focus on Aristotle’s idea of virtue being the mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess. This is the definition he gives in TNE (1107a1-6):
“So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency; and also for this reason, that whereas these vices fall short of or exceed the right measure in both feelings and actions, virtue discovers the mean and chooses it.“
What this means is that the good person will act appropriately in every manner, including their emotional responses, their dispositions to pick up the relevant values and reasons, and their choice of the right action for these reasons.
Take, for example, the virtue of courage. This virtue is relevant to situations involving fear and confidence. Aristotle identifies the deficiency of action as being cowardice and the excess as being rashness. So, in a situation where a person is presented with some danger or threat, it would be rash to act without considering the scope and seriousness of the danger, but it would also be cowardly to succumb to their fear and fail to act at all. The virtuous action would be for them to judge and evaluate the nature of the threat appropriately and only act in such a way that is likely to succeed without being foolhardy despite feeling fear, i.e. to act with courage, to find the mean between the extremes of potential responses.
This seems straightforward enough, but we should be careful not to misunderstand what Aristotle means by “the mean.” He does not mean the middle between two extreme measures, which will be the same for everyone. He uses the example of choosing the amount of food you eat. Just because you would starve if you ate less than 1000 calories but would die of overeating if you ate more than 4000 calories a day does not mean you should eat 2500 calories. We are not trying to figure out averages. Rather, the point is that there is an appropriate amount of food for a professional athlete and a different amount of food for someone who spends most of their time in an office. Both of these people can eat too much or too little, and they should try to stay away from those extremes. The mean will be relative to the person and the particular situation. This explains why Aristotle thinks that the mean will often seem nearer to one extreme than to the other (TNE, 1108b36-1109a5):
“In some cases it is the deficiency, on others the excess, that is more opposed to the mean; for instance, the more direct opposite of courage is not the excess, rashness, but the deficiency, cowardice; and that of temperance is not the deficiency, insensibility, but the excess, licentiousness.”
The above clarification can seem to confuse things a bit. If virtue was simply the actual average or middle degree of action and feeling, then we would have an action-guiding principle closer to those discussed above. But that is not what it means, and so the mean is not relative to the extremes but relative to the person and the situation. Each decision and each context is going to ask different things from us and with varying degrees. Furthermore, some virtues are closer to one extreme than the other. What all of this means is that virtue ethics wants to develop a much more robust and psychologically rich view of ethical action than simply following some principle or maxim. This explains why much of the practical advice from Aristotle is going to be interspersed with his discussion of the individual virtues themselves and their natures. An important part of acting well under virtue ethics is not merely doing the right thing but being appropriately motivated while doing so as well. So the first piece of practical advice is to study the great ethicists and learn what people consider appropriate and what behaviour, both action and emotion, tends toward the extremes.
Aristotle’s Practical Rules
Aristotle does, however, provide three pieces of practical advice to help the person in their pursuit of moral and intellectual excellence. First, try to stay away from the extreme that is more contrary to the mean/virtue. Second, pay attention to your natural tendencies, specifically to those ways you tend to fail and focus on moving away from that sort of behaviour. Finally, always remain vigilant against pleasurable things; we are particularly vulnerable to being led astray by our sense of pleasure.
The first practical rule is to avoid the more contrary extreme. We already touched on this in the quote I provided above. Once we appreciate the virtue of courage, we realise that it is mostly a response to the fact that people tend to be discouraged by fear, and this is detrimental, especially when that fear is overestimated or is stopping you from realising a valuable good. So, it is better, in general, to try to overcome your fear and lean away from cowardliness than to try and focus on whether your fear might be underestimating the situation – in other words, don’t worry as much about being rash, more about being cowardly. The same sort of general rule is going to apply to all the virtues.
Aristotle’s second rule is to pay attention to your own bad habits. One of the best ways to move towards the mean, that is, virtue, is to focus on your extreme behaviours and slowly move them toward the other extreme. You are likely to slowly come closer to the mean and start to appreciate better where it lies. As he put it (TNE, 1109b5): “We must drag ourselves in the contrary direction; for we shall arrive at the mean by pressing well away from our failing – just like somebody straightening a warped piece of wood.”
Finally, Aristotle warns us to be aware of one of our enduring and widespread failures: our overindulgence in pleasurable things. Basically, we are frequently misled by our sense of pleasure. We think that because something feels good or tastes good, it must be good. Because of this, we frequently choose short-term pleasures over long-term goals, eat and drink too much, and mistakenly value worldly pleasures and status. Thankfully, being aware of this general bias allows us to remain vigilant and hopefully make better decisions. Therefore, it is good practical advice to be sceptical of our sense of pleasure and how useful it really is.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, then, the sort of general action-guidance that a virtue ethicist is likely to advise is something as follows: try to act appropriately in all facets of behaviour, specifically, staying away from the excesses and deficiencies that we tend toward. Generally, you should study and strive for justice, temperance, courage, prudence, humility, liberality, magnanimity, patience, honesty, friendliness, and righteous indignation. This is pretty universal, but it is also vague and general. But that is not a weakness of virtue ethics. Rather, it captures the nuance and variety of ethical behaviour. Anything more practical than this is likely going to involve advice on how to tend towards the mean so that people can cultivate full virtue or just study life and learn how people tend to fall short, including getting to know our general psychological natures. Being a good person is tricky and hard, and life is just too complicated for us to follow only one or two simple rules.
Reference
Aristotle. 2004. The Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by H. Tredennick. Translated by J.A.K. Thomson. Penguin Classics.
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