On Delineating the Virtues
In past essays, I have argued that ethics can be derived through a purely naturalistic methodology, describing appropriate courses of action as manifestations of certain virtues of character. Virtue theory is possibly the most ancient moral framework, and has proven amenable to various contradictory accounts-the virtues of Aristotle notably conflict with the virtues of Thomas Aquinas, and both are distinct from the virtues of Confucious. I have argued that virtues can be delineated in reference to worthwhile goals, and these goals can be understood in reference to concrete entities. This is typically and unfortunately well-known as the “is-ought” problem.
This is often seen as an impassable philosophical problem which renders naturalistic ethics impossible, but this is an illusion, derived from a misapprehension of what kind of a thing ethics actually is. Once we have identified the form or identity of what it is we’re talking about, a list of “oughts” necessarily follow, so long as the word you have used to identify it carries certain conditions to be correctly applied. If you have hired a dog-walker, it follows that such a person ought to walk dogs, if such a term is to be correctly applied-we can think of this as a statement of the kind “If Chris is a dog walker, then he ought to walk dogs.” But there are other oughts we can apply. If we find out that Chris doesn’t like dogs, is confined to a bed, has never walked a dog in his life, and has no intention of walking a dog any time in the future, then we have struck all the conceivable “oughts” from the list. If Chris is to be a dog walker, he must at the very least take dogs on walks. If Chris is a good dog walker, he should like dogs, and dogs should like and readily obey him, because these are traits picked from a finite list of things that make someone good at walking dogs. We can identify this list because we can identify dog walking as a distinct craft, with a distinct set of criteria.
We could very well say “no, actually, there’s no reason a dog walker ought to like dogs!” You can of course say this, the same way you could say “there’s no reason a taxi driver ought to be able to see,” or “there’s no reason bread ought to be baked,” but these are simply nonsensical statements-driving presupposes sight, and bread presupposes baking. Given the choice between a dog walker who likes and is obeyed by dogs, and a dog walker who hates dogs and doesn’t even attempt to keep your dog under control, no sane person would choose the latter over the former.
“This is an artificial distinction, though. You’ve simply labelled one set of characteristics ‘good’ and another ‘bad.’” But why have I done this? Have I done so randomly? Or have I simply looked at the purpose of dog walking—to entertain and keep dogs mentally and physically healthy—and extrapolated from this other qualities a dog walker would possess which would either be more or less useful in achieving this goal? And if we disagree that this is a correct application of the words “good” and “bad,” by what other criteria would you prefer I use the terms, and what term other than “bad” should I use to describe the performance of a dog walker who brings your dog home irritated and still needing to take a shit? What do those words even mean, if not as an evaluation of performance in relation to a particular goal or function?
But notice that we need not completely annihilate the relationship between the subject and its identity to point out this “is-ought” relationship. Having noticed green, vascular appendages on the end of a branch, and surmised that what we are looking at are leaves, we can then infer that they ought to have chlorophyll, stomata, veins and so forth-lacking any of these elements, we would say that the leaf lacks something it ought to possess by virtue of its identity as a leaf, and lacks the functions those parts dispense of towards the overall function of a leaf-that being the nourishment of plants. Up to a certain point, we can certainly still be say that the subject is a leaf, but it simply is not fully actualizing the form of a leaf, those criteria of “ought” statements by which the leaf can be identified as a leaf. There may be some mutation which has caused it to lack stomata required for gas exchange; it may have an iron deficiency which has left it chlorotic, or unable to manufacture chlorophyll; or its central vein may have been destroyed by a petiole boring insect. All of these things can be true while it still can be called a leaf, but there is some number of ought criteria the leaf must satisfy before it is no longer a leaf, as when it eventually dies, falls from the tree, dries up, and is turned into leaf mold or undifferentiated organic matter, at which point there will be a set of “ought” statements for some other identity which it will meet and by which it will be correctly identified.
How do we distinguish what “ought” statements to attach to any identity? An inescapable concept here is that of the function of a thing, or the functions of its parts. In the case of human beings, functions include those of the body (a human ought to have two legs, ought to have ten fingers, ought to have kidneys, all with their respective uses), but also include conscious actions—those which contribute to the flourishing of the individual, but also those which contribute to the flourishing of some other individual (as in the case of parents, teachers, or caregivers), and to that of the social body in which the individual is enmeshed, so as to yield a social ecology which is conducive to the maintenance and creation of other flourishing individuals. Societies themselves have a function beyond that of individuals, just as plants have a function beyond the function of the leaf. Functions arise and change as living things, which are necessarily goal-oriented, evolve and develop, and as they interact with each other in a broader ecology. Plants are not merely singular organisms-they provide food and habitat, they root graft with their neighbors, form symbiotic relationships with mycorhizzal fungi, build humus in soil, restart processes of ecological succession, and so on. Since human beings are no different from any other living things in this respect, the method of delineating our virtues is no different either.
What I have not done is articulated what the virtues are-nor, perhaps disappointingly, am I foolish enough to attempt to do so here. There are many virtues which are more or less universally agreed upon by anyone who accepts virtue theory and to which I have nothing useful to add. To attempt to inaugurate a virtue seems an immensely foolhardy task to do without a great deal of forethought and discussion, and in doing so I would doubtless only succeed in plaigarizing a virtue long praised by some culture whose ethical account I’m unfamiliar with. While these parallels are interesting when they occur, that’s not my goal here. What I would like to do is use this essay to explain how I think one would go about identifying and verifying a virtue as a virtue.
It is important to note a few things at the outset, first about what we mean when we speak of virtues, and what we do not.
For the arguments I will make here to make sense, there should be some clarification of what I mean when I use the phrase social ecology. When I use this term, I am using it in the spirit of Murray Bookchin. Bookchin was a polemicist at least as much as a philosopher, so to find a strict and overarching definition of social ecology in his writings is a tall order: in one essay, it is “an appeal not only for moral regeneration, but also, and above all, for social reconstruction along ecological lines,” which offers a “definitively naturalistic” spirituality. This does not amount to a clear, concise definition. But taken together, in his many writings on the subject, here is what I think Bookchin has in mind: Social ecology is human society viewed as a kind of ecosystem-not a natural or class hierarchy, but rather a complex web of interrelationships with a developing form, its elements intermingling and coevolving with one another without a clear beginning or end-these elements being people, cultures, ideas, political forms, and technologies. On a broad and historical scale, it constitutes a dialectical relationship between the human concepts of domination and freedom, giving rise to successive political-economic forms, all of which constitute not only relationships between human beings and societies, but between those elements and nature as a whole. Just as naturalism recognizes human beings as organisms, in contradiction to contractarian theory, social ecology recognizes human societies both as parts of ecosystems, and as natural human habitat, the environment by which individual human life is necessarily and correctly characterized, rather than something we form merely out of necessity.
To view humanity through the lens of social ecology is, if nothing else, 1) to recognize human beings as intrinsically social animals, and 2) to recognize human societies as intrinsically natural, inextricably enmeshed with all other processes in earth’s biosphere.
Virtue, used in reference to human beings, is an excellence of character. When we outline virtues, we are, importantly, not talking about actions. No virtue ethic can codify how such-and-such a person should behave in such-and-such a circumstance, except insofar as to say that whatever action one does take should be undertaken in light of the virtues described, such that after the fact, we would be justified in saying “her actions demonstrated her courage,” or “temperance,” or “conscientiousness,” or “gentleness,” or “equanimity.”
Since a virtue is defined as an excellence of character because of the actions it yields, shouldn’t we be able to give such a codifiable list of virtuous acts? The usual position among virtue ethicists is that this is unrealistic, and actually makes us more prone to act wrongly. There are many circumstances in which acts that seemingly follow from virtue conflict with other, potential acts which follow from other virtues. If we are to take the reasonably commonplace stance that candor is a virtue, for instance, we would be forced in such a list to add an addendum for instances where rigorous honesty would lead someone else to come to harm-the man who tells the SS officer at his door that Anne Frank is in his attic, when Anne Frank is in fact in his attic, is acting honestly, but not virtuously.
Why? In all likelihood, if the man were to tell us that he told the SS officer the truth because he believed it was a vice to lie, we ironically would tend to doubt his candor. Finding ourselves in such a circumstance, we would likely feel a pull to tell the truth out of fear for our own safety, putting it before the safety of the innocent girl hiding in our attic. For just this reason, most psychologically normal people would know that the right thing to do would be to lie to the officer, and that this would embody another virtue-that of courage. A person who claims they did not do this because they felt a moral compulsion to be honest would at best lack phronesis (a word which lacks a suitable English translation but is usually rendered as “prudence”), but at worst would be dishonest, because not only did they commit a cowardly act, but lied and pretended they had simply committed an honest one, demonstrating themselves to be both cowardly and dishonest.
What, then, is phronesis? Prudence is an inadequate word because it is so associated in English with shrewdness in money matters-in Greek, it is best described as the virtue of practical reason-being able to apply one’s virtues of character correctly in action, to produce good outcomes. To be able to know, depending on the context, when one ought to be courageous, or when one ought to be caring, or when one ought to be analytical, is a virtue all its own, without which all the other virtues are prone to lead us to behave absurdly.
We find, then, that virtue ethics is not wholly exempt from accusations of consequentialism-it seems inescapable that we ought to cultivate virtues because of the good things that come from doing so, or else why would we care about being able to know when to deploy what virtue, as if simply possessing the virtues didn’t suffice? After all, it would be fair to say that one’s virtue could be decently audited if one could convincingly account for any of their actions at a given moment in reference to some virtue they hope to display-likewise, it would be very hard to give a convincing representation of one’s virtue in the absence of any actions to substantiate it.
Doubtless, this is at least partially true, but not entirely. There is a consequentialist element to virtue, but it is also argued that one ought to be virtuous not in the traditional sense of moralistic pleading, but in the sense of ought suggested earlier-that certain behaviors reflect a virtuous character, and one ought to have a virtuous character as a condition of their identification as a human being, of their unique form. As it is in the form of a leaf to photosynthesize, it is in the form of a human being to act virtuously. This raises a metaphysical discussion of what form is and why we should care about it in discussing ethical matters, a discussion which is not in the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that there are characteristic traits of human beings, and these traits evince certain potentialities which can either be actualized or not. In every human, there is the potentiality for some degree of virtue, and we characterize the virtues partly in reference to what human potentialities are (there is no virtue of skillful winged flight, for instance, as there may in fact be said to be for flying animals, as this is not a human potentiality). Therefore, to flourish as a human being is to fulfill one’s distinct potentialities, to be a good human qua human. Therefore one need not be rich and famous, or even especially cheerful at a given moment, to be virtuous; one need only possess an excellent character.
This raises a further, obvious question, that with which we began: by what standard do we delineate what constitutes an excellent character? Having defined virtue and some of how we would seek to apply it, how do we actually identify virtue? A theme which the reader likely detects by now is the description of a human being as an animal. Human beings, along with their virtues, have developed through an evolutionary history, in an ecological context which has rendered them certain capacities. These capacities do not develop merely in reference to ecology (first nature), but also to social ecology (second nature)-indeed, most virtues are only comprehensible in relation to some social context in which they would be able to prove their worth. It is simply incorrect to think of human individuals and societies as existing sequentially: to imagine that human beings choose to form societies is as silly as to imagine we choose to be born with opposable thumbs.
Society, like opposable thumbs, constitute an inheritance from our pre-human ancestors, not an invention of Homo sapiens. There is a great deal we do not know about our pre-human ancestors, but one thing we have no doubt of is that they were highly social beings, as is the case of virtually all primates. Before there were human beings, there were societies of apes whose ancestors would be human and would live in human societies. When we find the bodies of distant ancestors of our own species, or of our cousins in the genus Homo, we find their bodies ornamented and carefully buried, not that unlike how we would bury our own loved ones. We also find the bodies of individuals who suffered grevious injuries-and then went on living for decades afterwards. We find evidence, in other words, that these individuals were loved by somebody, that their lives and deaths meant something to those around them, and their disabilities tolerated and compensated for. We cannot know whether prehistoric humans of any species had philosophers, or had any concept of virtues or any way of explaining to themselves why they clung so tenaciously to life-but we have every reason to believe that they did have sympathy, they did have compassion, and they were capable of love.
Thus, to attempt to understand what a human being is independent of her social life is rather like trying to understand an ant and excluding any explanation involving its colony, or trying to understand the function of a fish’s gills and fins and rejecting out of hand any explanation involving water. By the same token, to attempt to understand human societies without taking into account the broader environment, in both its biotic and abiotic elements, is to deal in absurdity. If we were to try to understand why human beings would seek to make fire without accounting for the realities of cold and dark, or the indigestibility of raw foods, or the abundance of combustible materials found in the natural environment, we would I suppose be left to conclude that they simply took an inexplicable pleasure in inhaling woodsmoke.
In discussing the health of an organism, we speak in terms of how its constitutive elements are functioning. If the liver is not processing toxins, or the lungs are not absorbing oxygen, we say the person as a whole is unhealthy, that the body is not functioning as it ought. Likewise, if a city is stricken with plague, such that instead of going to work, caring for their families, or spending time with their friends, people are simply lying dead in the street, we say that the society, and not merely the people, are unwell.
This is the case for two reasons. Firstly, that the constitutive elements of any thing are critical to its continuance as a whole, but also that it is on the continuance of the whole that all the parts depend. People can live without society for at least a little while, it is true (the same way a kidney can live outside of a body for a period of time), but they cannot persist, for the simple reason that individuals die in a rather short time-frame-lacking a society, usually a much shorter one. It is society which renews us in the form of food and water, but which also grants us socially-derived identity and camraderie. It is us who give society much of its form, and society which gives much of our form to us. Without it, we are only just human—and certainly not in any sense recognizable to us.
None of this gives us strict guidelines for behavior, however, any more than claiming that eyes produce sight does anything to explain how they do so. Indeed, there are different ways of behaving which can yield a self-perpetuating society, at least for some length of time. The great problem virtue ethics was formulated to contend with was the fact that different cultures have arrived at different solutions, and therefore differing notions of the meanings of evaluative terms like good and bad, and different sets of virtues to go along with these differing notions. Thus it would appear that there is no such thing as virtue really-only differing notions which can be written off as mere convention.
One easy way to approach this argument would be to make the mistake of claiming that we can simply look at all prior societies and examine their moral systems. By finding a common denominator, the logic goes, accepting only the virtues and traditions which are either identical to or at least analogous with one another, we can discern general virtues of human life as such. This has a certain validity to it, insofar as we can identify certain common virtues any human society needs to develop and maintain to persist as a society-just the way if both birds and insects fly, and both independently evolved wings, we could conclude wings bear some importance in flight. Similarly, if we visit all human societies and find that they tend to place value on things like caring for one’s children, telling the truth, or doing useful work for the community, we could not be easily dismissed in claiming that these qualities demonstrate certain fundamental human virtues, if virtue is to be taken as pro-social behavior.
But this proves to be altogether too simplistic. For the simple ability to function as a society, and to persist as one, does not make a society good, the same way that being long-lived does not make a person good. While we could well develop a set of virtues which would allow for the perpetuation of a given social life, we could not then say that such a set of virtues constituted the good life. For the social ecology mentioned earlier is just one of the relevant spheres which ethics must consider-beyond any one society we must account for others, and for the broader sphere of nature as a whole; within it, we have to account for, at minimum, the individuals of which the societies are composed, as well as the groups they form, whether they be families, friendships, workplaces, or affinity groups.
Is there a possible state of affairs in which there is a harmony between all these spheres? I don’t believe this is a question which can be honestly answered at this point. The only way to answer the problem posed by convention, however, is to engage in frankly utopian thought. We are forced, at minimum, to imagine a society which has been fully integrated into the natural world, and in which individuals are given the tools necessary to fully engage in society, and then ask ourselves how, in that society, we would be expected to behave.
It is in this sort of thinking that I have found a great deal of what has alienated me from the broader left. We hear much on the left about the importance of increasing civic participation, a goal I fully endorse (or haven’t you heard?). But when we hear proposals like the defunding of police, we are seeing a certain ideological dysfunction. If one wishes to live in a society without police, the first step is clearly not to abolish them-the first step is to create a society in which they are not necessary. What makes someone a leftist is not the intent to do the former, but the belief that it is both possible and worthwhile to try to achieve the latter.
Likewise, if one wishes to create a society governed by municipal assemblies, one must first cultivate a culture and a people with the virtues and capacities necessary to allow those assemblies to function, and not to become miniature tyrannies or simply devolve into chaos and faction. What would be needed of people who wished to partake in such assemblies?
If one gives this thorough consideration, we come up with a list not at all dissimilar from the list generated by Aristotle—and this is not surprising, since Aristotle’s virtues are after all the virtues (or lack thereof) he observed in his fellow citizens, who were themselves participants in the ecclesia, or assembly. A citizen in an assembly would have to display courage in speaking before his peers, even when he knew what he would say would not be taken well; he would require temperance, to prevent himself from polemicizing inappropriately and wasting everyone’s time; magnanimity, so as not to be distracted and inflamed by petty squabbles and personal insults; patience, so as to be able to actually listen to and consider the views of others; a truthful appraisal of which areas in which his level of knowledge made him an authority on a topic, and of which he was a subordinate, and so on. In every case, the virtues in question are delineated by mediating the individual’s function in the assembly—to actively participate in discussing the affairs of the community—with the function of the assembly itself—to actually come to useful, if imperfect conclusions as to what actions must be taken, and how to implement those actions.
To be able to do any of this well requires another set of virtues, which Aristotle delineates as the intellectual virtues: intelligence, wisdom, logical reasoning, phronesis, and understanding (specifically, the ability to comprehend what others are saying), among others. Crucial to all of these is a good education, and further, the dispensation of those necessities of life which give one the time and energy to engage in intellectual development. A society which does not supply these simply cannot expect to create individuals capable of flourishing, any more than we could expect a plant to grow without watering it.
The discussion of the virtues does not, and should not, end with Aristotle, of course. Aristotle’s virtues were composed with a particular kind of man in mind, the magnanimous, great-souled man who is justly prideful-a phrase which hits our ears, conditioned with the morality of Christian meekness, as oxymoronic. Pride is taken by us to be intrinsically vicious. If such a man, because he is completely virtuous, rightly views himself as superior to others, and treats them as such, he cannot be virtuous-he is prideful.
But we shouldn’t dismiss Aristotle’s great-souled man simply because he offends us. Indeed, there is plenty of reason to be suspicious of Christian meekness, as there is always reason to be suspicious of someone who understates their own excellence—a strong individual who frames themselves as weak in fact often confers a great deal of power to themselves by doing so, even if they do this unintentionally. By pretending to be something other than what they are, they often lull those around them into being unduly influenced by them. It is such people who so often become the covert dictators of small, ostensibly non-hierarchical organizations. There is much to be said of a person who honestly evaluates themselves with admirable objectivity, correctly finds themselves to be unusually excellent in many areas, and then freely admits it. Someone who is capable of doing this without deluding themselves is indeed worthy of admiration.
What Aristotle’s great-souled man lacks is not meekness, but the qualities of a teacher. In demanding that others treat him with due reverence, he runs the risk of smothering their own development—and Aristotle doesn’t appear to see this as a possible concern. The role of exemplary people is not, in fact, to become the dictators of their assembly, but the leaders. The difference is not at all as facile as it sounds—a dictator simply commands, whereas a leader, one who is generally acknowledged to be worthy of deference and even obedience, identifies the vices and virtues of the individuals in their community, and not only educates through direct instruction, but provides an environment in which their inferiors can improve. A leader encourages questions, and is prepared to substantively answer them. A great leader is one who could do the job better than anybody, but chooses to delegate tasks not just to save him/herself work, but to give others the opportunity to develop the virtues which make him/her a good leader. Dictators use and ultimately overthrow democracies to self-aggrandize, whereas leaders sustain democracies by inculcating the culture and practices which make them possible, using the moral authority granted by their demonstrated excellence. A crucial piece of this is that a leader must inculcate those intellectual virtues in their subordinates which would lead those subordinates to eventually revoke their authority if and when they are no longer deserving of it. In practice, it is very easy for someone who is not in a stated leadership role to function as a leader, even to someone who is, on paper, their superior. They may serve the functions of a leader to those around them, when the actual leader is incapable, unwilling, or unaware of the responsibilities associated with their position. Most people who have worked in hierarchical workplaces have seen this happen firsthand, and most of us have also had the experience of being led by someone in one context, and then leading them in another-indeed, to be able to both lead and be led by the same individual is deeply characteristic of real friendship.
But in acknowledging the legitimate role of leaders, have I strayed from communalist orthodoxy? While that would be interesting, for now I feel safely hidden behind the sacred texts:
A Communalist society should rest, above all, on the efforts of a new radical organization to change the world, one that has a new political vocabulary to explain its goals, and a new program and theoretical framework to make those goals coherent. It would, above all, require dedicated individuals who are willing to take on the responsibilities of education and, yes, leadership. Unless words are not to become completely mystified and obscure a reality that exists before our very eyes, it should minimally be acknowledged that leadership always exists and does not disappear because it is clouded by euphemisms such as “militants” or, as in Spain, “influential militants.” It must also be acknowledge that many individuals in earlier groups like the CNT were not just “influential militants” but outright leaders, whose views were given more consideration — and deservedly so! — than those of others because they were based on more experience, knowledge, and wisdom, as well as the psychological traits that were needed to provide effective guidance. A serious libertarian approach to leadership would indeed acknowledge the reality and crucial importance of leaders — all the more to establish the greatly needed formal structures and regulations that can effectively control and modify the activities of leaders and recall them when the membership decides their respect is being misused or when leadership becomes an exercise in the abusive exercise of power.
Leadership simply serves as one craft which every society depends on, and it is the prerogative of the community to incorporate the insights of leaders as they would those of any other craftsman or otherwise knowledgeable individual. To the degree a society has successfully inculcated virtue in its citizens, the formal role of leaders as leaders, as opposed to educators, diminishes in its importance. Insofar as every member of the community has and displays the moral and intellectual virtues which must be exercised for an assembly to function and for individuals to flourish, the community is just so truly free, for it is the possession of the intellectual virtues which constitutes the basis for voluntary action, and therefore for authentic freedom. It is this authentic freedom to which nature itself seems impelled, and towards which it seems to struggle through time, its creative powers of development giving rise to diverse and novel forms of life, of which humans are just one instance. As I said earlier, it seems impossible to say whether human beings in a technologically advanced state can ever integrate themselves fully into the natural world, such that the two can sustainably or even mutualistically co-exist—but the first step towards such a project is the re-constitution of society, not as merely an arena for economic activity and egoistic self-expression, but for the practical application of virtue.