Here are two Aristotelian theses:
Complete human flourishing requires the exercise of all the human virtues.
Courage is a human virtue.
Add a highly plausible thesis that likely everyone will accept:
- The exercise of courage requires apparent or real danger.
Now add some theses that a Christian will surely accept:
In heaven, there are no apparent danger.
In heaven, there is no real danger.
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.
13 comments:
In NE 10.7, Aristotle says that happiness is activity in accordance with the *highest* virtue, and none of the practical virtues are the highest. He pretty clearly rules out courage with this: “Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely. Warlike actions are completely so (for no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war; anyone would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter)” (1177b5–11).
So he is rejecting premise 1.
NE 1.7 also anticipates his eventual rejection of that premise: “Therefore, if there is only one final end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are more than one, the most final of these will be what we are seeking. Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else” (1097a28–35).
I consider courage akin to faith and hope inasmuch as all of them imply some imperfection: Faith with respect to knowledge, hope with respect to possessing some good, and courage with respect to evils which are (typically) external to oneself. But nobody exercises faith or hope in heaven, and the saints don't seem to be the worse for it. Thus the exercise of any virtue which implies some imperfection or disorder, either directly to the person or to the circumstance a person finds themselves in, would seem to entail some lack of flourishing.
My inclination would be to deny 1 and say that the *exercise* of a certain virtue is not necessary for flourishing. Especially if we see virtue as a disposition, it would seem possession of the disposition would be sufficient. But obviously if we modify premise 1 in this way, the argument doesn't go through.
If God establishes the conditions for human flourishing (namely, by creating us with the potential to act according to a set of virtues of his ordination), then perhaps God establishes a different set of conditions for humans in heaven. This makes sense if there is real difference in the nature of reality, that is fallen v. saved (the difference resulting in different conditions for flourishing).
The contradiction depends upon an overly demanding interpretation of the relation between virtue and flourishing. Aristotelian ethics does not maintain that complete flourishing consists in the continual actualization of every virtue at every moment; rather, it consists in the full possession of virtue and its fitting exercise according to the circumstances proper to the agent’s condition. Virtue, for Aristotle, is fundamentally a stable disposition (hexis), not an uninterrupted activity. A just person is not perpetually engaged in acts of justice, nor a temperate person in acts of restraint, yet the absence of occasion does not imply the absence of virtue. The same applies to courage. Courage is essentially ordered toward danger, but its perfection need not consist in perpetual confrontation with danger. A courageous person who inhabits conditions of perfect safety does not thereby cease to possess courage; rather, the virtue remains fully actual as a dispositional excellence, though lacking the occasion for manifestation. Thus, the proper Aristotelian revision is this: complete human flourishing requires the complete possession of all virtues and their exercise where and when their objects are present. Since heaven contains no danger, courage may remain as a perfected disposition without requiring activation, and no contradiction follows.
A second, and perhaps deeper, response arises from the classical privation theory of evil. If evil is not a positive ontological reality but merely the privation of the good, then those virtues whose objects are constituted by evil, defect, or privation cannot be metaphysically fundamental in the same way as those ordered immediately to positive goods. Courage, fortitude, endurance, and similar virtues are structurally responsive to danger, suffering, or hardship; they are therefore parasitic upon conditions of privation and disorder. By contrast, love, joy, contemplation, and union with the highest good are ordered directly toward what is ontologically basic, namely being and goodness themselves. It follows that complete flourishing need not require the active exercise of every situational or privation-conditioned virtue, but only the full realization of those virtues grounded in fundamental goods. Heaven, as the consummation of participation in the Good, excludes privation and therefore excludes the occasions for derivative virtues such as courage, without any corresponding diminishment of flourishing. The absence of courage in heaven is therefore no more an imperfection than the absence of medicine in a state of perfect health: both are excellences rendered otiose by the complete victory of the good.
These are good points, but remember that Aristotle does think that happiness consists in the *exercise* of virtue, not in the *possession* of virtue. He gives the example of the person who is asleep for the whole life while possessing all virtue, and says this person isn't happy. Yet this person engages in what you call "the full possession of virtue and its fitting exercise according to the circumstances proper to the agent’s condition".
I like your point that it would be absurd to think that happiness requires *constant* exercise of the virtues. But merely *having* them, without *ever* exercising them, still does not seem like a fulfillment of human nature. It would be like the idea that we have legs in heaven but never walk, because we never need to.
But notice that he also says in chapter 7 that a life of the highest virtue "would be too high for a man". And then in chapter 8, he says: "But in a secondary degree the life in accordance with the other kind of excellence is happy; for the activities in accordance with this befit our human estate."
So what's going on? Maybe Aristotle thinks happiness comes in a central sense and a broader sense. Central happiness is constituted of those sparks of contemplation that the philosopher from time to time has. But happiness more broadly consists in excellent activity that "befits our human estate". Central happiness is the apex; happiness more broadly is what fulfills us.
If he's not talking of something like apex happiness, the first sentence of chapter 7 is implausible: "If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us." For imagine animals that have two excellences, and one of them is just *slightly* more excellent than the other. It would be absurd to think that for fulfillment, happiness in the broad sense, all one needs is the slightly higher, to the total neglect of the slightly lower.
Thank you for your points.
A quick question unrelated to the topic, could you please present a short argument that you would think is the best argument (1) for idealism (I think you might be inclined towards it as i suppose you and Rasmussen are working on "Perfect Existence", where Rasmussen would most likely invoke idealism, which would in turn help him make a strong case for the foundation of reality to be a mind.). And (2) against the physicalist token identity theory of mind.
I would be grateful to have your thoughts on this. But please, present the most forceful and powerful points that you think are to be made.
To develop a point about perfect vs. imperfect virtues, can we have the "goods" of courage without the "bads" of courage? If courage is something akin to holding fast to what is good in the face of evil (or threat of evil), then we can still affirm that those in Heaven hold fast to what is good even more perfectly than those who express courage on earth. The imperfect part of the virtue (the evil or threat thereof) falls away and all that is left is what is good about said virtue. Thus, the saints exercise the perfection or purification of courage (think of it as a limit case of the virtue of courage, maybe), without having to exercise courage such that it implies their being subject to possible evils.
One might object that there is a glory which can accrue to someone who endures evil, but then we have to face the question of whether someone can flourish if they lack any particular glory. I'd say yes, they can.
Let's take the example of faith again. There can be a certain glory which comes from the exercise of faith (befitting today's feast: "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe"). Yet there can also be a certain glory in who you know and how well you know them ("We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"). The glory of the exercise of faith and the glory of the vision of God are, so far as I can tell, incompatible, at least at the same time. But it doesn't seem clear to me that the person who has vision is meaningfully failing to flourish relative the person exercising faith, even though the one with faith is attaining to a glory that the one with vision cannot achieve.
As a last note, Aquinas talks in II-II Q. 123, a. 1 about how natural virtue makes man good and makes his works accord with reason. He goes on to enumerate the three ways in which this is done: (1) Rectifying reason as such (the intellectual virtues), (2) establishing rectitude of reason in human affairs (justice), and (3) removing obstacles to the establishment of this rectitude (temperance and fortitude). But if there are no remaining obstacles, this clearly doesn't undermine our being made good or our works according with reason. So if we take human flourishing just to consist in being made good and having our works be good, being unable to exercise courage on account of there being no further obstacles does not appear to undermine our flourishing. Courage and temperance are, in this sense, subordinated to justice (and all of these subordinated to charity). Thus, if our inability to exercise courage according to its proper definition does not undermine that to which it is ordered, I don't see how this actually prevents or limits flourishing.
I don’t know what Aristotle ought to say about your hypothetical animal. I just have two thoughts. One is that, despite the fact that perfections come in degrees, there are still a lot of cases where goods are not commensurable. So maybe if excellence A is, in some unqualified sense, only slightly better than excellence B, we should still expect that excellence B will frequently be better than excellence A in this or that situation. Perhaps it is like this: Although polyphonic music is better than Gregorian chant, if we already have an abundance of polyphonic music, it might be better in this moment to sing Gregorian chant. That would explain the intuition that one excellence shouldn’t be pursued to the exclusion of a slightly less good one. The second thought is that Aristotle doesn’t describe the relationship between contemplative and the practical virtues as merely a slight difference. The life of contemplation merits the names *divine* and *immortal*.
VIvaswan: Idealism is false, I think. But the best argument for it is presumably one from theoretical simplicity. I think the best version of physical token identity is going to be functionalism, and there is no good way to restrict the notion of physical isomorphism so as to avoid the Putnamian conclusion that everything is conscious.
ccmnxc:
That is, I think, a well-expressed variant of the solution I was suggesting. But notice that this solution does require one to give up on the idea that fortitude is a fundamental virtue. The fundamental virtue on a view like this is practical reason, or justice, or charity.
Thank you.
Dr. Pruss, looking at it now, yeah, that does basically track with what you proposed in your post. I will say, I'm not terribly bothered by the idea that fortitude is not a fundamental virtue. Given how the cardinal virtues are typically connected with different powers of the soul, I can understand the importance of fortitude in the tradition. But I don't likewise feel compelled to make the move from fortitude's importance to its fundamentality.
I could see some potential concern that having no occasion to exercise the irascible powers of the soul might indicate some diminishment or lack of flourishing, but I'm struggling to make a cogent articulation of such a concern. So for now I think I'm content as things stand.
I don't think one has to say that there is no occasion at all for exercising irascible powers in heaven. It seems plausible that one would still feel righteous indignation against Satan.
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