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Abstract

Ambition is a curiously neglected topic in ethics. It isn’t that philosophers have not discussed it. Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Santayana and a number of others have discussed ambition. But it has seldom received more than a few paragraphs worth of analysis, in spite of the fact that ambition plays a central role in Western politics (one cannot be elected without it), and in spite of the fact that Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke and Rousseau each considered it to be among the greatest threats to political security. The aim of this paper is to provide a long overdue analysis of ambition. The first part of the paper explores what ambition is. The second seeks to answer the question, “Is ambition a virtue or a vice?”

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Notes

  1. We may also find Gerwig’s book astonishing because of a change in attitudes toward teaching values in schools.

  2. “Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people and we are going to keep that edge” (Bush, quoted in Bumiller and Nagourney 2006).

  3. See Plato (1961a, 1961b); Aristotle (1939); Seneca (1995); Aquinas (1981); Machiavelli (1996); Harrington (1992); Locke (1980); Hutcheson (2002); Rousseau (1987); Smith (1982); and Santayana (1915).

  4. See Hume (2003), Book 2, Part 1, Section 8, paragraph 4 (hereafter cited as 2.1.8.4). Benjamin Franklin in his speech before the Constitutional Convention on “the subject of salaries” offers a similar account of ambition, defining it as the “Love of Power.” However, in spite of beginning with this definition, the entirety of Franklin’s subsequent discussion is framed in terms of the desire for honor (Franklin 1987, pp. 1131–1134).

  5. See Hume (2003, 2.1.10.11–12, and 2.2.8.14).

  6. See also Aristotle (1939, 1107b–1108a4); Aquinas (1981, Part II–II, Question 181, Article 1); and Hutcheson (2002, p. 56).

  7. See Plato (1961a, Republic 550b); and Plato (1961b, Timaeus 90b).

  8. Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of knowledge as the interest of “the ambitious soul” (Emerson 1996, p.55). The context makes it clear that Emerson is speaking of knowledge of something significant. Aiming to know how many blades of grass grow on the university lawn would not make one ambitious. Rather, as Rosalind Hursthouse put it, it would make one “a crazy coot.” William Kerrigan discusses knowledge, fame and power as objects of ambition’s desire (Kerrigan 1996). Robert Kaplan speaks of ambition in terms of a number of related desires, including the desire to be better than others, to succeed, to advance in one’s career, to be esteemed by one’s superiors, and to perform one’s job perfectly (Kaplan 1991, pp. 17, 24, 27).

  9. While social recognition is essential to ambition for honor, it is not essential to all ambitions.

  10. See Kerrigan (1996, pp. 13ff); Freud (1953, pp. 210–12) and Freud (1959, pp. 152–3).

  11. Cf. Wrye (1994, p. 130).

  12. One might worry that this characterization is still too narrow. It seems to exclude two kinds of cases where we often speak of someone being ambitious, viz., the ambitious social reformer and the ambitious parent. Often these cases will conform to the description I have offered. The social reformer may desire the social reform because it will bring about a rise in his or her own social condition. Likewise the parent may desire the child’s success as a way to secure an improvement in the parent’s condition. In neither case need the sense of an improvement in one’s condition be defined in an explicitly individualistic way: one may yearn for social reform or a child’s success because one sees one’s identity as fully tied up with that of the child or the group. On the other hand, one might think that some ambitious social reformers or parents are more altruistic than this. In such cases, I’m inclined to think our sense of ‘ambitious’ is borrowed from the definition I have offered of what we might call paradigmatic or full-fledged ambition, even though the resemblance between the two cases is inexact. The altruistically ‘ambitious’ parent may have a strong desire for her child’s success and she may pursue the conditions that would make it possible, but in so doing she is not concerned with improving her own condition.

    I think a similar story will account for cases where we would be inclined to say someone is ambitious to A even though we wouldn’t say she is ambitious full stop. In such a case the agent and object possess some of the qualities of full-fledged ambition, but not all of them. A may be difficult, for example, and the agent may be committed to achieving it. But she may lack the yearning desire or A may not be tied up with her sense of self.

  13. See Kaufmann (1961, p. 318) and Kaufmann (1973, pp. 117–18, and 127).

  14. Cf. Smith (1982, pp. 50–7); and Rogers (1961).

  15. Adam Smith’s distinction between an ambition that pursues “the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue,” and one that concerns itself with “the acquisition of wealth and greatness,” might appear to advocate such an approach to the evaluation of ambition. However, the context makes it clear that Smith’s account of ambition’s value is richer than the one-dimensional picture currently on view (Smith 1982, p. 62).

  16. See Dombrowski (1989).

  17. One natural way to characterize this section is as an attempt to make explicit what it means for ambition to be felt “at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right [object], for the right purpose and in the right manner” (Aristotle 1939, 1106b21ff.). I shall say more below about the relation between my account and Aristotle’s.

  18. For a recent defense of the Socratic claim that all virtues involve a certain kind of construal, viz., one that entails knowledge, see Brady (2005).

  19. So, for example, Lachmann (1988) analyses a patient who defines ambition, in part, in terms of wanting to outdo others and succeed in her career.

  20. See Meissner (1997) and Kaufmann (1973, pp. 119–121). Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) speaks of the characters who embody the ideals of a culture. The characters who typify the ideal of ambition are the artist, the inventor, and the self-made captain of industry. The third of these has seen its halo tarnished in recent years by corporate-executive-scandals. But its continuing cultural significance is illustrated by its tenacity. It remains an important cultural icon in spite of its bad press.

  21. According to Hogan and Schroeder (1980), their presumed lack of autonomy and deficient self-respect were two of the reasons achievement-oriented personalities were deemed psychologically unhealthy by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Carl Rogers.

  22. Aquinas (1981), for example, expresses this worry (Pt II–II, Q 131, A 1).

  23. Mahan borrows the term ‘invidious comparison’ from Veblen (1931). The latter part of the sentence is a passage Mahan quotes from Merton (1961).

  24. Cf. Aquinas (1981, Pt II–II, Q 131, A 1).

  25. Cf. Williams (1973, pp. 95ff).

  26. Jackson quotes the latter sentence from an interview with Lucy McGee, director of Development Dimensions International, a human resources consulting firm based in Stoke Poges, United Kingdom.

  27. The worries about insatiability, selfishness and a disregard for competing values account for the rest.

  28. For an early discussion of the issue see Sophocles (1957).

  29. Cf. Frankfurt (2004, pp. 58–9) and Mahan (2002, pp. 95–6).

  30. The subsequent discussion owes much to Wolf (1997a) and (1997b).

  31. Specifying exactly what it means for a life to be meaningful is notoriously difficult. Wolf (1997a, b) suggests that any satisfactory account will need to distinguish the following related conditions from one another. The first is the condition of being engaged in projects that strike one as worth doing. The second is the condition of being engaged in projects that are genuinely worthwhile, which at the very least means being intersubjectively recognized to be projects of worth. The third is the condition of finding one’s projects fulfilling. Wolf argues that a meaningful life must satisfy the first and second of these conditions: one must be engaged by projects that one takes to be worth doing and they must be intersubjectively recognized to be projects of worth (pp. 209–12). I’m not sure she is right in this regard, but that is a matter for another paper. In this context what I wish to note is that, although the object of Geoff’s ambition is not intersubjectively recognized as valuable, his life still may be. Thus, on Wolf’s account, his life could be meaningful in virtue of its enabling him to engage in other projects and involve himself in relationships that are of genuine worth, even though what he takes to be its aim is not.

  32. As an account of virtue and vice this characterization is inadequate. However, in this paper I do not intend to offer a general account of virtue and vice. What I intend to offer is an analysis of ambition that will be of use across a range of normative theories. The very thin characterization of virtue and vice that I have offered serves this end. Millians, Kantians, Humeans, Aristotelians and others will offer different accounts of what gives a character trait value and thus of what elicits the admiration of the virtuous. But they will all agree that virtues will be approved and vices disapproved by the virtuous.

  33. For an analysis of Aristotle’s view, see Dombrowski (1989, pp. 132–5).

  34. Aristotle (1939, 1125b2–3).

  35. That is not to say that the Aristotelian lacks resources to sort out such cases. It is just to say that the idea of the mean is not very useful for so doing. However, rather than being a reason to reject the Aristotelian account of the virtues, my point could be taken to reinforce that account by highlighting the importance of practical wisdom for assessing whether a trait is a virtue or a vice.

  36. Cf. Aristotle (1939, 1106b21–2).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Michael Brady, Bill Fish, Rosalind Hursthouse and Mike Meyer for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. The paper also benefitted from questions raised by Dirk Baltzly, Fiona Macpherson, Roy Perrett and Luke Russell at the Australasian Association of Philosophy meeting in Canberra in 2006.

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Pettigrove, G. Ambitions. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 10, 53–68 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-006-9044-4

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