Virtue and the Phronimos

A question was posed to me recently, a question I will rephrase and in turn pose to all of you.

A man goes and volunteers at the soup kitchen for an evening, let's say. In doing so he not only acts with beneficence but also considers the interests and autonomy of others, helps to maximise (local) utility and respects his obligation towards minimally decent Samaritanism. It seems fair to say then that by ethical and intuitive moral standards, this person is doing the right thing. Consider this then: the man does this not out of his own free will, but is compelled by a friend or loved one (with a more attuned sense of social justice, perhaps) to volunteer to pay something back to society. The fact that he now performs the same act reluctantly makes no difference to the nature of the act itself; it is still, by all accounts, the right thing. But with this in mind, on this information, can we call him a 'good person'?

It should seem to me at least that, purely from the information above, it is difficult to answer yes in any meaningful way. This question might seem trivial, but it highlights a significant deficiency in the current major ethical systems of thought. Though consequentialist and deontological ethical systems require, and thence give guidance towards, 'right action', they do not in and of themselves contain any requirements for how one should feel. If the question is any illustration, it seems that our concept of what constitutes a good person is very much dependent on not only how we act but also how we feel and what motivates us.*

But what is the relevance of being a 'good person', particularly? Need we bother with such considerations, when right action could just as well be all we need to live moral lives? To answer this question, we must consider what it is exactly to be a moral person. One might be forgiven for thinking this is the springboard for some long, philosophical discussion. To the contrary, if one cannot reduce moral concepts to basic common sense thinking, even if that thinking is somewhat complicated, then your concepts become difficult, perhaps too difficult, to implement in real life, and a moral theory without practical application is all but worthless. So what does make being a good person so crucial to morality, what makes it as (if not more) important than simply doing the right thing?

There are a number of recourses we could make in answering this question, but I will start with one particluarly simple and pragmatic one. What is the difference between someone who characteristically does the 'right thing', but does so to appease the demands of others, and someone who acts in much the same way but voluntarily? How would we treat these two people in our relations with them, knowing this? Would it make a difference? I think it would. It would seem to me that if we took both of those people and placed them in a social vacuum, one could still be depended on to do the right thing while the other would be far more reluctant. In our interactions and relationships with people, we are constantly assessing their character to determine how and what our relationship with them should be, and to what limits we extend the bounds of our interactions. Needless to say, it is far easier (and more appropriate) to trust someone whose motivation comes from within than someone whose motivation comes from without. This is an important realisation that we will come to in a moment.

However, it is quite arguable to suggest that one can derive motivation internally from the consideration of the interests of others using purely consequential or deontological principles. So this is only part of the story. Perhaps we should consider a new scenario to further probe the issue. I have adapted this example from my recent ethics lecture, and so credit is due to the School rather than myself. Consider your sick friend, who is staying in hospital. It seems that by any account you should go and visit them, as you have the time and ability to do so and it would surely mean much to your friend to put in the effort. But why, morally speaking, should we go? Appealing purely to consequences or a sense of rational obligation seem not only forced, but also somewhat cold. Though we might be impartial in our ethics, can we still call ourselves a 'good friend' if we go to visit only because it increases the net utility of the world than acting otherwise, or if we have an obligation to be minimally decent to each other? And can we justify seeing our friend rather than someone else in the hospital by merely appealing to a greater increase in utility or a set of duties and obligations and still seem a 'good friend'? Surely not. Thus we can see that unless a person acts with feeling, or perhaps acts out of feeling, we cannot truly call them a good friend, and if not a good friend, then even more surely not a good person.

Why be a good friend though? Why be a good person? These questions we still not have properly addressed. Our response relates back to the answer to our earlier question. The good person characteristically acts in a manner which is good. That it is a matter of character is important, because character is wholly internalised. Except in situations where it is impossible, the characteristically good person does good. Not because of obligations, not because it will be 'better' overall, but because it is in their character. Good deeds are not enough to be good, one must be able to be counted on to do those deeds, no matter what. Without the ability to do good out of character alone, one is not only dependent on circumstances to determine action (circumstances whose whole nature it may be impossible to know) but cannot be trusted to act as a friend, in the case of the situation above, or as a good doctor, a good engineer, a good businessman; or, in other words, a good person.

Please excuse my repetition in the paragraph above, but what I have repeated I have done to be both clear and definite, because the concept is an important one that must be understood if we are to continue.

So we have established, I hope, that it is important to be characteristically good and not do good out of purely impartial means (a full address of impartiality and morality will have to come in another blog post, I'm afraid, but I trust you are able to keep up so far by filling in the gaps). Having done so, we must next define exactly what "good" and "good person" and "good character" mean within this context. It is surely not enough to use vulgar definitions; when we speak of a good doctor, we really mean a good person who happens to be a doctor, not a person who happens to be good at the practice of medicine. Where then do we get our most basic definition, that of 'good'? Without it we cannot make any justified moral judgements at all, we can only appeal to gut feeling. While this feeling is important, it is no basis for a system of morals. It is simply too unreliable and susceptible to immoral suggestion, as I'm sure we have all found from personal experience.

Lacking the ability, or perhaps believing it impossible, to appeal to impartial means of determining what is 'good', perhaps the best place to start off is the so-called 'good person' we have already rudimentally identified. After all, what other recourse do we have? This may seem like an invalid appraoch, and indeed it is most certainly contrary to our usual method of determining moral values - it is generally thought we must have the values before we make the judgements. Why must this be so, though? If we can all agree that some people are 'good' while others are not, and we can agree at least to some extent on what characteristics those people possess, as I believe we can, then it does not seem like there is any reason we cannot derive our definitions from these examples. And even if we cannot, surely there is no harm in trying and seeing where it leads us.

Unfortunately, and I know this will be a disappointment, it is not within the scope of this essay to determine the nature of these characteristics, which I will from here on refer to as virtues. I will surely write a far more detailed on the virtues alone at a later date, as it is definitely the sort of concept that merits its own discussion. This is only an introduction to the concept, and if I have sold it to you with what I have said so far about how we come to find the virtues, then I'm sure you will be happy to wait to find out more about them.

That is not the end of our story, though. We have established so far, I hope, that there is merit in the case for virtue ethics. I mentioned earlier, however, that any ethical system is useless if it does not have any applicability. It might seem as though from what I have written so far that while virtue ethics seems appealing, it is too open to flexibility and personal opinion on how we should act, and does not offer sufficient moral guidance. After all, if we accept that we define what is good (virtue) in relation to the people who possess it, how can we possibly come to any sort of moral decision of our own if we accept that we are not wholly virtuous people?

This is where I can introduce the concept of the phronimos, a moral expert. According to Aristotle, the phronimos embodied phronesis, or practical wisdom - not the sort of old-hermit-giving-obscure-and-metaphorical lessons wisdom, but the sort of wisdom in knowing about the world and how we should act within it. "What should I do?" "Think about this, this and this. Do you see now?" That sort of useful wisdom about everyday life. [[In my philosophy, the phronimos can be considered someone on the way to becoming a sophos, or sage - someone who is truly wise and fully understands the world, and so has achieved eudaimonia (this is a term I will discuss in more depth at a later time). This will be pertinent to later discussions, but is not strictly relevant now.]] So what does the phronimos have to do with moral guidance? I certainly do not consider myself a phronimos, so how does it relate to me? The answer should be apparent from my brief attempt to give an example of practical wisdom. You are uncertain in how to act, so what should you do? Ask someone whom you would consider to be a phronimos. Someone whom you think embodies a certain virtue or virtues, and who can be relied upon for useful moral advice. This is where our guidance can come from.

We will not always have a phronimos at our disposal, however, and in fact these people can be difficult to come across sometimes. What then? Well, try to do what you think they would tell you to do. You don't know what that is? Then just do something. You may make a mistake, but this is to be expected. What made you think you could always do the right thing in the first place? If you made no mistakes you would have no need for advice in the first place! But mimicry is not enough. You have to be able to learn from the phronimos and learn from your own mistakes. Only by increasing your understanding can you yourself become wise, and that is why active moral consideration is important. You can't forever act on moral autopilot if you hope to ever become a good person, because remember what we discussed earlier - it is one thing to do good, it is another thing to be good.

Clearly, the case for virtue does not end here. There are many more points and issues on the topic, positives and negatives, which must be proven and refuted if we are to take virtue theory seriously. What are the virtues? How can what is virtuous in a doctor be considered good while what is virtuous in a thief be considered bad? And how exactly does emotion relate to moral consideration? This essay has only been introductory, and was not intended to address these issues, but if they strike you as interesting, you can await my future posts on virtue ethics (if you are particularly patient) or you can research the topic yourself, and if you like I can point you in the right direction. For the moment, however, it seems that we are done.

*I am concerned that I here have conflated emotion, motivation and action. It is my opinion that we should try to keep these separate. I am not trying to say that feeling should necessarily provoke certain action - emotion is a reaction to a situation, and that means it entails judgement, judgement which can be right or wrong. Therefore we cannot derive right action from emotion nor can we associate certain actions with certain emotions. The two are not (or I should say, should not) be closely linked. My point here was to point out that emotion is a separate but important part of moral consideration in addition to right action, something which impartial theories do not account for.