Watching RRR - which is a maximalist Indian film about the conflict between utilitarianism and deontic ethics - reminded me that ye olde “virtue ethics” is the red-headed step child of online discussions. Sure, maybe you know it’s been kicking around since Aristotle (and will henceforth be referred to as Aristotelian ethics, or AE), or that for a long time this was the dominant ethical framework of Europe, but now what does it mean? AE is often framed as “if you do something with good intent.” Sounds nice but how can that really compare to “making the best result” (consequentialism) or “doing right instead of wrong” (deontology). Caring about your intent about all just sounds so self-centered.
So, ignore that. Wipe everything you know about virtue ethics clean, and approach this as just a blank state. Instead, picture this:
“Aristotelian ethics is a marriage between consequentialism and deontology that best approximates how we actually feel about right action.”
What the hell does that mean?
Well, if you are in this discourse sphere, you are familiar with “Terminal Values.” This is understanding what thing you measure your success by. An easy one is just “maximum number of lives.” Or perhaps maximizing knowledge. Or if you’re a libertarian maybe you say freedom is your terminal value. Or amount of joy in the world. Other well known terminal values are the infamous paperclip maximizer, or villains with the famous “blue-orange” morality spectrums, etc.
Here’s the dirty little secret about terminal values: they are almost always all *instrumental values* too. Knowledge is prized as a good in of itself… but also helps us effect the world so that our lives are better in a number of ways, and that even feeds into us being able to acquire knowledge faster. More people being alive means a larger community advancing our values and creating a thicker network that we exist in. More people alive means we have more choices which means we have more freedom… which is a terminal value too but freedom also allows people to make the best choices for themselves and lead to the best outcomes.
Being a person who does not lie and helps others can feel righteous in of itself… but also makes it easier for others to trust you and work with you, making your life better and more successful.
So, do we truly value knowledge for its own sake damn everything else, or do we value knowledge because it adds to our toolset that helps us accomplish overall utilitarian goals.
The answer is: yes.
Aristotelian ethics has an image of the “good life” that includes knowledge, as both something fulfilling on its own AND something that makes us better at accomplishing our goals, including gathering even more knowledge. These simply aren’t separable.
A good life includes freedom, which makes you feel less trapped on its own, and also helps you attain goals that were stymied when you were trapped.
A good life is healthy, which makes you feel and look better now, AND gives you more years of life later. A good life treats others well both because that is right AND you get farther in life as a cooperator than as a defector.
It’s like saying “don’t cut your arm because that will cause pain, AND ALSO you use that arm for things.” Your arm - and your health, your freedom, your knowledge, your honor - is part of an organic whole. It IS YOU and it helps you accomplish things.
(Obviously this “organic whole” can scale from your one life, to the entire picture of society, which is maximizing lives, joy, knowledge, freedom for everyone in the society as it grows itself.)
There are things that make you feel good but destroy your abilities - like heroin. AE says don’t do that. Or there are things that have better consequences but narrow who you are - like going to a soulless finance job just so you can live on instant-ramen and donate all of your income to malaria nets. AE hates that. These things are not “the good life” and do not “broaden the organic whole.” There are indeed values that are not part of Aristotelian virtues.
You can dislike this approach, but you can’t really argue against it, because it is a postulate in of itself. It can’t fail consequentialist measures because it’s not trying to. It’s very hard to argue about a first ethical principle, after all.
The reason AE has appeal is because it is intuitively how so many people act and feel. Most people at most times do not want to entirely ignore consequences just to Do the Right Thing. But most people do not want to ignore and torture their conscience for years just because it will lead to a marginally better off long-term outcome. We want to… flourish. We want to be good in many ways - health, morality, intellect, happiness - and we rather all the various societal numbers go up rather than down.
So, when the “virtue ethics” response is “what would a good person do in this situation” it does not mean “good intentions are what matters” but “what adds to my flourishing and society’s flourishing, on the many axes that matter to us?”
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Hat tips to https://an-irrelevant-truth.tumblr.com/ for the tumblr image, and https://twitter.com/peligrietzer for discussing the idea generally.
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