The Interdependence of Virtues: Aristotelian v. Stoic View

WE END OUR TREATMENT ON VIRTUES in this series of posting by discussing the interdependence of virtues. In this area, we find two schools of thought which might be categorized as the Aristotelian and the Stoic. The Aristotelian notion emphasizes the separateness but interdependence of the virtues. It stresses, at least with regard to the cardinal virtues, that the acquisition of virtue is one of degree, so that it makes sense to talk about a more or less virtuous man.

For Aristotle, justice is one quality, prudence is another quality, temperance another, and fortitude still another quality. They are four qualities, not one. . . . [But] these four distinct qualities are very closely connected with each other. They are in fact interdependent in more than one way. . . . first of all . . . all moral virtues are knotted together in prudence . . . . and [secondly] the truth of the matter is that any virtue, in order to be itself, needs the modalities procured by the other virtues. Each virtue needs every other virtue for the sake, we may say, of its perfection. . . . On this issue you find some profound insights in Montaigne. Any virtue may degenerate, so to speak, if it become intemperate. [Also] if a virtue is totally lacking, an insuperable obstacle arises for another virtue. Indeed, if one virtue is badly lacking, other virtues do not have a chance.

Simon, 126-128.

This, of course, is St. Thomas's view, as he adopted the Aristotelian notion of the connexio or concatenatio virtutum. St. Thomas believed that to have any of the virtues in its full and proper form one must have all of the virtues in their full and proper form under the governance and shaping role of practical reasonableness (bonum rationis), which is the same as saying that they would be under the guidance of the intellectual and moral virtue of prudence (prudentia). See, e.g., S. T. IaIIae, q. 65 a. 1 co. (virtutes morales esse connexas).

Cardinal Virtues: Design for a Ceiling by Sir James Thornhill

The Stoic school, on the other hand, tended to reject the notion that the virtues were separate but interdependent; rather, they tended see the virtues as one all of one piece and monolithic. Stoics "treated [the virtues] as aspects of something that is one, solid, and admits of no degrees." There was for them no such thing as degrees of virtue; the issue of virtue posed a binary response. One either was virtuous or one was not virtuous.

(Although not mentioned by Simon, the problem of the interdependence of the virtues is complex, and, particularly in the Middle Ages the issue of whether the virtues were connected was a source of lively debate. There were distinctions made between the infused virtues, the natural (acquired) virtues, the cardinal virtues and lesser virtues, and imperfect and perfect virtue. There was confusion as to what the true Aristotelian teaching was. St. Augustine appeared to take two different views on the matter, and so provided authority for arguing either position. There was debate as to how the virtues were connected, whether as a result of prudence or, at least for the baptized Christian, by charity. Morever, there were also other views on the matter that cannot be classified neatly into "Aristotelian" and "Stoic" characters, as some theologians argued that the virtues, at least some of them, were independent, and that a person could have one virtue, but not necessarily all. Such an advocate was the Franciscan Richard Rufus, who argued that the virtues could not be interdependent and were independent based on the fact that the vices are clearly independent: one can be a murderer, say, without being a fornicator. Others argued that the moral virtues could not be interdependent by arguing from analogy from the intellectual virtues, which were clearly independent (one can be an excellent mathematician and yet be an abysmal artist.) Others argued that the virtues had to be independent because they had different ends. Ignoring subtle distinctions and generalizing broadly, we can generally say that both Duns Scotus and William Ockham advanced the notion that the virtues were independent.*)

A related issue is whether the the possession of virtue was one of degree or was binary (one either had virtue, or did not have virtue, tertium non datur). The Aristotelian/Thomistic view allowed for progress and degrees in virtue, whereas, generally speaking, the Stoic view did not. Simon summarizes his view as follows:

[W]hile the theory of interdependence of virtues [to which Simon subscribes] requires the presence of all virtues, it does not require that all virtues be possessed in the same degree. It is true that one cannot be just without being at the same time both courageous and temperate. This is so because the lack of one virtue creates obstacles for another virtue, because every virtue needs the modalities contributed by other virtues, and because, as we have said, all virtues are knotted together in prudence. . . . The making of the prudential judgment requires the presence of all virtues, because the absence of any of them would either blind that judgment or present an insuperable obstacle to its fulfillment.

Simon, 129-30.

In his design for a ceiling, Sir James Thornhill depicts an Aristotelian/Thomistic notion of the cardinal virtues. The virtues are shown as separate and distinct figures, each with their own modality and symbols of office, and each with his or her own role. And yet the four virtues communicate in one common circular, never-ending conversation, and so express their interdependence, their intimate communion in the virtuous man or woman.

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*A good discussion of the varying proposals is Rega Wood, in Chapter 4 ("The Medieval Debate on the Connection of the Virtues") of her translation of Ockham on the Virtues (Purdue University Press, 1997).

Virtue Defined

WE ARE NOW POISED TO PROPOSE a definition of moral virtue. But before we do, we ought briefly to recapitulate our prior postings on this issue. First, we looked at and criticized the modern substitutes for virtue: the notion of natural spontaneity, the notion of psychology and its techniques, and the notion of social engineering. Each of these, while they contain germs of truth, are not, in any event virtue. They may have a subordinate role to play in perfecting man, but they are subordinate to moral virtue which objectively fits into natural law, and so has a guide to right and wrong which these other techniques dangerously do not have. From these substitutes, we looked at the notion of habit, and distinguished the Aristotelian notion of hexis which has been translated as "habitus," and the meaning of which is inadequately conveyed by the term "habit." Principally, hexeis or habitus is grounded on an objective reality. It is a form of knowledge (epistēmē), in the area of morality practical knowledge to be sure, and not opinion (doxa). Though the word virtue is used by Aristotelian and his followers in a sense broad enough to include both intellectual and moral virtues, and, may broadly be used even to refer to inanimate behaviors that are reliable and dependable, it needs to be distinguished in its general sense from its sense in the context of moral virtues. Simon distinguishes the intellectual virtues from the moral virtues by using the concept of existential readiness and qualitative readiness. The intellectual virtues have a qualitative readiness, but not necessarily an existential readiness (which may be equated with the notion of "finality"); whereas the moral virtues have both qualitative and existential readiness (finality) as part of them. From the notions of qualitative and existential readiness, we looked at the notion of disposition or diathesis, which is the the arrangement of that which has parts, in respect either of place, or of potency, or of kind, and in the area of morality, yields the notion of reliable, arranged, and ordered response to the contingent circumstances met by a human being during the course of his life. From these concepts, we turned to the traditional four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

The Moral Relativist, who Demands Normativity,
Cuts Himself Off From the Trunk of Normativity

With this backdrop, we are ready to tackle a definition of virtue. This notion of virtue has an unusually strong and rich pedigree, and it has been found among the followers of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, St. Augustine, and the medieval theologians, most notably St. Thomas, and into all the moral theologians, manualists, and advocates of traditional morality. Only recently, with the advent of modern, materialistic substitutes of the natural law taking precedence in the 18th but especially mid-19th centuries, have these notions been lost. Instead, there has been a collapse of a central moral ethic, and we wallow in relativism which is not benign and tolerant, but which has turned out to be quite tyrannical. It imposes the normativity of relativism on an objectivist, though it has sawn itself off the trunk of objectivism. Refusing to recognize that it sits proverbially on the branch which it is sawing off from the tree, and so is bound to being supported by nothing, relativism accuses the entire stable trunk from which it has sawed itself off as intolerant, dogmatic, obscurant, and unfeeling. The fundamental inconsistency does not seem to bother the relativist, since he is based upon nothing other than naked assertion, a moral ideology not founded on reality, but on a moral revolt and skepticism. There has been a resurgence--how lasting it will be is difficult to tell--of both the natural law and virtue ethics which may result in these concepts once again being central to Western thought. But we are a long way off from that, if it even happens.

In any event, we may start with Aristotle's definition of moral virtue found in his Nicomachean Ethics.

Virtue (aretē, ἀρετὴ), then, is a state of character (hexis, ἕξις) concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle (logō, λόγῳ), and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom (ho phronimos, ὁ φρόνιμος) would determine it.

ἔστιν ἄρα ἡ ἀρετὴ ἕξις προαιρετική, ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὡρισμένῃ λόγῳ καὶ ᾧ ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν.

Aristotle, Nic. Eth., 1106b-1107a.

The translation of hexis into "state of character," might be better rendered by the term "habitus" were that latter term better known. The notion of a "state of character" or moral habitus is, as we have seen, "a stable, objective disposition of the diverse parts of the soul." Simon, 105. This state of character or moral habitus avoids both excesses and defects into which all our actions may fall. This is the famous Aristotelian "golden mean," or aurea mediocritas, the via media between defect and excess wherein virtue lies. One should not fail to see the genius in the definition, as it incorporates both objective notions of excellence and habitus, yet also subjective realization of those in a particular person ("relative to us"). "The mean has to be relative to us," Simon notes, "because it is we and nobody else who have to decide what to do in a given situation." Therefore, what may be within the mean of temperance for someone who can hold their liquor, would be intemperance for an alcoholic. What would be an act of courage for a lifeguard who saves a person drowning, might be an act of rashness on the part of a man who cannot swim. Though the decision is our own, and must reflect circumstances, including those of our ourselves, "that does not make our decision unqualifiedly subjective. For if we have practical wisdom, we shall determine what is to be done, and do it, on the basis of rational principle and objectively with regard to the circumstances." Simon, 106.

Aristotle insists that our choice must be in accord with "rational principle," or in accord with logos or reason. The invocation of logos into the moral mix is significant. Logos as Simon notes, is "a powerful word with a beautiful multiplicity of meaning. It means 'word,' it means 'concept,' it means 'reason,' it means 'rational principle.'" Simon, 109. Yet, for Simon, this statement of Aristotle is "rather ambiguous," and does not sufficiently invoke the notion of "what is good or what is bad" into his definition. Some effort is made to tie in the decision with that of a wise or prudent man, the objective man of practical wisdom. However, in Simon's view, the Aristotelian definition of virtue does sufficiently contain a "theory of how we know the basic premises of the moral order." Simon, 107. In other words, it seems inadequately grounded, at least in any express sense, in the natural moral law. In a world that accepts an objective moral order to be referenced in moral decisions, the gap in Aristotle's definition is not consequential. However, where such a concept is lacking in a culture, as in ours, the gap becomes problematic, and Aristotle's definition's insufficiency is felt.

The notion of right and wrong relates to the notion of nature and its finality. "To know what do do, one must consider the nature of things." Simon, 107. In the case of man, it requires the recruitment of both reason and inclination, an "intellectual feltness" which is grounded in the natural moral law.

Natural law . . . is known first of all by inclination. That does not mean, of course, that it cannot be known rationally, or that rational knowledge of its principles is not desirable. it is simply that primordially, primitively, and primarily, natural law, whose core is constituted by the premises of the moral order, is known by inclination.

Simon, 108.* Again, this knowledge by inclination, though intensely subjective, is also intensely tied to the objective moral order. Through this intellectual feltness, a man intellectually "smells" and what is wrong, though this intellectual "smelling" is consisting with an intellectual "feel" or an intellectual "sight." As Simon observes:

For just as we use metaphors derived from the sense of sight when we speak of analysis, and metaphors derived from the sense of touch when we want to convey certainty, we come closes to describing knowledge by inclination in moral matters by comparing its feelings of attraction and repulsion to the sense of smell.

Simon, 109. There is, then, this wonderful synthesis of objective and subjective worlds in the decision of a virtuous man:

In knowledge by inclination, subjectivity--that is, the constitution of a subject--works as a way of judgment in all cases, including the case of correct, right good objective judgment. And then we, too, can say with Kierkegaard that "in der Subjektivität liegt die Wahrheit [Truth lies in subjectivity]."

Simon, 111.** Perhaps the simplest way to explain the intermingling of objectivity and subjectivity is the Scholastic formula that joint right reason with good will. We might view it in antimetabolically: to be virtuous, we must use both use both heartfelt reason and a reasoning heart.

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*Simon invokes the teaching of Jacques Maritain on the natural law, particularly his notion of the role of inclinations in informing our sense of right and wrong from a natural law standpoint. It has been the subject of prior postings. The reader is particularly referred to Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 1 and Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 2. We have described the Maritanian notion of inclination as an "intellectual feltness." Simon characterizes this "intellectual feltness" or inclination, as an intellectual sense of "smell," which should be distinguished from strictly rational operations which might be analogized to sense of "touch" or "sight."
**Simon's reference is to Kierkegaard's "Concluding Unscientific Postscript."

Preliminary to a Definition of Virtue: Fortitude and Temperance

IN AND EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND the concept of virtue we have looked at two of four classical cardinal virtues, prudence and justice. As we pointed out, prudence is sort of a virtue sui generis in that it straddles both intellectual and moral realms. Justice is a virtue specifically emphasizing the will. The remaining two cardinal virtues, fortitude and temperance, may be distinguished from the other two by being specifically related to the appetites of the senses.

Fortitudo by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)

Fortitude is a virtue that relates to "the difficult, the arduous, the good which hard to get and the evil which is hard to avoid." Simon, 100. At the extreme, fortitude involves overcoming the fear of death, and so one may see fortitude personified in overcoming the fears attendant to battle. Examples of fortitude are seen among the small cadre of soldiers that have been honored with the Medal of Honor, or in the even more resplendent Hall of the Great Martyrs, the μεγαλομάρτυρες, megalomartyrs as Eastern Church calls them. But fortitude involves also overcoming a whole panoply of lesser fears.

[F]ortitude has to do with feelings of fear and confidence (but more with fear than confidence), which . . . [is] natural but in need of regulation. What is terrible is not the same for all men, but there are things that one should be afraid of and other things with regard to which one should never be too confident. . . . the coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, according to Aristotle, are all concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed toward them. For only he who has the virtue of fortitude will face and fear the rights things from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, and will feel confidence under the corresponding conditions.

Simon, 103. It is important to stress that fear is natural in human life, and cannot, of itself, be classified as an evil. After all, it plays a healthy role in the self-preservation of the individual. It is an inordinate role of fear--its excess (which breeds cowardice) or its defect (which breeds rashness) that fortitude seeks to monitor.

Temperantia by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)

Temperance is a virtue that relates to to the drive toward pleasure and away from pain. One must point out that temperance is a virtue that seeks to avoid an excess of the drive toward the sensuously pleasurable, which of itself is normal and good. It is not consonant with temperance to be puritanical, to reject the sensuously pleasurable as if the sensuously pleasurable itself were evil. It is the immoderate, inordinate, or excessive desire for the sensuously pleasurable that is the evil which this virtue seeks to prevent.

In the emotional life, there is a drive toward the pleasurable and way from the unpleasant. . . . . [T]he drive toward the pleasurable . . . is normal, and it is good. But that does not mean that it does not have to be regulated. Moreover, as in the case of other such basic drives in man, the control of the drive toward the pleasurable (and away form the unpleasant) calls not just for a qualitative but also for an existential disposition. Here it is not enough just to know when it is enough; one must also be able actually to give up the excess pleasure (and not be pained by the renunciation). The person who can do that is called temperance. We say that he has the virtue, the habitus of temperance, which is but a rational disposition of the drive toward the pleasurable and away from the unpleasant.

Simon, 103. Again, the desire toward the pleasurable and avoidance of pain is, in itself, a natural feeling. It is the inordinate seeking of pleasure or avoidance of pain, the excess or the defect, that this virtue seeks to control and regulate.

In our next two blog postings we will wrap up this series on the virtues, and will focus first on a definition of virtue which incorporates the concepts of the prior blog postings, and lastly on the interdependence of the virtues.

Preliminary to a Definition of Virtue: Prudence and Justice

MAN HAS A FUNDAMENTAL NEED FOR a deliberate disposition of the dynamic parts of his psyche that would make him existentially ready to do good. That disposition, then, must be tied to the objective moral order (or else it could be a vice),* must be reliable, and must also be qualitative. Yet there is one more element that must be attached so to speak to this qualitative existential disposition to make it a moral virtue, as distinguished from some other behavioral disposition. A businessman may be disposed to pay his bills on a timely basis, not because he has an qualitative existential disposition to be just, but merely because he is convinced that "honesty is the best policy" and will, in the long, run more fruit. In other words, how do we mark a moral virtue--which makes us a good man--from a virtue that is conventional or bourgeois--a disposition that makes us a good citizen, and not necessarily a good man.

A better grasps of what a moral virtue is can be gained by reflection upon the traditional, classical list of cardinal virtues. There is remarkable unanimity in the tradition regarding the list, from Plato and Aristotle through modern writers on virtue ethics. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance are the cardinal virtues.

Prudentia by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)

Prudence (in Greek, phronēsis or φρόνησις; in Latin translated as prudentia) is particularly unique because it has one foot in the intellectual realm and another foot in the moral realm. It bestrides the intellectual and moral realms like a colossus. Thus prudence is companion to other intellectual virtues (understanding, science, wisdom, and art) which have only a qualitative readiness, as well as companion to the moral virtues (fortitude, justice, temperance) which have both qualitative and existential readiness. Prudence may be translated as practical wisdom, "wisdom in acting, wisdom in practice, wisdom in what we have referred to as human use."** Prudence exhibits itself most splendidly not in common, run-of-the-mill situations which may be handled by the standards of manualists. Prudence exhibits its worth in those areas where the person is confronted with unique and contingent circumstances which do not yield ready-textbook answers. Prudence is that moral disposition that allows one to take in all the factual circumstances, all the other virtues, and, through proper disposition or inclination derive the morally-mandated act in the premises.

Justitia by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)

Justice is the moral virtue that applies in relations with another. The "other," it may be observed, may be, but need not be, another human being. The "other" might be the community at large (i.e., the common good), or the "other" might be the Other, that is, God. In our modern focus on individualism, we have lost a sense of justice as it may related to the common good, the commonwealth, and even more significant, our duties in justice to God. "The world has heard enough of the so-called 'rights of man,'" said Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, "Let it hear something of the rights of God." Even in the Catholic Mass, in the "Sursum Corda," the justice owed to God would seem to have been squelched in the current translation of this wonderful prayer which introduces us into the Mass of the Faithful:

* Priest: Dominus vobiscum.
* People: Et cum spiritu tuo.
* Priest: Sursum corda.
* People: Habemus ad Dominum.
* Priest: Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.
* People: Dignum et iustum est.

Translated:

* Priest: The Lord be with you.
* People: And also with you.
* Priest: Lift up your hearts.
* People: We lift them up to the Lord.
* Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
* People: It is right to give him thanks and praise.

The "dignum et iustum est," which might be translated "it is fitting and just," has been suppressed in the English translation for whatever reason (which cannot have been a good one) and conflated into the vague term "right," which weakens, if not altogether removes, the notion that we owe to God in justice the lifting of our hearts to Him, that is our worship.

Justice might be further distinguished depending upon whether we are dealing with justice between individuals, justice between an individual and the whole of society, and justice between the whole of society and the individual. General justice (also called legal justice) involves the relationship of the individual to the whole. Distributive justice involves the relationship between the whole to the individual. Commutative justice involves the relationship between one individual and another individual. Rectificatory or corrective justice steps in to correct injustices. Thus, Simon summarizes:

So in the context of community as such, commutative justice is, in sense, taken for granted [in that it relates to individual to individual relationships, in which the State is uninvolved]. And that leaves us with just three kinds of what we may call social justice: general justice, ruling the relations of the parts of the community to the community itself; distributive justice, governing the relations between teh community and its members; and rectificatory or corrective justice, which is what the community must enforce when the rule of just exchange (which, incidentally, is strict equality) is not lived up to by individual citizens.

Simon, 100.

In our next blog posting, we shall look and the virtues of temperance and fortitude.
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*For Simon, vice is "a stable disposition not of habitus but of the habit type, because the necessity involved in it is subjective rather than objective." Simon, 92. Although Aristotle uses the term "hexis" to describe vices, and this is inconsistent with the necessity of hexis or habitus being tied the the objective order, Simon attributes it to a certain carelessness in Aristotle. It seems that vice relates to a seeming (objective) good, whereas virtue would relate to an authentic (objective) good. In reality, there is no objective necessity underlying a vice. They arise as a "result from a poor handling, a poor resolution of the conflict that normally exists between our senses and our reason." Simon, 93.
**See our blog posting on particular use versus human use. A Good Man is Hard to Find: Nature and Use.

Virtue as Dispositio or Diathesis

ARISTOTLE RECOGNIZES THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENCES between the "virtues" found in nature and those that are moral in nature, and consequently found only in men. These latter moral virtues, the moral virtues strictly so called, share in the characteristic of "existential readiness" or finality of the "natural" virtues. But they have their own unique characteristic, one which is derived from the fact that the are born in freedom and exercised or gained by choice and confirmed by free repetition. The natural world has its dispositions to behave toward a certain end, their existential readiness, pre-programmed. Man is not pre-programmed. Man's choices and acts, when they reliably conform to human excellence, may be predictable, even close to determined, by the moral virtue. For this reason, they share superficially the same predictability of the "natural" virtues which proceed necessarily.

This is not to suggest that because a humanly virtuous action is predictable it is unfree. "The predictability of [a virtuous man's] action will thus appear to deny his freedom only those who automatically associate free choice with indeterminism." Simon, 75. To be free is not to be impulsive, arbitrary, indeterminate, without guiding principle. That's not freedom, but flailing. And it is another form of slavery to be married to impulse, to passion. "The unfortunate person suffering from such a lack of virtues can hardly be considered acting either freely or objectively; on the contrary, he is plainly seen as harming himself and others precisely because he cannot--subjectively--help himself," so poorly is his life based on virtue. It is the acquisition of virtue, and the predictability that comes with it, that allows a man to overcome subjectivism's chains, and allows an act to be, beyond merely subjectively desired, one that is right objectively. It is possession of virtue (and the virtues), where the power is found wherein "one freely abstains from doing wrong because it is wrong, and one freely does right because it is right," that true freedom is found. Simon, 78.

To help in understanding moral virtue, Simon distinguishes different forms of "existential readiness" or finality. The first distinction is between "independent" existential readiness and "instrumental" existential readiness. The former is, for reasons accidental or essential, not tied to any purpose. For example, if, by force of habit, we drive unthinkingly down a certain road to an old office after we have moved offices. There is a story that was once told me of students at Oxford who, upon leaving their refectory, would bow their heads upon exit. No one understood where this custom derived until the old paint was removed from the wall above the exit door and a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary was found underneath. That habit of the Oxford students had become "independent," severed as it were, from original purpose.

Instrumental existential readiness--whether of strict habit or, more broadly, of habitus--retains its tie to its purpose; it is tied to a sound moral reason. The habit of pressing the break when approaching an intersection with a red light, even if habitual and unthinking, is an example of a habit that has an instrumental existential readiness because there is a morally sound reasoning to it. These sort of unthinking habits play an important role in human virtue. "Virtues thrive on instrumental habits," even those done without thinking.

But as we have said before, the good life, and the virtues that are required for it, are more than mere instrumental habits. Virtue is not merely a good habit, or an ensemble of good habits Virtue is a hexis, a habitus.* "Virtue," says St. Thomas referring to the teaching of St. Augustine, "is a good quality of the mind, by which we live righteously, and of which no one can make a bad use."**

So moral virtue may be distinguished from science because it has existential as well as qualitative readiness, whereas science enjoys only qualitative readiness. Moral virtue is not merely a habit, because it enjoys an objective reality, and is not merely subjective. Moral virtue is thus characterized by objective reference and by existential and qualitative readiness. "Virtue is the state of character which makes a man good (as man) and which makes him do his own work (as man) well." Simon, 79.

The Seven Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Faith, Charity, Hope, Fortitude and Temperance and their representative Saints (Pesellino Shop, Birmingham Museum of Art)

The qualitative and existential readiness that is part and parcel of a moral virtue makes a man disposed to act in a good way. "Disposition! To dispose! To be disposed! We use these expressions spontaneously when we want to describe a person's readiness to act in a certain way rather than another." Simon, 79. The notion of disposition (in Latin, dispositio; in Greek, diathesis, διάθεσις) suggests an arrangement or ordering of "the parts of a given whole with a view to an effect pertaining to the whole." Simon, 79. Disposition or diathesis is, for Aristotle, "the arrangement (τάξις) of that which has parts (μέρη), in respect either of place (κατὰ τόπον) or of potency (κατὰ δύναμιν) or of kind (κατ᾽ εἶδος); for there must be a certain position (θέσιν), as even the word 'disposition' shows." Simon, 88 n. 9 (quoting Aristotle's Metaphysics).***

If disposition is an arrangement or ordering of the parts of a given whole with a view to an effect pertaining to the whole, then the question presents itself: what kind of whole of parts are we talking about when it comes to man? Simon characterizes the kind of whole man, his "psychological totality," as as a "dynamic whole with dynamic parts," or, less preferably, "a functional whole with functional parts." Simon, 81. Both parts and whole have movement, a dynamism or potentiality, that other wholes--a room full of well-placed furniture, an attractive display of toys in a shop window, the hours in a day, the form of a marble statue--do not have. There is a dynamism of parts and a dynamism of the whole, and so man is a miniature of the state, which has a dynamism of parts (its citizenry) and a dynamism of the whole (the state itself, composed of an aggregate of its citizenry and something more).

Accordingly, virtue is the stable state of character that gives order to the various powers, urges, qualities, potentialities in man who faces an indefinite number of contingent situations. To respond to these contingencies, to the possibilities and circumstances of life, requires choice, and, one would hope, such a choice that gathers together and orders the various individual dynamisms of man, or rather, that is the result of that order, should not be arbitrary, but deliberate, and the deliberateness which ought to guide and order those dynamisms in any given situation is a disposition.

In the case of the moral disposition (as distinguished from disposition that relates to opinion), the disposition must be formed in light of objective reality (similar to that disposition relating to science). Moral disposition therefore relates to epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη), objective knowledge, and not doxa (δόξα), subjective opinion.**** Such disposition in the moral area represents moral character, "the unique arrangement of all his moral traits." "And when this arrangement makes him totally reliable and dependable in human affairs, we call both the man and his disposition virtuous." Simon, 84.

This . . . has always been the common understanding of the meaning of virtue: dependability in matters pertaining to the good of man as man. . . . . While Aristotle saw it as a compound product of nature, habit and reason, achieved literally by good disposition of personal inclinations and qualities, modern writers have looked for simpler and easier methods. But I am afraid that there is no cheap or automatic way of solving the problem of how we should live . . . .

Simon, 84.

That complex dispositio or diathesis that orders character is therefore far more complex and dynamic than the advocates of natural spontaneity (such as Rousseau or Emerson) would have us believe. There are times when such spontaneity does not accord with the good, but is the result of disordered urges, or stems from accidental sources confused with spontaneous impulse (e.g., traits caused by growing up under a domineering or cruel father) which must be overcome or controlled. Similarly, the suggestion by the psycho-technologists for improving the ordering of the mind never extends out to the objective realm, and so has limited, though perhaps in the proper cases, a real enough role. Similarly, external tricks of social control cannot control and order the inside of a man. The governance of men is not the same as the governance of a man, and so the social planners have not the entire answer.

The Aristotelian notion of disposition does not necessarily reject the notion of spontaneity, the role of psycho-technology, or even the role of society in forming character; however, it takes these notions and broadens them and adds to them in a realistic, complex, dynamic way. Aristotelian and Thomistic virtue is no facile achievement: it offers no quick cure, no immediate fix, no instantaneous recipe. But it offers an authentic, lasting, albeit rigorous and demanding cure, with a lot of moral exercise and training and discipline. It is a regime that, though it may not be ready and automatic, yields, if the proper moral dispositio and habitus are acquired, true freedom. True freedom requires order and requires reliability, and the moral dispositio (diathesis) and habitus (hexis) that gives us order and reliability in the moral life, the combination of which is virtue, and which guides us to freedom.

The unexamined life, which leads to knowledge and truth, is not worth living.

Neither is the unexercised life, which leads to virtue and the good.
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*For the notion of virtue as habitus, see Virtue as Habitus: In the Realm of Knowledge.
**.Virtus est bona qualitas mentis, qua recte vivitur, qua nullus male utitur. S. T., Iª-IIae q. 55 a. 4 arg. 1. Simon cites to St. Augustine's De Libero Arbitrio, II.19 as the source for this quote in St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae; however, that cite appears to be incorrect. It appears that the statement may be a compilation or formulation of St. Augustine's teaching in De Libero Arbitrio by Peter Lombard. See James Colman Lineham, Rational Nature of Man with Particular Reference to the Effects of Immorality on Intelligence According to St. Thomas Aquinas, a Metaphysical Study (Catholic University of America, 1937), 57 nn.9-10.
***Aristotle, Metaphysics 1022b (διάθεσις λέγεται τοῦ ἔχοντος μέρη τάξις ἢ κατὰ τόπον ἢ κατὰ δύναμιν ἢ κατ᾽ εἶδος: θέσιν γὰρ δεῖ τινὰ εἶναι, ὥσπερ καὶ τοὔνομα δηλοῖ ἡ διάθεσις.).
****For the difference between epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη) and doxa (δόξα), see Virtue as Habitus: In the Realm of Knowledge. Simon thinks that taste in art or aesthetics is also a habitus ultimately based upon objective epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη) grounds, and not mere opinion or doxa (δόξα). "I remain convinced that, if there is objectivity in the creation of beauty, it must be possible for its appreciation also to become objective." Simon, 84. Simon's best evidence is that there is such a thing as just plain bad art, and if there is an objective negative standard, it suggests and objective positive standard, however elusive it may be to comprehend.

Man, Like the World, Has an End: Existential Readiness in Yves Simon's Thought

ALTHOUGH ARISTOTLE USED THE NOTION OF HEXIS or habitus to encompass both intellectual and practical realms of human activity, he distinguished between a hexis or habitus related to scientific knowledge and a hexis or habitus that related to the moral realm. Virtue, at least in the manner that we modernly use it, pertains only to the moral habitus. The scientific habitus (or for that matter the artistic habitus) is value neutral. Both art and science can be used for both good or evil. "With science, as with art, one can do as one pleases." Simon, 69. These hexeis or habitus do not have necessarily the disposition to goodness, to reliability, to imperativeness, to oughtness that the moral hexis or habitus displays.

Aristotle points to this distinction in an interesting way. The rational part of man is divided into to, one containing the rational principle proper (τὸ μὲν κυρίως καὶ ἐν αὑτῷ), and the other rational part being "obedient to its as a child to its father" (τὸ δ᾽ ὥσπερ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκουστικόν τι). The moral habitus is, as it were, imperative. It has the voice of command of a father to his child. Nic. Eth., 1103a.

We seem to have become aware that science and art are value-free. They do not provide the means for their own governance, and are utterly incompetent to self-govern. Both science and art can be used for good or evil, and, though they can define what is good or evil from a purely technical or particular way, they cannot define what is good and evil from a largely, human use.* Unfortunately, our recognition that science and art are value-free has led many to think that as a consequence they ought not to be governed by any other standards except their particular standards. Thus scientists enter into realms like in vitro fertilization and experimentation on human embryos with reckless abandon, thinking they must do something because they can, and never pose the question of whether they ought to do something irrespective of the fact that they can. Similarly, we have artists that demand absolutely freedom from any restrictions, including moral restrictions, and so put out works that are offensive, immoral, and morally corrosive. There is a moral enormity in Pablo Picasso's view that "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. . . . Where it is chaste, it is not art."** Far better, more artistic, and more authentically human is Pieter Breugel's message in his wood print "Following the Vice Unchastity." Breugel understood that vice darkens the mind, and hence also darkens art. LVXVRIA ENERVAT VIRES, EFFOEMINAT ARTVS. Lust enervates the strength, and weakens the arts. Luxurÿe stinckt. Sÿ is vol onsuuerheden. Sÿ breeckt die Crachten, en Sÿ swackt die leden. Unchastity stinks, it is full of dirt. It breaks one's might, and weakens limbs. All this is as graphically represented by Breugel as boldly as anything Picasso ever painted:

Pieter Breugel's Following the Vice Unchastity (Luxuria)

Simon contrasts the scientific habitus with the moral habitus, the former which relates to science, the latter which relates to moral virtue. To do so he uses the notion of "readiness," and distinguishes two kinds: qualitative and existential. Simon, 71. Science and virtue both contain a "qualitative readiness," and this is why Aristotle finds hexeis or habitus as encompassing both science and morals. However, virtue involves a sort of readiness which science does not, an "existential readiness," which Simon equates with "finality" or to the teleological question. Simon, 72. "Whenever we think of finality," we confront teleological questions which ask us what the purpose, end (telos), or meaning of an act or thing is, and so "we inevitably think of the good." Simon, 72. Therefore, the distinction between scientific or artistic habitus and moral habitus is that the latter inevitably is linked to the good, whereas for the two former, it is not.

Finality (or existential readiness in Simon's words) is found in all things, animate or animate. It is thus found in the affinity between Silver (Ag) and Chlorine (Cl), in the purpose or function of kidneys, of the pancreas, or of the gall bladder, or in man, or even the entirety of the cosmos, as a whole. There is, however, a sort of veil between us and the finality of things that are inanimate. We are somehow shielded from knowing, in any adequate way, the finality between Silver and Chlorine's combination, or any chemical process or affinity for that matter, or in the finality or purpose behind natural disasters such as earthquake, or a plague, or the eighteen men who died at the falling of the Tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4).

[T]hose who believe that finality is not totally irrelevant to our efforts to know the world invariably support their arguments with examples from the world of the living. Yet finality may not be the exclusive property of living things, and I rather think that there is finality wherever there is movement or process. The only trouble is that we do not know and may never know what most movements and processes in nature are good for. . . . [t]he good, or goodness, or a process--which is its finality--is most easily perceived in an among living things. . . . Thus while I remain convinced that wherever there is movement or process there is finality by metaphysical necessity, I also believe that in our common efforts to understand inanimate nature, we can do better with existential readiness [as a concept]. Because even the most stubborn mechanists cannot help recognizing this readings whenever they turn in nature . . . .

Simon, 72-74. There is therefore an analogous relationship between the finality of the movements and processes of inanimate nature (which we have difficulty knowing) and the movements and processes related to animate nature (which we have less difficulty knowing). The ancients (that is those before the 17th century and the Enlightenment, or die Aufklärung, or la Lumière when mechanistic notions of reality began their prevalence) recognized this overlap, and so they used the term "virtues" to refer both to the natural existential readiness (or finality) of both animate and inanimate movements or processes. Simon points to such a use of the term virtue in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (act II, sc. ii):

The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, yet all different.
O, mickle [great] is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action dignified. . . .

Thus virtues broadly understood are found in rocks, in herbs and plants, as well as in man. All the world, and each part of it, even the most rude, then, tended toward an end. And all life had meaning, purpose, an end given to it under the design and watch of the Providential God, the Creator and Father of all. The world, of course, was then "enchanted," or perhaps more accurately not yet "disenchanted" by intellectually clumsy men whose intellectual hands were all thumbs, and the natural law (understood in its most generic, broad sense) encompassed both inanimate objects and animate objects, including that rational animal, man. "In fact, seeing natural as well as human virtues grounded in 'natural laws' is a usage that stretches all the way back to classical antiquity." Simon, 74. Post-Enlightenment moderns divide the "laws of nature" from the "natural moral law," and there is cause for these two to be distinct, and in this regard they are not different than classical man. Yet the division that modern man has made between the "laws of nature" and the "natural [moral] law" has gone too far, the cut has been made too deep, so that nature has nothing to teach man, and man is separated from nature as a whole. Kant, it would appear, seemed to have nailed the last nail on the coffin of classical and traditional thought:

In the classical view, there are enlightening communications and similarities between these two worlds. In Kant, the emphasis is almost exclusively on their contrasts, on what sets them apart. I do not say that you cannot find in Kant some qualified recognition that morality may have something to do with nature. He is after all a profound thinker, and such people never get locked in absolutely untenable dogmatic positions. But there is little doubt that when Kant speaks of the starry skies above and the moral law within, he wants to bring out not what they might have in common but what sets them apart. By contrast, in Shakespeare no less than in Aristotle, there is continuity between the laws of nature and the laws of morality, and the 'virtue' of a physical thing is so called because of perceived resemblance to moral virtue. They are both seen as instances of existential readiness, which makes for trust, confidence, dependability, reliability, and indeed predictability.

Simon, 74-75.

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*For the distinction between the particular and human use of something, see the blog posting A Good Man is Hard to Find: Nature and Use.
**Pablo Picasso, quoted in Antonina Vallentin, Pablo Picasso (ch. 11, p. 268) (1957).

Virtue as Habitus: In the Realm of Knowledge

IN OUR LAST BLOG POSTING we reviewed the notion of "habit," and how such a term is unable to render adequately the concept of Aristotelian hexis. An understanding of the Aristotelian notion of hexis or the word that Yves R. Simon uses to translate hexis, habitus, is however, essential for understanding virtue in any traditional sense. The notion of hexis or habitus is "absolutely indispensable in a realistic theory of ethics." Simon, 56. There is no ready English word that sufficiently incorporates the complex reality underlying the Aristotelian concept of hexis, and that obviously causes problems in understanding the meaning of Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics, indeed any traditional, natural law and virtue-based theory of moral philosophy, including any Biblical notion of such as may be inferred by the teachings of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans.

The Aristotelian concept of hexis or its Latin equivalent, habitus, might plausibly be translated by the words "state of character" (as W. D. Ross defines it in his translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics) if it is confined to the moral context; however, the concept of hexis in Aristotle extends out much further than the moral context or the practical realm. The concept of hexis extends out into the speculative or intellectual realm as well. For Aristotle, science as well as morals are hexeis. We could hardly speak of biology or mathematics as a "state of character," yet Aristotle could easily view such human knowledge as the fruit of hexis. Additionally, for Aristotle as well as St. Thomas, the four "intellectual virtues" of understanding, art, science, and philosophical wisdom are hexeis or habitus, but in no wise can be called "states of character" or "habits." So the translation of hexis or habitus by the words "state of character" is not adequate.

Yves R. Simon

Much less is the translation of hexis by the term "habit." For Aristotle as for St. Thomas, the four moral virtues--temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence--are hexeis or habitus. But to characterize these dynamic virtues as "habits" is to do them an injustice since the term "habit" implies an involuntary or deterministic quality which the virtues do not have. The only thing that "habits" and hexei or habitus share is "stable dispositions established through repetition of acts," but beyond this, they are as opposite as can be. Simon, 58. Whether in Aristotle or in St. Thomas, Yves Simon observes, the "moral virtues are paragons of voluntariness, and thus the very opposite of habits." Simon, 58. In both Aristotle and St. Thomas, in contrast to the notion of habit, the hexeis or habitus, whether intellectual or moral, have a basis in objective reality. Habit and habitus also differ in their form of operation. While habits operate automatically or mechanically, or nearly so, "the operation of habitus is characterized by unmistakable vitality. Habit relieves us of the need to think; but habitus makes us think creatively. . . . Compared to habit, habitus represents thought that is truly alive." Simon, 60.

Not only must habitus or hexis be distinguished from habit, but it must be distinguished from opinion. Both Aristotle and Plato distinguish between objectively-grounded science or knowledge which they call epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη) and subjectively-grounded opinion which they call doxa (δόξα). The notion of doxa also encompassed the entire gamut of human decisions that were contingent, accidental, affected by chance, and so not absolutely true. The hexis or habitus which is the foundation of virtue, whether that virtue is one of science or one of morals, is, for Aristotle, clearly a matter of epistēmē, objectively-grounded knowledge.

The distinction between epistēmē and doxa is not always perfectly clear, as there is a whole world of human thought that seems to hover between both pure epistēmē and pure doxa.

In considering the relationship between science and opinion, then, let us make sure we understand when they mix and they they do not. True science, episteme, or the "capacity to demonstrate," excludes opinion by definition. But science in a looser sense includes also speculative hypotheses, probable judgments, and educated guesses, which we collectively call "scientific opinion." Because leak-proof demonstrations are as a rule very hard to com by in any field of knowledge, these opinions are very useful. But we must always remember that the function they play in science, that is, with regard to matters that in themselves are not matters of opinion, can never be more than substitutional, and that any such opinion my at any time be replaced by a better one, or, one hopes, by demonstration. By contrast, with regard to matters that in themselves can be otherwise than they are, our opinions play not a substitutional but an essential role. In the world of accidents and contingencies, doxa rules supreme, and episteme is excluded by definition.

Simon, 64-65.

The role of opinion in the life of humans is, of course, huge. And this presents significant problems for those who seek the purer, more rarified forms of both scientific and moral knowledge. Like habits, opinions are thicker than knowledge, and so have a similar lasting power which impede the acquisition of or the ruling by knowledge.

Despite the mutable nature of their subject matter, our opinions can be frightfully stable and enduring, while our scientific knowledge despite the certainty of its subject matter, is quite perishable. . . . Despite their merely subjective necessity, opinions like habits tend to be quite stable.

Simon, 66. As an example of this unfortunate quality of opinion, we might point to the popular and persistent opinion that that, following conception, that is the joinder of ovum and sperm, the zygote is not a human being, though though the scientific knowledge is absolutely unquestionable that it is. Just as it takes an effort to overcome a habit, so likewise does it take great effort to overcome opinion.

The Aristotelian/Thomistic notion of hexis or habitus resides outside the world of opinion or doxa. It is part and parcel of the world of knowledge or epistēmē. Both scientific and moral knowledge are objectively-founded and, for Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the entire tradition, need to be distinguished from mere routine, unthinking habit or contingent, conditional, accidental, and unreliable opinion.

In order to understand what Aristotle means when he defines moral virtue as a "stable state of character concerned with choice," it is necessary to keep habit, scientific habitus, and opinion separate and distinct. And we can do so here, if we remember that we recite Shakespeare's lines out of habit; that we predict election results on the basis of opinion; and that we grasp the Pythagorean theorem by mathematical habitus. Clearly, we need all these things and could not do without them. But in order not only to tell right from wrong but also to do the right thing, we still need moral virtue.

Simon, 66-67. The distinction between scientific hexis or habitus and moral hexis or habitus, that is the hexis or habitus that relates to speculative or theoretical intellect (which seeks the true) versus that which relates to the practical intellect (which seeks the good), is what we shall tackle next.

Virtue as Habitus: The Problems with Habit

WHAT IS VIRTUE? How does it differ from modern psychological or sociological techniques, which advance an ersatz virtue, that is, "human dependability with the least cost in effort to individuals"? How does the notion of virtue that Simon has in mind, one based upon the Aristotelian concept of it, differ from the Socratic notion that virtue is knowledge or science? How is this virtue something objective, something other than mere habit, a more or less subjectively necessary disposition present in the mind without reference to any extrinsic objective necessity or standard?

For Simon, the answer begins with a proper grasp of the Aristotelian notion of virtue. "Virtue for Aristotle is a special kind of quality," says Simon, one which Simon recruits the Latin word "habitus," which is the traditional Latin translation for the Greek concept of hexis or hexeis, to explain the concept so as to disassociate himself from modern notions of "habit." The Aristotelian word underlying Simon's use of the term habitus--ἕξις or hexis (plural ἕξεις or hexeis)*--is clearly related to some objective rational order or reality. Though there is some similarity between "habit" and the the Aristotelian notion of ἕξις or hexis, the latter concept is simply not sufficiently translated by our modern notion of "habit." The modern notion of "habit" is not coterminous with the Aristotelian hexis, but is much more narrow. The modern notion of habit has become more focused on biological and psychological habituations, and has largely lost the objective notions which informed the Aristotelian notion of hexis.

David Hume and William James: Enemies of Objective Thought

The modern, restrictive notion of habit may be the result of Humean empiricism and Deweyian or Jamesian pragmatism. It seems to be limited, moreover, to biological or somatic and psychological and intellectual realms, without reference to the moral realm. But perhaps the most significant restriction upon habit may have been the result of Hume's skeptical thinking, which denuded the notion of habit by removing any notion of objectivity from it. Thus Simon sees the modern term "habit" as having the following characteristics:

• Habit is not an activity, but a disposition to act. Habit is "something much like an intermediary potency." Simon, 51.
• Habit is stabilized through the repetition of acts. "the law of habit calls for repetitions." Simon, 51.
• The "necessity of habit . . . is not of an objective character." Simon, 51-52. This is David Hume's particular contribution, and is what renders the word "habit" unserviceable in understanding the Aristotelian notion of "habit," that is, the notion of hexis.
• Habit excludes voluntariness and freedom; consequently, an act done strictly by force of habit is not an voluntary or free act.
  

Hume's unique contribution to the notion of "habit" is his specific insistence that intellectual habit, while it imposes a necessity to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the strength of the habit, does not mean objective necessity. It is just, at best, a subjective necessity. Habits of the mind are sort of like dry creek beds furrowed out as if by a plow by the habitual flow of water following torrential rains. Water tends to flow down these dry creek beds, but the necessity is arbitrary, a matter of chance, not one of objective necessity. The necessity belongs to our minds, and not to things. It is the seeming easeful necessity of having been down the same way below. What happens to the waters on the Western plain after a torrential rain happens with the thoughts of causality in our mind. Furrowed water, furrowed thoughts.

Speaking plainly, that is the idea of the theory of knowledge proposed by Hume: the only kind of necessity our mind can establish in relations among things is that of habit. While we may think that we observe relations that are intelligible because they are objectively necessary, this really is not so. What actually happens is that repeated observations establish in our minds certain habits, which give the impression of objective necessity.

Simon, 53. William James's pragmatism and his "radical empiricism" differ little from Hume's "ordinary empiricism": "On this point, American pragmatism differs little from English empiricism," Simon observes. Indeed, the rejection of any relationship between knowledge and things is, if such a thing were possible, even more tenuous in the pages of James than in the pages of Hume:

Theoretic truth is thus no relation between our mind and archetypal reality. It falls within the mind, being the accord of some of its processes and objects with our processes and objects. . . ."

Simon, 68, n. 9 (quoting William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green 1912), 264). British empiricism and American pragmatism, therefore, share in this common view: we are condemned never to know the world by objective necessity. And this is true for the speculative sciences as it is for the moral sciences.

It is this notion of the word "habit" that makes it uniquely unqualified to carry the connotations included in the Aristotelian concept of hexis. The Aristotelian concept includes a notion of objectivity which clearly is rejected by Hume's notions of habit. Whatever the Aristotelian notion of hexis is, it is not the Humean notion of habit. For this reason, Simon recruits the word "habitus."

The notion of habit, moreover, which is largely mechanical, is also burdened by rejections of finality. But even habits "[a]utomatic as they may be," "cannot be explained without reference to finality." The very purpose of habits--whether they are the habits of learned swimming strokes or of looking at one's mailbox--have reasons or ends, i.e., final causes attached to them.

Finally, habits (in the modern sense) appear to exclude voluntariness or freedom. But truly moral action is never involuntary and are always free. "Insofar as an act is done purely and simply out of habit, it is neither free nor voluntary. Habit excludes choice as well as intention." Simon, 55.

All these considerations, therefore, make the notion of "habit" something outside the notion of Aristotelian hexis. Whatever virtue is, and whatever hexis is, it is not "habit" as modernly understood. Modern notions of habit--mechanical, lacking finality, freedom, voluntariness, and, most important, lacking a relationship to things, that is lacking a relationship to an objective order--make the word habit entirely unfitting a vehicle to understand the habitus of virtue.

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*E.g., εἰ οὖν μήτε πάθη εἰσὶν αἱ ἀρεταὶ μήτε δυνάμεις, λείπεται ἕξεις [hexeis] αὐτὰς εἶναι. ("If then the virtues [aretai] are neither emotions [pathē] nor capacities [dynameis], it remains that they are dispositions [hexeis]." Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a (H. Rackham, trans.)

Nature v. Nurture: Avoiding Extremes

YVES SIMON IS QUITE INSISTENT that we should avoid taking any position of extremes in the "nature" versus "nurture" issue, between the Rousseauian/Emersonian insistence on spontaneity and the Fourierian dismantling and remantling of human society. How much of man's behavior is natural? How much of man's behavior is learned? How much of man's behavior is spontaneous? How much of man's behavior is conventional? Beyond those questions that are empirical in nature and perhaps impossible of full resolution, we have the more fundamental questions. How much of man's behavior ought to be spontaneous? How much of man's behavior ought to be conventionally controlled? We have questions related to those: Are all conventional values evil, suppressive? Is all spontaneity good?

Simon resists absolute answers to these questions. He rejects the notion of the "noble savage" as a result of "preconceived opinions," one fraught with ambiguity of the very notion of what is primitive, and one whose truth is belied by the empirical evidence associated with more primitive peoples which seem to be about as equally divided between being good and evil as the most civilized man. Simon, 30-31. Yet even while debunking these theories as the monolithic truth, he maintains that "there is something to them, no matter how badly they may be warped by all sorts of unwarranted extensions of the basic idea that there is good in each of us and that it should be let out." The very survival of the idea is, in his view, evidence that it is "bound to have a measure of truth in it." Simon, 29. Simon, therefore, advocates a position between pure natural spontaneity as ipso facto good and pure natural spontaneity as ipso facto evil.

Yves R. Simon

Similarly, the suggestion that the opposite extreme--that society must be governed by extrinsic controls, habits, customs, and mores and not mere instinct--is the whole picture is equally to be shunned. One can envision a society where all individual expression would be suppressed, and it seems almost inhuman. Yet the value of such social structures cannot be rejected: "[T]here is here no question of minimizing the value of fulfillment by way of upbringing, training, socializiation--all of which assure that rules of correct behavior, even if not always understood, are nevertheless observed with but a few exceptions." Simon, 33. But this is not adequate in an absolute sense: "For the tasks of man to be properly fulfilled, there has got to be something rational in the way they are fulfilled." Simon, 33. There must not only be an answer to the question of how, there must also be an answer to the question of why.

The truth of the matter is that insofar as it is anterior to the work of reason, human fulfillment lacks the rational modality which belongs to it precisely as human fulfillment. Instinct and custom may make us both behave and be happy; but it is only if we know what we are doing and why that we become fully human.

Simon, 33. Yet even here Simon avoids the extreme between "knowledge as virtue" and "practice as virtue." Simon acknowledges that there can be a "misplaced insistence on explaining the principles of our action [which] threatens and perhaps even blocks their fulfillment." Simon, 33. Quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet, Simon concedes that

the native of hue of resolution is often
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

Even the quirky Fourier is to obtain some hearing. No one can disclaim the intricate relationship between society and its influence on human behavior. But to suggest, as Fourier and his "fantasies" do, that "society can [and ought] accommodate any and every human tendency," that "[c]lever organization would allow . . . every human desire, every human oddity, to find its proper expression without doing real harm to anyone," Simon, 34, and that there is no role for societal guidance or even for social repression is an extreme to be avoided. We are neither "moral man in immoral society" nor immoral man in moral society. We are to be moral man in moral society:

Fourier's specific fantasies aside, let us acknowledge that he addressed an extremely difficult and complex problem, to which no one really has all the answers. . . . I am convinced that it is hardly possible to exaggerate the influence of society upon human behavior and characters. This influence may be misplaced, and it may be misunderstood, but I do not think that it can be exaggerated.

Simon, 34. The role of societal convention on shaping individual character is thus not to be rejected, either from an empirical viewpoint or a rational point of view. Likewise, the notion that all societal role is baneful to individual expression is to be rejected. In morals, socialism and individualism both are to be rejected as absolute determinants of moral reality. The truth is that morality is both social and individual. "Organized society . . . has . . . a great deal to do with safeguarding good human behavior." Simon, 36. The absence of such social structures, and the mayhem and violence that follows when these--as a result of war, natural disaster, or other cause--fail is manifest and well-documented. The role of society in forming individuals is fundamental: "All societies, to a greater or lesser degree, indoctrinate their citizens." Simon, 37. But that is not to say that such indoctrination is necessarily stifling. Human society does not result in social determinism, "complete automaticity," necessarily robbing people of individuality, such a herd does to sheep, or a beehive to a bee, or a anthill to an ant, though, in Simon's view, "[t]hat such a mode of sociability exists is beyond any doubt." Simon, 38, 39. Even so, "[i]t is an error to think that such automaticity can ever be attained." Simon, 39. Moreover, it is not at all clear that such socialization is evil. In fact, Simon suggests that such socialization has a role to play in "inspiration" of the individual. Simon, 42.

I do not think that we can just ignore social relations in which individuals, far from being depersonalized and made to conform, are actually inspired to be themselves. . . . [T]here is clearly more to human sociability than what keeps the herds of sheep together. . . . For the simple truth accessible to all of us directly is that not all social forms require or impose conformity. A part of human sociability operates also to inspire individuals to fulfill their own personal destinies.

Simon, 42-43. Citing the distinction of Ferdinand Tönnies, Simon distinguishes between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, a stifling society, and an organic, creative community.

In our quest for understanding the full richness and depth of the traditional understanding of virtue, there appears to be only one rule: to avoid all extreme ideologies, and to humbly acknowledge that the problem of virtue, the interplay between society and individual, society and morality, spontaneity and convention, nature and nurture is exceedingly complex and multifarious. What is required of us is to accept the following common-sense matrix:

• Distinguishing between nature and use is reasonable in the context of morals;
• The superiority of natural spontaneity over rational deliberation cannot be taken for granted; and
  
• The process of socialization is not only a process of conformity, but also one in which the individual may be groomed to express his individuality.
  

A Good Man is Hard to Find: Nature and Use

WHEN WE CALL A MAN A GOOD MAN, we ought to know what we mean by such a statement. This, of course, means we need to know both what "good" means, and what "man" means. This leads to the need to understand the concept of "use." The concept of "use" leads us to the notion of "nature."

Simon defines "use" broadly as "the application of a thing to an operation." Simon, 20. Here we identify three aspects or components: the thing being used (the instrument). That question involves exploration into the nature of the thing. The user of the thing (the agent) and how he operates the thing. That issue focuses on the relationship between the user and the thing. Simon calls this the particular use of the thing. And, finally, the end for which the thing being used, that is, how it is being applied. Simon calls this the human use of the thing.

To explain his analysis Simon uses the example of a piano. The first issue of "use" relates to the piano itself, and focuses on the nature of the piano. Is the piano as a thing good or bad as a piano? Is it expensive and in tune? Or is it cheap and out-of-tune? The answer to this question, of course, will affect subsequent components of use. If, for example, the piano is out-of-tune, the piano player will have a difficult if not impossible time using the piano correctly, whether the use is in reference to its particular use or to its human use. Irrespective of his virtuosity, the piano player will not be able to play Mozart's playful Scherzo well if the piano is out-of-tune. No matter of his burning desire to please his friends, the piano player will have an exceedingly difficult time doing that if the piano is out of tune.

Supposing then that one has a piano that is in tune, the next issue is the ability of the piano player or agent to use that piano. One can can have an excellent piano, yet have a pianist who is truly wretched. It may be that the piano player has not practiced, or is drunk, or is not familiar with the piece to be played, or is simply not nimble or experienced enough to play, for example, Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and so absolutely fumbles the piece. There is, then, the possibility of a disconnect, a lack of fitting between the piano as piano, and the piano as used. The competence associated with using the piano (which is defined by the piano's nature) allows us to call the piano player good or not good. We have here a question of art, not character.

Yet even if the piano is perfectly in tune, and the piano player perfectly competent (so that we may say the piano is good and the piano player is good), there is an ultimate question which Simon calls the human use of the piano. A good piano may be used by a good piano player in a way that is still not good. For example, he may play in the late hours of the night beautiful, complex pieces with unparalleled virtuosity, and yet be in utter disregard to the rights and interests of his neighbors. Similarly, he may decide to play to Mozart's Scherzo during an event when he was supposed to play Chopin's Marche funèbre.

Focusing on a distinction haling back to Plato,* Simon thus distinguishes between "being good at a particular skill and being good absolutely speaking as a human being." Simon, 20. Though it appears obvious that the condition of the nature of a thing does not assure its correct use, whether particular or human, there is nevertheless a connection that Simon detects between the condition of a thing and its ability to be used well in a particular or human sense. If a piano is out of tune, for example, it will never effectively be used by the pianist, and both its particular use and human use will suffer accordingly. If the piano is, however, in tune, we are not assured of its proper use.

What is true with the piano and the piano player may be analogized to a human soul and its powers, such as memory or will power. Someone may have a good memory or a strong will, but that does not assure its proper particular or human use. However, having either a weak memory or a weak will (analogous to the situation of an out-of-tune piano) can seriously affect the ability to put this faculty to a good human use. So two principles may be obtained. First, "we understand that we can make either good or bad use of certain things . . . regardless of their own condition." Second, "a poor natural condition of a thing may sometimes result in its wrong human use." Simon, 25.

Given the importance of the condition of the thing in determining its proper human use, the question then arises of whether the tendency towards wanting to put some thing to a right human use does not also tend toward wanting to improve the condition of the thing to be used. It is rather obvious that the desire to put some thing to good human use will also have an accompanying desire to make sure that the condition of the thing used is such that it accords with its nature. The piano player, to put his piano to good human use, will both want to have his piano in tune as well as to make sure he is sufficiently adept at using the piano. A human being, then, to put himself to good human use, will want to have his nature properly ordered and will want to have sufficient adeptness at controlling his nature so that it may be at his disposal and control.

This issue become particularly important in the area of human emotions. "When it comes to emotional tendencies, their condition can never be neutral with regard to their use. To make good human use of emotions, they must be sound." Simon, 24. If these emotional urges are outside of rational control, and if they are sufficiently destructive, we may have a situation where it is impossible for these to be put to good human use. Here we arrive at the issue of insanity beyond which there is no question of morality, for any sort of rational control is impossible. In the vast majority of situations, however, there is an area where the emotional urges that are destructive are not so intense as to be outside of rational control. If that control is exercised, especially if exercised consistently, we have a situation of moral loftiness.

Simon thus sees the subject matter of virtue to lie in the interplay between the interconnecting links between the tendency to put something to good human use and the improvement of the condition of the thing we use and of the proficiency at the particular use of that thing.

[D]eliberate acceptance of proper particular use of things, supported by a strong tendency toward human use, may well lead to their improvements, especially when these 'things' happen to be the internal powers of the human soul. If there is a secret at the bottom of the question about the relation between 'nature' and 'use,' in my opinion, this is it.

Simon, 28.

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*Simon cites to Plato's Apology 22d, Euthydemus 228d, Gorgias 448b.