Abstract
On a standard Aristotelian account, the moral virtues and vices stand in an asymmetric relationship to one another. To help explain this asymmetry, I argue that the vices share significantly less common structure than many think. That there are many ways for agents to get it wrong gives us prima facie reason to think that the vices lack a robust common structure. Further, the most promising candidates for a common structure (or important property) of the vices fall short. These are that (a) the vices have the common structure of being excesses and deficiencies (this is not the right kind of common structure), (b) the vices result from agents’ unreflectively taking their inclinations as their ends (not all vicious agents do), and, relatedly, (c) the vices result from rational corruption (this structure does not apply in all cases of vice). Argument (b), which Terence Irwin and others endorse, is the most promising one, so I focus on it. But it, too, faces weighty objections. I conclude that none of these important arguments establishes the existence of a robust common structure of the moral vices. The great variety of moral vices is a puzzling phenomenon that continues to stand in need of explanation.
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02 November 2022
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Notes
I lack scope to discuss other forms of virtue ethics that take inspiration from, say, Stoicism, Thomism, Nietzscheanism, or hybrid accounts.
“Seem to” is not meant here to imply “clearly do,” which would be far too ambitious.
There are also hybrid views (e.g., Barney 2020) on which vices and virtues are in different respects both symmetrical and asymmetrical.
Müller (2015: 460–461) names the two views and, focusing on EN IX.4, argues that the second view is correct.
Grönroos (2015: 147–148, 161, et passim) argues that the vicious person faces two sets of desires. Satisfying bad desires both precludes satisfying good ones and leads to a sense of degradation.
“Generally” because, as Aristotle notes (EN I 5, 106b 19–22), some people do seek to imitate powerful leaders (e.g., Sardanapallus) who lead lives of pleasure and gratification fit for grazing animals. Whether people admire the vicious-but-powerful may depend on the particular vices in question. It’s easier to admire a wealthy king who is avaricious than a murderous one.
Barney (2020) provides textual and linguistic analysis of Aristotle that challenges some accounts of a robust common structure. As noted later, I agree in part with her account, including for independent reasons (see §II-V). I also critically address her account of a common structure of the vices (toward the end of §V).
A related account might consider the importance of my thesis for consequentialists and deontologists who argue in the register of virtue and vice.
Some argue that missing the mark is not enough to constitute vice. See, e.g., Drefcinski (1996), Cuzner (2005). I will use “missing the mark” broadly to mean deliberating poorly in choosing an end or ineffectively pursuing a well-chosen end.
One might wish to read the following analysis with regard only to vice in the strict sense soon discussed. Fine by me.
See Kontos (2014) on intellectual failings that cause agents in states of vice, beastliness, incontinence, and continence to miss the mark.
Aristotle also distinguishes incontinence and vice temporally: the former is episodic, the latter continual (Müller, 2015: 470).
Korsgaard (1986: 267) observes:
The fact that reason itself admits of corruption or a kind of error that is undetectable (vice is unconscious of itself) implies that determining the mean by reason cannot be a straightforward matter. At least we cannot find the mean merely by engaging in some characteristic procedures of reason, for these can be misleading. For instance, we cannot determine the mean by referring to our rational wishes, for if we have vices, these too will be wrong.
On this classificatory scheme, see Irwin (2001) and Curzer (2018). Curzer (2018; see also 2012), for instance, compares virtuous, continent, incontinent, vicious, and brutish (thêriotês) agents. His multifaceted account of vice pursues an intra-group pairwise ranking of agents by their moral status. He notes (2018: 102), for instance, Aristotle’s underappreciated distinction between (a) continent agents who strive to overcome vicious desires for pleasure and (b) agents with “endurance,” who aim to overcome such desires to avoid pain. My argument that the vices have fairly minimal common structure is compatible with this helpful categorization.
Emotions can be critically virtue-supporting. For instance, anger at being harmed can be good for one’s development (see, e.g., Taylor 2006: 14).
For example, exercising charity will often require sympathy, but one can fail to sympathize, be insufficiently sympathetic, or sympathize for the wrong reasons or with the wrong people.
Korsgaard (1986: 266) observes that the vicious might yet have harmonious souls due to their “corrupted reason.” A vicious person can reason in unconflicted ways to achieve defective ends, such that “the bad person’s rational wishes and rational judgments are harmonious with her evil passions” (266).
On the nature and development of practical skill, see Fridland (2014).
For example, the suburbanite teenager with no income does not incorporate the virtue of generosity by giving great sums to charity. Instead she becomes generous by, say, helping her friends with their homework or volunteering at a local soup kitchen. I believe I first heard this example from Julia Annas.
Annas’s account is not intended to suggest a perfect analogy between virtue and skill. Human action differs from skillful production in notable ways, and virtue requires certain motivations, unlike skill. See Aristotle (2000: EN VI).
Irwin too discusses the excess and deficiency view (2001: 74).
On the doctrine of the mean, see Gottlieb (2009: Chap.1, esp. 32–35). Gottlieb argues (22–32), inter alia, that it is a doctrine of equilibrium or correct balancing rather than moderation, and that virtue is a mean relative to persons and their particular contexts. By implication, when it comes to determining the mean, “the relevant factors in one situation may not be the relevant factors in another” (Meilaender, 2010). I accordingly suggest that the degree of common structure of the vices will depend on how the vices link to their particular corresponding virtues and how and how far particular vices are agent- and context-relative.
Here “very vicious” allows that viciousness is scalar rather than binary.
The vicious person may well pursue the fine (kalon) but does so to meet his ends and not because it is fine (see Irwin 2001: 86).
On miscalibration as a vicious extreme, see Gottlieb (2009: 23).
Social environments may also be full of temptations to, or accommodations for, vice, which can even make the virtuous maladapted to succeed within them.
People who act upon their inclinations will not necessarily become worse off. In certain settings, relying on inclinations that are caused or guided by one’s emotional instincts can be adaptively valuable (see, e.g., Railton 2014).
Irwin does say that “[p]erhaps all that the different vices have in common is their failure to be virtues” (Irwin, 2001: 74). He does not develop this idea, however, but proceeds to argue in detail that the vices have one key common structure: viz., the vicious uncritically accept their inclinations as ends.
See also Gaus (2008: 56–65) on framing effects, prospect theory, and other sources of psychological bias. For instance, if Jane falsely believes that charitably helping others precludes them from eventually helping themselves, this can push her toward extreme selfishness.
This theory arose as a challenge to the traditional rational actor model in economics.
Repeatedly facing such situations could give one a vicious disposition to steal that is not due to an unjustified lack of reflection.
This seems true insofar as reflecting seriously requires doing so in a way that is sensitive to resource trade-offs one faces qua deliberator.
This allows that rationality is scalar rather than binary.
Irwin’s account has also been criticized for underappreciating the conflict between wish and appetite in the vicious person. On this line of argument, the rational part of the soul, which “harbours wish,” fails to control the non-rational part, which “harbours appetite” (Grönroos, 2015: 150, 154, et passim). Korsgaard (1986: 261) notes that wish (boulesis) “is a rational desire, a desire for something conceived as a good.” Such a fact pattern is sufficient, but not necessary, however, to establish the presence of vice. Vicious agents can also, for instance, conceive (Reeve, 2018: 22–23) or pursue (Brickhouse, 2003: 12–19) the good in rationally inadequate ways.
Other possible structures of the vices seem true of either some but not all vices (e.g., steady weakness in the face of temptation) or many things beyond the vices (e.g., a disposition to support value-undermining processes or outcomes). See Barney (2020: 293 − 94).
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Acknowledgements
For generous feedback and discussion, I thank Neera Badhwar, Ben Bryan, Jason Byas, Mark LeBar, Christian Miller, James Otteson, Karina Robson, Tristan Rogers, Daniel Russell, and Wes Siscoe. I especially thank Julia Annas, a mentor who never ceases to inspire a desire for virtue.
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Robson, G. The Varieties of Moral Vice: An Aristotelian Approach. Erkenn (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00614-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00614-x