Virtues in heaven

Here are two Aristotelian theses:

1. Complete human flourishing requires the exercise of all the human virtues.

2. Courage is a human virtue.

Add a highly plausible thesis that likely everyone will accept:

3. The exercise of courage requires apparent or real danger.

Now add some theses that a Christian will surely accept:

4. In heaven, there are no apparent danger.

5. In heaven, there is no real danger.

6. In heaven, there is complete human flourishing.

Contradiction!

I find it nearly impossible to deny 3-6. That leaves 1 and 2.

One move available to the Christian Aristotelian is to weaken 1. Perhaps complete human flourishing only requires the exercise of fundamental virtues, and courage is a non-central virtue. But traditionally fortitude also counts as a cardinal virtue, cardinal seems to imply fundamental, but fortitude is a virtue of dealing with evil—whether in the form of real or apparent danger, or of suffering, or of hardship, while there is no evil in heaven. So the problem comes back for fortitude. One solution is to deny the traditional cardinal virtues as being fundamental, and insist that the only fundamental virtue is love. Fortitude is just a central situational way for love to manifest.

Another move is simply to deny 1 altogether, of course, denying the whole link between virtues and flourishing. This is probably too radical.

And of course one might just deny 2. The most plausible move would be to say that only love is a virtue.

An argument for the unity of the virtues

Alice and Bob are friends, but Carl is a friend of neither. Carl pays Bob to betray Alice in some nasty way, and Bob being greedy does so. What Carl has done is as bad as what Bob has done. However, Bob was disloyal whereas Carl’s action was not a failure of loyalty. We might say this: Carl’s action offended against the value of loyalty without being disloyal.

Here’s perhaps a starker example. The virtue of chastity does not apply to immaterial beings: they can’t be either chaste or unchaste. If an immaterial tempter, however, persuades someone to be unchaste, the tempter offends against the value of chastity without being at all unchaste.

There is thus more than one way to offend against a virtue. One very special way of offending against a virtue is to act in a way contrary to it. But that is not the only way. Carl offends against loyalty without acting contrary to loyalty and the immaterial tempter offends against chastity without acting contrary to chastity.

Once we see this, we can also see that there is a multitude of ways of acting (or just being) in for or against a virtue that need not fall under or be contrary to the virtue. Encouraging someone else to be courageous is a way of acting in favor of courage, but need not show any courage. Typically, encouraging oneself to be courageous does exhibit some courage, because one is apt to know that if one becomes courageous, one is more likely to be in danger in the future. But we can imagine someone who hasn’t thought through the logical consequences and doesn’t realize that training oneself to courage is itself dangerous.

If all good action falls under a virtue and all bad action is contrary to a virtue, the above considerations suggest that there must be a meta-virtue M such that acting for any first-order virtue falls under M and acting against any first-order virtue is contrary to M. Now, since one common way of acting for a first-order virtue is to exhibit that first-order virtue in one’s actions, and one common way of acting against a first-order virtue is to act contrary to it, it follows that every action that is for a first-order virtue V falls under M insofar as it is an action for V, and every action that is against V is contrary to M insofar as it is against V. Moreover, just as acting for first-order virtues is virtuous, acting for higher-order virtues is also virtuous. To avoid a regress of meta-virtues, we should suppose that M is actually a virtue exhibited by acting for any virtue, including M itself, and opposed by acting against any virtue, including again M.

This yields something very much like a unity of virtues thesis: There is a virtue M such that any virtuous action whatsoever falls under M and any vicious action whatsoever is contrary to M.

What is this virtue? In the end, I suspect it’s love.

Does justice trump other considerations?

One sometimes hears the idea that justice trumps other considerations. There is a sense in which this is true, but it's not a very interesting sense: ultima facie duties of justice trump other considerations--but they do that not because they are duties of justice, but simply because they are ultima facie duties. Other ultima facie duties--say, ultima facie duties of beneficence or of chastity--also trump other considerations, as that's what we mean by saying that they are ultima facie duties. (One might have some worries here about real dilemmas. But one had better not say that in real dilemmas the ultima facie duties of justice trump other kinds of ultima facie duties, since that would contradict these other duties being ultima facie.) I suppose one could think that only justice gives rise to ultima facie duties. That might be true but only if one has an expansive unity-of-the-virtues kind of view of justice. And that expansive view also trivializes the trumping thesis simply by taking all the other kinds of considerations under the umbrella of justice.

And it's just false that all considerations of justice trump all other considerations. Considerations of justice range over a full spectrum of strength. For instance, there are very weak considerations of justice: whenever I see someone having done the right thing, I have a reason of justice to praise, and whenever I see someone having done the wrong thing, I have a reason of justice to criticize. But these reasons are typically extremely weak, being easily overcome by reasons of social propriety. ("Good for you, you didn't cheat on the test" isn't very appropriate, nor should I criticize every driving infraction I observe a friend making.)

Thick and thin obligations

Suppose that all fundamental thick moral obligation terms can be put in the logical form: "required by virtue v". Then we have a plausible and neat account of thin obligation in terms of thick obligation:

1. A is obligatory if and only if there is a virtue v such that A is required by v.

Can we define the thick terms via thin obligation? A promising start is:

2. A is required by virtue v if and only if facts about v explain why A is obligatory.

But this is only a start, since there are obvious counterexamples. Suppose I promise you to give you ten dollars if courage is a virtue. Then a fact about courage, namely that it is a virtue, explains why it is obligatory for me to give you ten dollars, but I am not required by justice, and not by courage, to give you ten dollars.

To make something like (2) work, we would need to specify the way in which facts about v explain why A is obligatory. It is implausible to suppose that this can be done without recourse to something circular, like saying that facts about v explain in a requirement-inducing way why A is obligatory.

This suggests that it is easier to account for thin obligation in terms of thick obligation. And this, in turn, suggests that it is better to take as our fundamental concept of obligation not "is obligated to" but "is obligated by ... to".

Vices

The virtues support each other in two ways: (i) having one helps gain another; (ii) each helps to achieve the ends of the others. In regard to (ii), note that it is easier to achieve the goals of prudence if one is chaste, sober and eats in moderation, to achieve the goals of generosity if one is prudent and brave, to achieve the self-knowledge that humility aims at if one is wise and sober, and so on. This is partly distinct from (i).

The vices, on the other hand, support each other in sense (i), but hamper each other in sense (ii). Thus, laziness may lead to gluttony (having nothing better to do, one may just eat) and lust may lead to greed (in order to impress potential sexual partners): having a vice helps one gain another. But, in fact, the goals of the vices hamper one another. Lust is expensive, and hence hampers the goals of greed. Wrath makes it harder to make money and keep sexual partners. All the vices, including vanity itself, hamper the goals of vanity by making one appear ridiculous. Conversely, sloth and cowardice hamper the goals of all the other vices.

So, while type (i) support among the virtues is a delightful thing, because the virtues also help to achieve one another's goals, type (i) support among the vices is a baneful thing, because the vices hamper the achievement of one another's goals, but nonetheless the vices lead to one another.

This is a fine, and very broadly both Kantian and Aristotelian, answer to the question of why be virtuous.