THE IMPERATIVE OF FOR A NEW SOCIETY

BY

NWANGUMA OKENNA MICHAEL DI/342

BEING AN ESSAY SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, DOMINICAN INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IBADAN, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF BARCHELOR OF ARTS DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY

IBADAN

JUNE 2010. ATTESTATION

This is to certify that the long essay titled: THE IMPERATIVE OF FOR A NEW SOCIETY, submitted to the department of Philosophy, Dominican Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Ibadan, for the award of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy of the University of Ibadan, is an original and insightful research work undertaken by Nwanguma Okenna Michael and was supervised and approved by Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Ben Faneye, O. P.

MODERATOR:

Date……………………. Sign…………………….

Rev. Fr. Faneye, Benedict, O. P.

Head of Philosophy Department,

Dominican Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Ibadan, Nigeria.

II

DEDICATION

This project is fondly dedicated to my parents, Mr. Bartholomew Duru Nwanguma and Mrs. Grace Chinyere Nwanguama. It is also dedicated to you, the reader – I hope you will find it an insightful introduction to contemporary virtue ethics and the need to learn and grow in the .

III

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to the Triune God for bestowing on me undeserved love, wisdom and strength to accomplish this project. I remain ever grateful to my dearest mother, Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen and Victress of Schoenstatt, for guiding me through the difficult moments of the execution of this project.

The stimulus to write this work came from Rev. Fr. Alfred Kistler. I am much indebted to him for his encouragement at every stage. Especially, I must thank Rev. Fr. Ben Fanaye, my moderator, for reading the entire manuscript in draft, and for taking the time to make many characteristically insightful comments. I am also most grateful to Anthony Onyeuwaoma, Rev. Fr. Magnus

Ifedikwa Charles Agboeze, Cajetan Okeke, Lazarus Illigh and Stanley Obijiaku for being willing to take the trouble to read some of the more awkward bits and let me know whether people coming to virtue ethics for the first time would find it relevant.

I remain grateful other friends who in one way or another contributed to the success of this project. Worthy of mention are my Schoenstatt Fathers’ group brothers, Chukwuwike Enekwechi, Ekenedilichukwu Uchenu, Victory Oforka,

Raymond Gbadamosi and Damian Chilobe. I also remember profoundly the contributions of my dear father, Bartholomew Nwanguma, my friend

Oluwaseun Opeyemi Oni and other friends whose name I cannot mention here for want of space. I have you all in my mind for the good impact you have made in my life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Attestation…………………………………………………………………. II

Dedication...………………………………………………………………. III

Acknowledgement………………………………………………………… IV

Table of Contents………………………………………………………….. V

INTRODUCTION

I. Statement of the problem…………………………………………. 1

II. Aim and scope of the work……………………………………….. 2

III. Methodology……………………………………………………… 2

CHAPTER ONE

HISTORY OF VIRTUE ETHICS

1.1 What is Ethics?...... 4

1.2 Division of Ethical Theories…………………..…………………. 5

1.2.1 …………………………..…………….. 5

1.2.2 Descriptive Ethics………………………..………………. 6

1.2.3 Metaethics……………..…………………………………. 6

1.3 Historical development of Virtue Ethics………………………..... 7

1.3.1 Greco-Roman Ethics- ’s Ethics………………….. 8

V

1.3.2 Medieval Period- Aquinas’ Ethics…………………………. 11

1.3.3 Modern Period- Deontology and …………….14

1.3.4 20th Century- Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy”….. 19

CHAPTER TWO

KEY CONCEPTS IN VIRTUE ETHICS

2.1 Human Flourishing……….…………………………………………23

2.2 Moral Education and Character Formation………………………... 28

2.3 Types of Virtues……………………………………………………. 34

2.4 Uncodifiability of Ethics………...…………………………………. 40

CHAPTER THREE

IMPERATIVE OF VIRTUE ETHICS FOR A NEW SOCIETY

3.1 Moral dilemma of our society today………………………………. 43

3.2 Virtue and social life………………………….……………………. 56

3.3 The imperative of Virtue Ethics…………………….……………… 63

3.4 Conclusion…………………….…………………………………… 65

3.5 Bibliography………………………………………………………. 67

VI

INTRODUCTION

I. Statement of the Problem

Aristotle in propagating virtue ethics focuses on the inherent character of a person rather than on the specific actions the person performs. This approach to normative ethics which was the prevailing approach to ethical thinking in the ancient Greek and Medieval periods of philosophy, faded out during the early

Modern period where virtue ethics was practically jettisoned and replaced by utilitarianism and deontology. It re-emerged in the late twentieth century heralded by Anscombe's famous article “Modern Moral Philosophy” (Anscombe

1958) which crystallized an increasing dissatisfaction with deontology and utilitarianism as the paradigm for normative ethical theories.

Virtue ethics suffered rejection on the accusation that it lacked absolute moral rules which can give clear guidance on how to act in specific circumstances such as abortion, digital crimes, euthanasia and so on. Also some others reject virtue ethics because they believe different people, cultures, and societies often have vastly different perspectives on what constitutes a virtue.

Since it is difficult to establish the nature of the virtues especially across different cultures and societies, it is erroneously held that virtue ethics can no longer hold true in many modern societies.

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II. Aim and Scope of the Work

This work aims to argue, in the line drawn by Elizabeth Anscombe, that a return to virtue ethics is not only relevant but also desirable to help modern society out of its plunge into moral decadence. In response to its critics, we shall show how virtue ethics is able to resolve specific moral dilemmas and establish that there is a necessary interplay between social life and the virtues. Consequently, this essay shall argue that virtue ethics can serve as paradigm for reconstructing our present morally decaying society in order to create a better one.

III. Methodology

To achieve the set aim, in chapter one, we shall trace the history of virtue ethics from the period of Greco-Roman philosophy and the Medieval era of philosophy to the era of its decline in the early Modern period. We shall then discuss how

Anscombe was able to revive virtue ethics by showing dissatisfaction with the then prevailing deontology and utilitarianism.

In the second chapter, we shall expose the key concepts of virtue ethics. Usually, concepts like , habit, character, types of virtues and the doctrine of the mean are either misunderstood or misapplied and so our aim shall be, as much as possible, to place this understanding in the right perspective. 2

Finally, in the last chapter, we shall show how and deontology have failed to meet new moral challenges of our modern society. In this place, we shall argue that virtue ethics is able to meet these challenges. To meet modern society’s moral and social challenge, there should be interplay between virtue and social life in order to facilitate the possible attainment of the goal of having a society with virtuous personalities promoting common good. This can be done without virtue ethics necessarily falling into as its critics claim. Duty based moral thinking has failed to lead man to its promised of a morally upright world. Virtue ethics is the viable alternative ethical theory that can lead us to the Promised Land – the evolving of a virtuous man in a new society!

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CHAPTER ONE

HISTORY OF VIRTUE ETHICS

1.1 What is Ethics?

Etymologically, ethics derives from the Greek word ethika, which designates “character,” “custom”, or standards of human conduct. It is sometimes called “morals” from Latin mores, meaning “customs”, and, by extension, the study of such principles, sometimes called moral philosophy.1 To attempt a more technical definition, we can say ethics is the science of human conduct. There are two important elements of this definition, science and human conduct, which both require explanations. The sense of science used in the definition is not the same as the physical experimental science that rely on fixed empirical principles but it involves a broad sense of the word, which designates an intellectual enterprise that uses scientific methodology for its rational inquiry to attain truth.2 Human conducts, on the other hand, pertains to the ability of man to make voluntary choices between alternative courses of action because they have decided that they ought to choose one alternative rather than the

1 Cf. "Ethics." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All reserved. 2 Cf. Oliver Johnson, Ethics: Selection from Classical and Contemporary Writers (Fort Worth: Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data, 1989), p.2. 4

other.3 Ethics thus sets out to address the problem of how humans ought to act which is different from how they indeed act.

1.2 Division of Ethical Theories

There are generally three divisions or approaches to ethical theories; although the conclusions arrived using one approach may bear on those of other approaches. It is thus useful that we distinguish between the three before we fully delve into the area that largely concerns us in this work.

1.2.1 Normative Ethics

Normative Ethics prescribes how we should act. This level of theorizing includes sets of principles that can be used to decide what ought to be done.

Normative ethical theories are concerned with the discovering of the things that are intrinsically good, and which principles of obligation are the true fundamental principles of . The basic assumption in normative ethics is that there is only one ultimate criterion of moral conduct. There are three dominant approaches to seeking out the foundational of moral conduct in normative ethics and they are deontological theories, consequentialist theories and virtue theories. Deontological theories reject the idea that rightness or

3Cf. Oliver Johnson, Ethics: Selection from Classical and Contemporary Writers. Ibid. 5

wrongness of an act depends on its consequences, instead they posit that morality is duty based. Consequentialism argues that an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable. Virtue ethics holds that the cultivation of moral character and embodiment of virtues is the essential issue in ethics, rather than the establishment of rules based on duties or consequences.

1.2.2 Descriptive Ethics

Descriptive ethics is sometimes referred to as comparative ethics because it derives from observation of choices made by moral agents. It is a form of empirical research into the attitudes or ethical actions of people.4 It tries to answer the question: “What do people believe is right?” Through comparative studies of actions that different societies recommend, we are able to know how better it is to live. Consequently, descriptive theories are not about what one thinks but a description of what is. Example of this approach is Kohlberg’s theory of moral development which describes the different stages of in a person.

4 James Feiser (2006), “Ethics” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm (Oct, 2009) 6

1.2.3 Meta-ethics

Meta-ethics can be defined as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts and it is concerned with analyzing moral concepts. Geoff Sayre-

McCord defines metaethics as an “…attempt to understand the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk, and practice”.5 We enter into the sphere of metaethics when we attempt to answer questions like: Is morality more a matter of taste than truth? Are there moral facts? How do we learn about the moral facts, if there are any? Do moral concepts have any meaning? We do metaethics when we reflect about what we are doing when we make a moral judgment; whether we are simply expressing our emotion or enforcing what is willed by God and so on. There is a close relationship between metaethics and normative ethics.

Metaethics primarily does the work of conceptual analysis of moral concepts while normative ethics has the task of prescribing how one ought to act.

1.3 Historical development of Virtue Ethics

I shall discuss the development of virtue ethics in the . In the overall development of virtue ethics from the Greco-Roman era to the

5 Geoff Sayre-McCord (Jan 23, 2007), “Metaethics” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/ (10 August, 2009) 7

contemporary period of the history of philosophy, thinkers like Aristotle,

Aquinas and Elizabeth Anscombe occupy a central place. It was in Aristotle that

Greek philosophy; most especially ethics reached its full and perfect maturity. In the medieval period, is prominent among the philosophers that led the revival of the study of Aristotle and thus the continuation of his system of ethics. Virtue ethics in the modern and enlightenment era experienced great decline due to the rise of Kantian deontologism and consequentialism. The relevance of these ethical theories born of the enlightenment project was questioned by Anscombe in the 20th century and she consequently proposed a return to virtue ethics. We shall treat in details the contribution of these outstanding philosophers in the history of virtue ethics.

1.3.1 Greco- Roman Ethics

Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was born at Stagira, in Macedonia. His father,

Nicomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III (reigned c. 393–c. 370 BC), king of Macedonia and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323 BC).

He is said to be the founder of the Lyceum, an academy where lectures were given for free to the public. Aristotle wrote three major works in ethics:

Nichomacean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics and Magna Moralia. Many scholars 8

agree that the earliest and most influential systematic account of virtue ethics appears in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

Aristotle divides the sciences into three groups: Theoretical Science,

Practical Science and Poetical Science. He insists that ethics is a Practical

Science and thus when we ask the question — what is good? — we are not simply asking because we want to have knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. His ethics is teleological in the sense that it starts by asking the question what is the “end” of human life? He answers that the goal is the attainment of the highest good, which according to him has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other are desirable for its sake. Aristotle uses the term “eudaimonia” to designate the highest good of human life. Eudaimonia is commonly translated as

“” but Aristotle means little more than the ordinary understanding of happiness, he regards “eudaimon” as a substitute for “human flourishing” or

“well-being”. Consequently, all man’s actions are for the purpose of human flourishing which is the highest good or end, and all subordinate goals —health, wealth, and other such resources — are sought because they promote well- being, not because they are what well-being consists in.

9

The question usually raised from this point concerns “how” one can reach this highest good. To answer this question, Aristotle develops the concept arête (virtue) which designates excellence in fulfillment of a particular function.6 He argues that it is the “function” (ergon) of man to reach the highest goal and it belongs to the proper activity of the rational part of the human soul in accordance with virtue to move for the good. explains that:

The term [virtue] cannot denote a mere natural feeling or susceptibility to feeling, such as anger, fear, pity, — as these, considered merely as such, are not objects of praise and blame: it denotes a settled habit, formed by a course of actions under rule and discipline in which vicious excess and defect have been avoided, of experiencing the natural emotions just mentioned in a duly limited and regulated manner; so that the virtuous man, without internal conflict, wills actions that hit the happy mean in their effect.7

From Sidgwick’s explanation, we can understand that Aristotle’s concept of virtue contains the idea of the golden “mean” which is a state or reasonable midpoint between two vices, namely, excess and defect towards which our actions should aim. Also, Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “hexis”, “habit” or better translated “settled disposition” by which one holds himself in a stable

6 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk II, Chap I. (Based on the translation by W.D. Ross, with emendations by Daniel Kolak. Electronic HyperText Markup Language Version Copyright  1999) 7 Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1931), P. 59 10

equilibrium of the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. To buttress these points Richard Kraut writes:

In this respect, Aristotle says, the virtues are no different from technical skills: every skilled worker knows how to avoid excess and deficiency, and is in a condition intermediate between two extremes…. The arithmetic mean between 10 and 2 is 6, and this is so invariably, whatever is being counted. But the intermediate point that is chosen by an expert in any of the crafts will vary from one situation to another. There is no universal rule, for example, about how much food an athlete should eat, and it would be absurd to infer from the fact that 10 lbs. is too much and 2 lbs. too little for me that I should eat 6 lbs. Finding the mean in any given situation is not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.8

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtue: intellectual virtues - those that pertain to the part of the soul that engages in reasoning, and moral virtues- those pertaining to the part of the soul that cannot itself reason but is however capable of following reason. He first discusses ethical virtue in general, then moving to a discussion of particular ethical virtues (temperance, courage, generosity, pride, good temper, modesty, friendliness, wittiness, and righteous indignation), and

8 Richard Kraut (July, 2007), “Aristotle's Ethics” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/ (October, 2009)

11

finally completing his survey by considering the intellectual virtues

(practical wisdom, theoretical wisdom, deliberation, understanding, judgment, intellection, and so on).

1.3.2 Medieval Ethics

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was born in the Castle of Roccasecca near

Naples. He was of the family of the count of Aquino and his father had hoped that Thomas would one day enjoy high ecclesiastical position. He first studied at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino for nine years and at the age of fourteen, he entered the University of Naples to study the seven liberal arts.9 It was in Naples in 1244 that he joined the Dominican friars. Aquinas taught theology at the University of Paris.

We find Aquinas’ account on virtue in the Summa Theologiae, Disputed

Questions on the Virtues and his Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics.

Aquinas holds that all actions or movements of all things irrational and rational are directed towards some end. There are many ends actually sought like riches, honour, and pleasure, but none of these satisfies and gives complete beatitudo or

9 The seven liberal arts include the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) 12

felicitas. He argues that only through an uninterruptible vision of God, the ground and first cause of all being, that man can reach complete happiness. It is towards God that all things are surely, though unconsciously striving in their pursuit of good; but this universal striving after God, since he is essentially intelligible, exhibits itself in its highest form in rational beings.10 God is thus the intrinsically desirable end of all rational beings.

Aquinas’ argument is thoroughly systematic in that it proceeds from his natural doctrine to his doctrine of virtues. Natural law consist of those universal principles in practical reason that function in a way analogous to principles in speculative reason. Speculative reason is that reasoning which begins from propositions in first principles, proceeds by way of theoretical arguments till it reaches a conclusion. In the practical realm, the first principle is that “good is to be done and pursued, and is to be avoided”11. The intellect is able to apprehend this simply through Synderesis that unerringly prompts to the realization of the first principles in conduct. It is the disposition containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of human acts.12

Consequently, the most general precepts of the natural law will be more substantive if it points out specific goods that are to be pursued. We have

10 Cf. Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, P. 141 11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 94, a.2 12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 94. a.1 13

pointed out that the good of the human being is, in a sense, rational activity itself. Here is where we can conveniently locate the importance of virtues which are dispositions by which we appropriate our specific good effectively.

According to Aquinas, virtue is a habit that disposes an agent to perform its proper operation or movement.13 Knowing that reason is the proper operation of human beings, it follows that a virtue is a habit that disposes us to reason well. Virtues can be acquired naturally through training and practice. Aquinas, like Aristotle, divides virtues into intellectual and moral. However, unlike

Aristotle, he adds theological virtues. Concerning moral virtue which he describes as a “good quality of the mind, by which we live righteously”14,

Aquinas accepts the Platonic-Aristotelian thesis that there are four moral virtues which are cardinal. These virtues are prudence, , courage, and temperance. Prudence pertains to the good of practical reasonableness of one's deliberations, choices and execution of choices. Justice is the steady and lasting willingness to give to others what they are entitled to. The virtue of temperance is that which “integrates one's desires, particularly but not only for sexual pleasure, with reason, lest reason be enslaved by passion and becomes its ingenious servant, as it readily can. Temperantia [temperance] is the mean, for

13 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue, a.1, translated by Ralph McInerny (Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), Pp. 3-4 14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, q.55, a.4 14

example, between lust and frigidity or apathy….”15 And fortitude is the mean between recklessness or over-boldness and cowardice. The summary of Aquinas virtue ethics can be put as an effort to show precisely how prudence, justice, courage, and temperance are necessary for human flourishing.

1.3.3 Modern Ethics: The rise of Kantian Deontology and Mill’s

Utilitarianism

Thomas Aquinas seems to be the loudest herald of virtue ethics in the history of medieval philosophy. From the Enlightenment to the Modern era, the prominence of Aristotelian-Aquinas virtue ethics was replaced by the ascendancy of utilitarianism and deontology, and with that virtue theory moved to the margins of Western philosophy. In the light of the history of virtue ethics, this section would have been named: the decline of virtue ethics, but I take it to mean the rise of utilitarianism and deontology. Consequently, I shall briefly discuss these approaches that overshadowed virtue ethics in the modern era.

Generally, the reason for the apparent death of virtue ethics in this era can be given as the fact that 1.) The largely theocentric interpretation of reality of the

15 John Finnis (Dec., 2005), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy”, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas-moral-political/ (Nov., 2009) 15

medieval era was replaced with a more humanistic view. 2.) The various advancements in science, technology and arts, necessitated that the scholastic definition of man on which virtue ethics stands be questioned. Consequently, the modern man revisited and reconstructed the traditional understanding of man.

3.) The other reasons will be found in the ethical thesis of and

John Stuart Mill.

Utilitarianism

This is the idea that the moral worth of an action is to be judged solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people.16 It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. The typical proponents were (1789) and (1861). They claimed that “an act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion.”17

16“Utilitarianism” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarian_ethics (Nov., 2009) 17 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Feb., 2006), “Consequentialism”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ (Nov., 2009) 16

In his book, Utilitarianism, Mill argues that people desire happiness (the intrinsic good and the utilitarian end) and the overall happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons. It thus follows that for one to determine what is good, the amount of pleasure derived has to be weighed against the pain it produces, and if pleasure overweighs pain, the action is judged to be praise-worth. Suffice to note that Mill, unlike Aristotle, equates happiness with pleasure. He also argues that “cultural, intellectual and spiritual pleasures are of greater than mere physical pleasure because the former would be valued higher than the latter by competent judges. A competent judge, according to Mill, is one who has experienced both the lower pleasures and the higher.”18

There are two types of utilitarianism: Act Utilitarianism says that an act is right insofar as its consequences for the general happiness are at least as good as any alternative available to the agent19 while Rule Utilitarianism says that an act is right insofar as it conforms to a rule whose acceptance value for the general happiness is at least as great as any alternative rule available to the agent. Summarily, utilitarianism provides a standard of right action which is that a right action is that in which the pleasure derived is greater than the pain produced for the greater number of people.

18 “Utilitarianism” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarian_ethics (Nov., 2009) 19 David Brink (Oct., 2007) "Mill's Moral and " Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political (Nov, 2009) 17

Deontology

Deontology is from Greek deon, “duty,” and logos, “science”. Consequently, it focuses on the logic of the relationship between duty and the morality of human actions. The chief proponent of deontology is Immanuel Kant who died two years before Mill was born. He is famous for his Copernican Revolution in philosophy, the theory that in knowledge the mind does not conform to the world, the world conforms itself to the mind.20 This in a computer language may mean: nothing can get into the mind except what has been programmed into it, and nothing can come out of the mind except what it has been programmed to deliver.

Kantian ethics is systematic and can be summarized in these five points: 1.) There is a supreme moral principle and to reach it, the only adequate method is the a priori method of reasoning 2.) Man's rational will is pure and autonomous 3.) The human agent has both noumenal and phenomenal aspects

4.) Morality presents itself to human agents as a categorical imperative 5.)

Morality gives rise to a notion of the highest good which consists in a world of universal, maximal virtue, grounding universal and maximal happiness.

20 Cf. Charles L. Reid, Choice and Action: An Introduction to Ethics (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1981), p. 185. 18

In his most influential work on ethics, The Groundwork of the

Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that the most basic aim of moral philosophy is to seek out the foundational principle of metaphysics of morals. The second fundamental aim is to “establish” this foundational moral principle as a demand of each person's own rational will. Moral philosophy addresses the question: what ought I to do? To address this question one should draw on a moral viewpoint that is very widely shared and which contains some general judgments that are very deeply held. For Kant, this project can be best pursued through the a priori method, that is, without leaning on observations of human experience and their behavior. He believes that the only thing good without qualification is a ‘good will’. Explaining Kant’s idea of good will, Robert

Johnson says that:

The basic idea is that what makes a good person good is his possession of a will that is in a certain way ‘determined’ by, or makes its decisions on the basis of, the moral law. The idea of a good will is supposed to be the idea of one who only makes decisions that she holds to be morally worthy, taking moral considerations in themselves to be conclusive reasons for guiding her behavior. This sort of disposition or character is something we all highly value.21

21 Robert Johnson (2008), "Kant's Moral Philosophy", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/ (Nov, 2009) 19

Paul Guyer continues that “good will is manifested in the performance of an action for the sake of fulfilling duty rather than for any other end; and what duty requires is the performance of an action not for the sake of its consequences but because of its conformity to law as such; thus the maxim, or subjective principle, of virtuous action can only be that 'I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law'.”22

Guyer’s argument reveals that the moral law is vital and we cannot ignore them no matter how circumstances might conspire against any other consideration.

Kant believes that our moral duty is a “categorical imperative”, an unconditional command on man’s “free” rational will.

Kant alleges that ordinary moral thought classifies moral duties into two– toward ourselves as well as toward others. Hence, he recognizes four categories of duties: perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others.

From here, he puts forward the humanity formulation of the categorical imperative when he stated that “we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an

22 Paul Guyer (2004), “Kant, Immanuel”. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT 20

end in itself.”23 Generally, deontology holds that at least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare. Descriptive of such ethics are such expressions as “duty for duty's sake” and “let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

1.3.4 20th Century Ethics: Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy”

Utilitarianism and deontology continue to be the predominant schools of thought in normative ethics. The contemporary resurgence of virtue ethics in the latter half of the twentieth century is often traced to the seminal paper of

Elizabeth Anscombe titled, “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958). Some philosophers took up Anscombe's call for a return to virtue as a new way of thinking about normative theories. Prominent among these scholars are Philippa

Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, , Paul Ricoeur, Michael Slote,

Rosalind Hursthouse and .

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (18 March, 1919 – 5 January,

2001) was an original and formidable British analytic philosopher in her own right. She is widely recognized as the most brilliant of Wittgenstein’s students,

23 Robert Johnson (2008), "Kant's Moral Philosophy", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/ (Nov, 2009) 21

his closest friends, as well as the unsurpassed translator and interpreter of his works.

Anscombe critiqued modern moral philosophy's pre-occupation with a law conception of ethics, which deals solely with obligation and duty. She says:

… the concepts of obligation, and duty – moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say – and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought," ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it.24

To justify her charge, she started by criticizing Mill's greatest happiness principle and Kant's categorical imperative. In Aristotle's sense, the term

"moral" is used in connection with a moral subject-matter: namely that of human passions. But it has now acquired a special so-called "moral" sense, that is, a sense in which they imply some absolute verdict (like one of guilty / not guilty on a man) on what is described in the "ought" sentences used in certain types of context: not merely the contexts that Aristotle would call "moral"-passions and actions-but also some of the contexts that he would call “intellectual”.25 The ordinary terms like "should," "needs," "ought," "must" acquired this special

24 G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Philosophy, Vol. 33, No. 124 (Jan., 1958), Published by: Cambridge University Press, p. 1 25 Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, p. 7 22

sense by being paralleled in the relevant contexts with "is obliged," or "is bound".

The cause of this change is found in history when religion (especially

Judaism and Christianity) introduced a law conception of ethics. She argued that naturally it is not possible to have such a conception unless you believe in God as a law-giver and if such a conception is dominant for many centuries, and then is given up, it is a natural result that the concept of "obligation" be given up. “It is as if the notion "criminal" were to remain when criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished and forgotten”26, she argued. It is within the framework of Judeo- that Mill and Kant found their consequentialism and deontology respectively. She thus claims that the “major mistake made by modern moral philosophers is that they try to provide an account of ‘morally right or morally wrong’ that really has no content outside of the legislative arena provided by the divine.”27 Anscombe writes:

It would be most reasonable to drop it [that is the concept of obligation]. It has no reasonable sense outside a law conception of ethics; they are not going to maintain such a conception; and you can do ethics without it, as is shown by the example of Aristotle. It would be great improvement if, instead of ‘morally

26 Ibid. p. 8 27 Julia Driver (July, 2009), "Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/anscombe/ (Nov, 2009) 23

wrong,’ one always named a genus such as ‘untruthful’, ‘unchaste’, ‘unjust’.28

It is from here that Anscombe called for a return to an alternative way of doing philosophy. Taking her inspiration from Aristotle, she called for a return to concepts such as character, virtue and flourishing, that is virtue ethics. Julia

Driver summarizes her argument in simple modus ponens form:

(1) If religiously based ethics is false, then virtue ethics is the way moral philosophy ought to be developed.

(2) Religious based ethics is false.

(3) Therefore, virtue ethics is the way moral philosophy should be developed.29

Anscombe's suggestion that we place virtue more central in our understanding of morality was taken serious by a number of philosophers. This has resulted in a body of theories and ideas that is known as virtue ethics.

28 Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, p. 9 29 Cf. Julia Driver (July, 2009), "Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe", Op.Cit. 24

CHAPTER TWO

KEY CONCEPTS IN VIRTUE ETHICS

2.1 Human flourishing

To better understand virtue ethics, we need to look at the key concepts associated with it. Aristotle opines that to deal with the problem of ethics adequately, we have to ask the fundamental question: why do we do anything at all?30 Every action aims at some good. Sometimes we do things for their own sake; sometimes we do things for the sake of another end and other times we do things both for their own sake and because they are means to achieving something else. The end of human life and the greatest good is eudaimonia- good done for its own sake. The proper human end, eudaimonia is loosely translated as happiness, where “happiness” is understood in terms of completion, perfection, or well-being. The way in which Aristotle arrives at this conclusion is quite brief; man naturally wants to live a fulfilled life and this is necessarily connected to how we should morally live. What makes life worth living is eudaimonia; and to live a life which can be characterized by eudaimonia is

30 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk I, Chap. 1, 1094a, 1-3, translated by Roger Crisp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 25

precisely the aim of morality. The difficulty with this claim concerns the proper sense in which the concept eudaimonia is used.

Eudaimonia is usually translated in English as happiness. I call this translation loose because it can easily give a misleading impression. This is because happiness suggests a feeling of contentment or pleasure. In Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle warns that eudaimonia is not a feeling but it is achieving one’s full potential.31 Gerard J. Hughes proposes to translate the noun eudaimonia as “the fulfilled life” or simply “fulfillment” because it makes more sense of many of Aristotle’s questions and argument. He says that a fulfilled life is “enjoyable, and well regarded by good people; but its point consists in the living of it, and doing so precisely because it is worthwhile.”32

The problem with fulfillment is its vagueness. If our ultimate aim is fulfillment, it may seem that what is one man’s fulfillment may differ from what is another man’s fulfillment.

Is there only one supreme end for all men or is eudaimonia relative from man to man? There has been heated debate concerning this question by some neo-Aristotelians. Aristotle defines the supreme good as "an end of action which

31 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk X, Chap. 1, 1173a, 34-36 32 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics (London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p.22 26

is desired for its own sake, while everything else is desired for the sake of it."33

Anthony Kenny puts the question that springs from this definition thus: “Is the

"single end" in question an end which is, or ought to be, common to every choice of every man? Or is it merely an end which governs every choice of each particular man, but which perhaps differs from man to man?”34 To clarify the foreseen problem Aristotle adds: “If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”35 Peter Geach argues that the claim of a single supreme end is fallacious because the fact that every road leads somewhere does not mean that there is somewhere to which all roads lead.36 Georg Henrik von Wright, acquits Aristotle of the seeming fallacy in his The Varieties of Goodness, where he points out that Aristotle does not accept the conclusion that there is one and only one end of all chains of practical reasoning. If he does then he contradicts himself.37 Clearly, eudaimonia, for

Aristotle, is at least one supreme end but he also admits that there are ends, other

33 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk I, Chap. 2, 1094a, 21-22 34 Anthony Kenny, “Happiness”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 66 (1965 - 1966), p. 93 35 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk I, Chap 2, 1094a, 21-26 36 Cf. Peter Geach, "", Analysis Vol. 17 (1956), p.34 37 Cf. Georg Henrik von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (1963) quoted in Anthony Kenny, “Happiness”, p. 93 27

than it, which we pursue for their own sake.38 Von Wright mentions pleasure and honour among them. Consequently, Kenny explains that when Aristotle says that eudaimonia is never chosen for anything but itself, whereas other things are chosen for its sake, he does not mean that on some particular occasion honour and pleasure are chosen both for their own sakes and for the sake of happiness, but that on some occasions they are chosen for their own sakes, and on other occasions for the sake of happiness.39

W. F. R. Hardie answers this question by making the distinction between dominant and inclusive end. In his seminal work “The Final Good in Aristotle's

Ethics” (1965), Hardie explains dominant end as the object of a single prime desire while inclusive end is the orderly and harmonious fulfillment of a number of independent desires.40 In other words, a dominant view about eudaimonia claims that in the end there is just one ultimate answer to the chain of ‘Why do we do X?’ On the other hand, the inclusive view maintains that there are in fact many answers, all equally ultimate; or, slightly different, that the ultimate answer is a package of activities, rather than just one single kind of activity.41

For instance, the desire for money is a dominant desire but the life of man

38 Cf. Anthony Kenny, “Happiness”, p. 94 39 Cf. Anthony Kenny, “Happiness”, p. 97 40 Cf. W. F. R. Hardie, "The Final Good in Aristotle's Ethics", Philosophy, Vol. 40, No. 154 (Oct., 1965), p. 279 41 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics ( London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p.27 28

consists in the successive pursuit of a number of unrelated aims. So if happiness is considered as a dominant end, it seems not to be true that all men seek happiness. Anthony Kenny rejects the claim made by some scholars that happiness should be considered as an inclusive end in all cases. He rejects the claim because it is possible that happiness is renounced in favour of some other goals. He cites the example of a daughter who from the first moment at which she is of age to manage her own life, decides to forgo the prospect of marriage and creative work in order to nurse her parents that are confined to bed. It is unconvincing to say that such person is seeking her own happiness in so far as she is doing what she wants to do. Kenny thus concludes that not every long- term goal consistently pursued is capable of constituting an ideal of happiness.

Aristotle considers eudaimonia only as a dominant end and he attributes to it characteristics which make it peculiarly a human thing. He beliefs that eudaimonia must be perfect (which mainly distinguishes it from pleasure) and self-sufficient (which by itself, and without anything else, makes life choice- worthy and complete). Aristotle beliefs that eudaimonia is identical with philosophical contemplation. This claim about contemplation has been rejected by many scholars because it limits to a few (most probably philosophers) those who are able to reach the ultimate end. Aquinas moves to correct the apparent ambiguity found in Aristotle’s nature of the ultimate end by arguing that the

29

ultimate end of man can only consist in that which is perfectly good, which is

God.42

Many virtue prefer to translate eudaimonia as “human flourishing”. “Eudaimonia in this sense is not a subjective, but an objective, state. It characterizes the well-lived life, irrespective of the emotional state of the person experiencing it…. It consists of exercising the characteristic human quality -- reason -- as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity. Aristotle, like Plato before him, argued that the pursuit of eudaimonia was an activity that could only properly be exercised in the characteristic human community-- the polis or city-state.”43 In this context the proper goal of human life is living-well by practicing the virtues within the human community.

2.2 Moral Education and Character Formation

The next problem we need to resolve is what consist in “living well” and what is the general method for discovering what human flourishing consists in?

Aristotle in answering these questions employed what has come to be called the function argument. He asks ‘what is the proper function (ergon) of human

42 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae 1.8 43 “Virtue Ethics” (June 2008), Wikipedia online encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/virtue_ethics (April, 2009) 30

being?’ Hughes explains that “humans are organisms, and hence they too will have an inbuilt function (ergon) and an inbuilt goal (telos) which is achieved when they function properly. Humans will live fulfilled lives if they function properly. To function properly is to exercise the capacities to be found in the human soul, and to exercise them well.”44 In Aristotle’s , the soul is analyzed into a related series of capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so on. The proper ergon of man consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue.45 The good of man is that which sets him off from other species; this precisely is man’s capacity to guide his actions using reason in order to live a better life. If we reason well, we will live well and living well is what eudaimonia is about. For Aristotle, doing anything well requires virtue, and hence living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue.

The function argument brings us to a fundamental question ‘what is virtue?’ This question becomes important because granted that doing anything well consists in exercising certain skills which are called virtues; it does not by itself allow us to conclude that such qualities as courage, temperance, justice, as

44 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics (London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p.37 45 Cf. Richard Kraut (July 2007), “Aristotle’s Ethics”, Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotleiethics/ (April 2009) 31

they are normally understood, are virtues. This can only be true if we can argue that actualizing precisely these skills is what eudaimonia consists in. "Virtue"

(arete) can be simply defined as excellence in fulfillment of a particular function. Aristotle speaks in particular of two kinds of arête, distinguished by the fact that some belong to one’s moral character (for example, courage, or generosity), and others to one’s skill at thinking (such as being good at planning, or quick to grasp the point of something).46 Moral virtue has to do with the non- rational part of the soul which has more in common with reason (capable of either obeying it or opposing it); and these virtues of character arise through habituation.

The sense of the use of habit (hexis) has to be properly understood. Bill

Pollard in an essay “Can Virtuous Actions be both Habitual and Rational?” outlined three features of habit as actions that are repeated, automatic (that is, does not involve deliberation) and responsible (that is, the agent has particular control over).47 Such understanding of habit can be misleading. Hexis, for

Aristotle is no mindless routine but a settled disposition – an active condition in which one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of the soul when acting. Habit

(hexis) has a basis in human nature, in that we are naturally capable of

46 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Bk II, Chap. 1, 1103a, 13-17 47 Bill Pollard, “Can Virtuous Actions be both Habitual and Rational?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), p. 415 32

developing it. But although we are by nature capable of acquiring such habits, we do not develop them automatically. The development of a hexis comes about only by some form of training which produces good character.

Modern virtue ethics takes its insight from the Aristotelian understanding of character and virtue. Character is also about doing and character traits are stable, fixed, and reliable dispositions. In other words, if an agent possesses the character trait of kindness, he or she is expected to act kindly in all sorts of situations, towards all kinds of people, and over a long period of time, even when it is difficult to do so. Moral education and development are very important to the acquisition of good moral character which develops over a long period of time. To be virtuous does not just consist in studying textbooks of ethics and morality (acquisition of knowledge) but in performing just acts because by this way we become good. True virtue requires choice, understanding, and knowledge; that is, a virtuous agent has to put all these to bear when performing an act.

Aristotle faces a little difficulty when he tries to modify Plato’s view that virtue is knowledge. It seems what Plato means by knowledge here is the faculty to make right moral judgment. If this is the case, it appears to be unclear what

Aristotle considers as the prerequisites of moral training, which must be met by any of his students. What exactly does he expect his students to have before they 33

start, and what is it that they still have to get out of their course? In

Nicomachean Ethics (X, 9) Aristotle gives answer to the question when he suggests that parental guidance and instruction; the threat of punishment, the force of argument, and the sense of shame helps to form children to be noble in character.48 This does not work in the same way with all children but generally has far reaching effect. Aristotle thinks that children are more inclined to obedience, praise and scolding for wrong doing when it comes to their relation with authority figures like their parents. When parental guidance is insufficient, the young is trained to get accustomed to the framework of legal sanctions which express what the society admires and condemns. Hughes writes that the young requires "learning to use the concepts of morality with increasing sophistication, to esteem morally admirable behaviour, and to feel shame when they fail to live up to the standards proposed to them. Their more nuanced moral vocabulary goes hand in hand with more discriminating affective responses to situations, and together these add up to a gradually improving ability to make good moral judgments.”49

I find Alasdair Macintyre’s model of moral education most admirable, he was critical of the moral education born out of the Enlightenment project, particularly favouring virtue ethics among the "three rival versions of moral

48 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk X, Chap. 9, 1179b 49 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics ( London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p.73 34

inquiry" in modern moral philosophy.50 In his magna opus “After Virtue”,

MacIntyre tried to explicate virtues in terms of social “practices”. For him, the task of philosophy is primarily to study the actual world in which man lives – its , traditions, social organization, families and so on – and try to find the ideas and values that must bring about those institutions and practices, even if the members of the society cannot articulate them, or cannot articulate them fully. “When the philosophers have done their work correctly, the philosophy they articulate will reflect their society; and because philosophers are uniquely suited to see the society as a whole they will be in a unique position to point out inconsistencies, propose new ideas consistent with the old ones that are nevertheless improvements on those ideas, and show why things that seem trivial are actually crucial to the society, and vice versa.”51

Moral education is thus the acquisition of virtue fostered by practices, which stem from the proper understanding of human flourishing in terms of social networks and common good.52 There are two kinds of practices: external goods which are attached to the practice by the accidents of social circumstance and internal goods which are the goods that can only be achieved by

50 Cf. Phillip L. Engle, Worldviews, Xlibris Corporation, 1-888-7-XLIBRIS, www.Xlibris.com, p. 58 51 Ted Clayton (2006), "Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/p-macint/ (April 2009) 52 Cf. J.L. A. Gracia, “Modern(ist) Moral Philosophy and MacIntyrean Critique" in Alasdair MacIntyre edited by Mark C. Murphy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 103 35

participating in the practice itself. He further distinguishes between external goods which are someone's property (goods of effectiveness) and the more one person has of any of them the less there is for anyone else (money, power, and fame are often of this nature) and internal goods (goods of excellence) which are also competed for, "but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice".53 MacIntyre notes that when individuals first start to engage in a practice, they have no choice but to agree to accept external standards for the evaluation of their performance and to agree to follow the rules set out for the practice: "A practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of goods."54 As one grows in talent, experience, and knowledge, one can begin to have input into the standards themselves and then proceeds in self-education and development. Moral education is thus a two way thing: the community’s responsibility towards the student and the student’s personal effort in education in the virtue. Virtue is thus fully realized in the community among people who share the same practices. He writes:

53 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd Ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 191.

54 Ibid., p. 190.

36

A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and the exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods….we have to accept as necessary components of any practice with internal goods and standards of excellence the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty.55

2.3 Types of Virtues

2.3.1 Intellectual Virtues

Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of virtue56: that of the intellect and that of character. Intellectual virtues pertain to the part of the soul that engages in reasoning while moral virtues or virtues of character apply to the part of the soul that cannot itself reason but is nonetheless capable of following reason. Intellectual virtues are divided into two kinds: those that pertain to theoretical reasoning, and those that pertain to practical thinking or wisdom

55 Ibid., p. 191.

56 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk II, Chap. 1, 1103a 37

(phronêsis).57 Aristotle in Book VI classifies the intellectual virtues; the first five capacities of the soul: “states by which the soul grasps truth.”58

1. Scientific knowledge (episteme) - Studies things of which the origins "do not admit of being otherwise" (VI.3, 1139a 6-7; 1139b 20)

2. Art or craft (techne) - Concerned with the production of things that "admit of being otherwise." (VI.4).

3. Prudence (phronesis) This pertains to the regulation of action. (VI.5, VI.8).

There are different aspects to prudence:

3.1. "Prudence" proper- concerned with individual's good

3.2. Political science (politike)- concerned with the good of a city or "state". This also is subdivided into the "ruling" part (sovereignity) of politike or "legislative science", the deliberative part of politike or statesmanship, and the juridical aspect of politike (VI.8)

3.3. The "economic" aspect of prudence (translated by Crisp as "household management") (1141b 32).

4. Intellection or intuitive understanding (nous) -The source of our understanding of both the first principles of knowledge, of which no

57 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk IV, Chap. 1, 1139a, 3-8 58 Ibid., Bk VI, Chap. 2, 1139b, 15 38

demonstration is possible (for instance, the principle of contradiction), and of our knowledge of particular facts (for example, "this is a book”) (VI.6).

5. Wisdom (sophia) (VI.7): scientific knowledge of "the most honorable things" combined with nous regarding "the truth about origins" (1141a17-19). He distinguishes between wisdom and prudence. Prudence is said to serve wisdom or facilitate its attainment (Cf. VI.13, 1145a, 6-12).

6. Deliberation: enables one to identify "what is expedient for promoting the end about which prudence is true supposition" (VI.9, 1142b, 32ff).

7. Understanding (sunesis): concerned with the same objects as prudence, i.e., variable things concerning which we "might be puzzled about and might deliberate about" (VI.10).

8. Judgment (gnome): the characteristic of a good judge, one who discerns the equitable (VI.11).

39

2.3.2 Virtues of Character

Moral virtue is a habitual disposition connected with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, a mean which is determined by reason, by which the person of practical wisdom would determine it.59 The various types of moral virtues are:

1. Courage: the mean between the extremes of cowardice and foolhardiness with respect to the emotion of fear (III.6).

2. Temperence (moderation): the mean between the extremes of self-indulgence and insensibility with respect to the desire for pleasures of the body like: eating, drinking and sex (III.10).

3. Liberality or generosity (the virtue with regard to financial expenditures): the mean between the extremes of extravagance and stinginess with respect to the giving away and taking in of money. An extravagant person is excessive in giving away, but defective in taking in money; a stingy person is defective in giving away money, but excessive in taking in it. (IV.1)

4. Magnificence or pride: the mean between the extremes of vanity and excessive humility with respect to ones desire to receive great honors (IV.2).

59 Cf. Ibid., Bk II, Chap. 6, 1106b36–1107a2 40

5. Great-souledness or magnanimity: It is concerned with honour and dishonour in the right way. A person is thought to be great-souled if he thinks himself worthy of great things and not foolishness. It is an extreme with regard to grandness of claim and in the mean with regard to their correctness. (IV.3).

6. Gentleness or good temper: the mean between the extremes of irascibility (or irritability) and apathy with respect to ones proneness to anger (IV.5).

7. Friendliness: the mean between obsequiousness, that is, being overly deferential/groveling and unpleasantness with respect to the desire to please others (IV.6).

8. Truthfulness or Veracity (straightforwardness) of speech: the mean between the extremes of boastfulness and self-deprecation with respect to the way one presents oneself to others (IV.7).

10. Wittiness: the mean between the buffoonery and boorishness with respect to ones desire to amuse others. (IV.8)

11. Justice (Book V): there are two senses of justice- the complete virtue corresponding to law-abidingness and as a particular virtue equivalent to fairness or equity. Justice serves as a sort of link or "in-between" quality lying between the moral and intellectual virtues. 41

Aristotle refutes the claim that the virtues are separate from each other; he argues that they are all united. In fact possessing one means possessing all. He differentiates natural virtue from real virtue. To explain the former, someone can be good in mathematics, for instance, without being good in athletics. Real virtue on the other hand concerns moral decision making which stems from the settled disposition of an agent with well formed character. A virtuous person normally acts out of accurate understanding with practical reason and hence decides out of right reason. The decision evokes each of the moral virtues appropriately. Courage, for example, should lead someone to feel afraid when fear is appropriate and soldiers that fight at war are not foolhardy but noble because they fight to save their companions. However, to fight in normal circumstances would simply be foolhardy but in this circumstance, it is not foolhardy, but generous and noble. We should bear in mind when seeking to understand the notion of real virtue that it corresponds to the relevant mean which is relative to us.

42

2.4 Uncodifiability of Ethics

The “uncodifiability of ethics thesis” is the idea that ethics cannot be captured in one rule or principle. In book I of the Nicomachean Ethics,

Aristotle warns us that unlike mathematical science, the science of ethics is inexact. Virtue ethicists have challenged consequentialist and deontological theories because they fail to accommodate this insight rather they rely on one rule or principle that is expected to apply to all situations. In our day to day experience of moral acts, we discover that rules may be true for the most part, but may not always be the appropriate response. Consequently, since moral problems are varied, we should not expect to find their solution in one rigid and inflexible rule that does not admit of variable alternatives. The doctrine of the mean captures exactly this idea.

Aristotle states that virtue of character consists in the mean between two opposed human tendencies, excess and deficiency; for example, bravery is the true mean between cowardice and rashness and temperance is the mean between the extremes of self-indulgence and insensibility. The doctrine of the mean is often misunderstood. When Aristotle says virtue is the relevant mean which is relative to us, some have been tempted to think that he is here allowing the character we already have to influence what virtue requires of us.

43

What Aristotle means is that what is morally required is what the virtuous person would do in our circumstances. Hughes argues against those who say that the virtuous person is one who is by character disposed to have only moderate emotional responses. For him, the mean is not about moderation but more about appropriateness of our moral actions. Hughes says: “the appropriate response patterns can be contrasted both with over- and under-reacting. To say that virtues lie in the mean says no more than that appropriate patterns of response is in line with what right reason dictates as per the situation. The person with the virtue of moderation does not desire when he should not, no more than he should, nor in a way that he should not. But ‘should’ and ‘should not’ can be defined only relatively to individuals in each set of circumstances.”60

Rosalind Hursthouse in an essay "The Central Doctrine of the Mean"

(2006) argues against the ordinary understanding of the doctrine of the mean.

Ordinary understanding refers to the interpretation of “the mean” when taken out of its context of use in Aristotle’s ethics. The ordinary or quantitative interpretation takes the mean as a mathematical mean and it is sometimes employed in the field of modern science especially medicine to determine the

60 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics (London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p.73 44

moral rightness of certain controversial medical practices.61 Hursthouse favours a qualitative interpretation, that is, “the mean” should not be taken out of context but interpreted as a central doctrine in Aristotle's ethics and not just a mean between excess and deficiency of actions. She argues that the phrase

“relative to us” is not a form of moral relativism but tells more of “the evaluative elements” of the mean as reason dictates. Generally, what Aristotle simply advocates in the doctrine of the mean is that our moral thinking must contribute right reason and our appetites must contribute right desire and that our actions should be born from a settled disposition, if the action is to have moral stature.62

61 Cf. Rosalind Hursthouse , “The Central Doctrine of the Mean” in The Blackwell guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics edited by Richard Kraut (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), p.111 62 Cf. Joe Sachs (22 July, 2005), "Aristotle: Ethics" Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/aris-eth/ (March, 2010) 45

CHAPTER THREE

IMPERATIVE OF VIRTUE ETHICS FOR A NEW SOCIETY

3.6 Moral dilemma of our society today

Since virtue ethics has been abandoned by the enlightenment project, modern man and society has been greatly influenced by consequentialism and deontologism, which is a product of this period. In other words, human beings in the post-enlightenment era evaluate moral actions mainly from the view point of the consequence of such action or the fact that one is duty bound. In the first chapter of this work we have argued that deontologism and consequentialism have failed as the paradigm theories to evaluate human actions. We went further following Elizabeth Anscombe to propose a return to virtue ethics. We shall now apply these ethical principles to Africa, particularly Nigeria, by exposing the various moral problems facing Nigeria and how the consequentialist, deontologist and virtue ethics are able to meet Nigeria’s post-colonial moral challenges. After this we will show how virtue ethics will help our modern society to come out of moral decadence and lead it to become a “new society”, a desirable virtuous society.

Nigeria belongs to the category of developing nations in terms of the viability of its economical and technological advancement. Some of the major 46

social problems of developing nations are poverty, low literacy level, political instability, display of little homogeneity, that is, division by race, religion, culture, and geography, as well as frequently differing interests. Contemporary

Nigeria, to a great extent, enjoys great influence of colonialism in terms of world view and social systems like judicial, banking, political and education systems. This informs the fact that ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism which are products of Western civilization (that is, the enlightenment project) have been dished out to Africa through colonial and post- colonial encounters and experiences. This is proven by the fact that ethics, as a branch of philosophy, is taught in most African universities following the traditional approach (Western approach).63

Apart from inheriting the concept of obligation and case-based reasoning from the enlightenment project of Western civilization, Nigeria is also a multi- religious, multi-cultural and highly populous country; these elements help us to view the moral and social problems from a larger perspective. John Mbiti, an

African scholar, states that “Africans are notoriously religious”. Nigeria is not an exception to Mbiti’s observation but despite its high religiosity, Nigeria is

63 Cf. John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji, “Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture” In A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by Kwasi Wiredu (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), Pp.397- 398. 47

rated as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.64 Some of the dominant moral and social problems of Nigeria are: bribery and corruption, vandalism, terrorism, robbery, rape, examination and business malpractices, internet scam, digital crimes, certificate forgery, child abuse, abortion, ritual killing, promiscuity, capital punishment, tribalism, at-will employment, sexual harassment, discrimination, environmental pollution, and so on. I shall narrow down my discussion to how the normative ethical theories are able to address two of these problems, namely: at-will employment and digital crimes.

At-will employment is a doctrine that defines an employment relationship in which either the employer or the employee can break the relationship with no liability, provided there was no express contract for a definite term governing the employment relationship and that the employer does not belong to a collective bargain (i.e., has not recognized a union).65 Under this legal doctrine: “any hiring is presumed to be “at will”; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals “for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,” and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work.66 Many employers use the at-will rule to threaten or sack employees based on unjust

64 Cf. IRIN humanitarian news and analysis “NIGERIA: Nigeria angry at being rated second most corrupt” From: www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37128 (9 October 2003) 65 Cf. Alexei Marcoux (April 2008) “” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-business/ 66 “At-will employment”(6 March, 2010), Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment 48

reasons like: when an employee refuses to do something illegal or immoral as ordered by the employer, medical problems (like HIV/AIDS), discrimination on the basis of sex, colour, religious affiliation, tribe and so on.

In Nigeria, especially in the banking sector, at-will employment and mass retrenchment has become a burning issue. In the editoral, Newswatch

Magazine of 5th January 2010, it was reported that 7,000 bankers lost their jobs in the space of 4 months, while another 14,000 were said to have been pencilled down for retrenchment. This downsizing of 30 percent of the banking sector work force happened within the 25 accredited Nigeria banks.67 In Kola

Ibrahim’s article titled “Retrenchment”, he decries the Nigeria government’s unjust retrenchment of thousands of its workers across the several government ministries. To justify the mass retrenchment, the chairman of the Nigeria Labour

Congress (NLC) argued that workers consume about 80% of the government funds and thus need to be pruned to allow for other capital projects to be done by the government.68 Kola’s argument is that just 1% of Nigerians (mainly oil workers and government top functionaries) control over 80% of the nation’s oil wealth while over 70% of Nigerians are wallowing in what the International

67 Emmanuel Uffot and Dike Onwuamaeze, “A Matter of Survival” in Newswatch Magazine (5 January, 2010), http://www.newswatchngr.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=1677 68 Kola Ibrahim, “retrenchment” in Online Nigeria, http://www.onlinenigeria.com/articles/ad.asp?blurb=357 (13 October, 2006) 49

Monetary Funds (IMF) called severe poverty. The retrenchment of workers based on the ability of the government to execute capital projects is not justifiable. For Kola, retrenchment contributes to poverty rather than alleviate it.

Scholars in the field of business ethics have raised concern over the fairness of the at-will doctrine and whether other terms of employment ought to be substituted for it through public policy initiatives. Deontologists argue that arbitrary dismissal is incompatible with respecting employees as persons.

Immanuel Kant wants every person to be treated as an end and not a means to an end. Such treatment demands that employees be given good reasons when adverse action is to be taken against them. Thus, at-will employment is incompatible with recognizing and respecting the employee's personhood.

Opponents of the deontological approach respond that the at-will doctrine supplies a reason when it says that the terms of employer/employee arrangement are such that either of the party has the option to terminate it at will. In other words, the at-will decision of either of the party is sufficient reason to terminate the arrangement. Consequentialists mainly argue in defense of the at-will doctrine. They claim that the at-will doctrine promotes vibrant labour market by

50

reducing the costs and the stakes of disputes over dismissal and it ensures that jobs are frequently created and readily available.69

The at-will doctrine works better in developed nations which is highly industrialized (with reduced rate of unemployment) and where the governments has put in place measures that protect the interest of the employee against discrimination and abuse. It is more challenging in developing nations like

Nigeria where the rate of unemployment is alarmingly high and the interest of the employee is not adequately protected. Consequently, problems which are ordinarily handled by the government in developed nations like the USA70, where at-will doctrine is well practiced, are common features of at-will employment in developing nations. Given this fact the consequentialist approach is necessary but not adequate.

In his seminal paper titled “Virtue Ethics as a Foundation for Business

Ethics: A "MacIntyre-Based" Critique” (2003), John Dobson argued for a virtuous corporation. Despite the market driven competition in the business community, corporations must strive to be virtuous and to reach the ultimate

69 Alexei Marcoux (April 2008) “Business Ethics” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-business/ 70 All the U.S. states have a number of statutory protections for employees against wrongful termination and discrimination at work with regards firing or refusing to hire an employee because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or handicap status. Read more from: “At-will employment”(6 March, 2010), Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment 51

goal of economic survival. For Dobson, “corporations are real communities, neither ideal nor idealized, and therefore the perfect place to start understanding the nature of the virtues”71 Apart from the aim of profit maximization, corporations have moral responsibilities. Considered as a community, the corporation should emphasize sound moral judgments which promote eudaimonia (human flourishing) and make sure virtues such as justice, truthfulness, magnanimity, moderation, courage, liberality and friendliness, inform their moral decision. With this, even though the society in which corporations exist is developing, a virtuous corporation will neither take undue advantage of its workers nor be disobedient to the constituted authorities; but will compete meaningfully in the business arena and at the same time promote common good.

Digital crimes: Digital crimes are discussed in “Computer and ”, which is the branch of that studies and analyzes the social and ethical impacts of information and communication technology (ICT). In this field, professional philosophers use traditional Western theories like utilitarianism, Kantianism, or virtue ethics. They apply these theories to ethical cases that significantly involve computers and computer networks especially the

71 John Dobson (2003), “Virtue Ethics as a Foundation for Business Ethics: A "MacIntyre- Based" Critique”, http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/cst/conferences/antwerp/papers/Dobson.pdf

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internet.72 The ethical issues deliberated in this field are broad and they include: , cyber crime, virtual reality, respect and disrespect, role fulfillment, positive (civic engagement) and negative (deception and plagiarism) behaviors, privacy and confidentiality, unimpaired services, controlling access to resources, advance-fee fraud, malicious kinds of software, or “programmed threats”, embezzlement, planting of logic bombs, and system hacking.

Of all these ethical issues, the most dominant in Nigeria are system hacking and advance-fee fraud. Advance-fee fraud or “419 fraud” is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain which is popularly called

“Yahoo-Yahoo”.73 A “hacker” is one who “breaks into someone's computer system without permission. Some hackers intentionally steal data or commit vandalism, while others merely “explore” the system to see how it works and what files it contains.”74 “Explorers” most times claim to be benevolent defenders of freedom and fighters against rip-offs by major corporations or spying by government agents but all acts of spying or hacking in the cyberspace is harmful, because any known successful penetration of a computer system

72 Cf. Terrell Bynum, “Computer and Information Ethics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/ (Oct 23, 2008) 73 “Advance-fee fraud” (3 May 2010), Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud 74 Terrell Bynum, “Computer and Information Ethics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/ (October, 2008) 53

requires the owner to thoroughly check for damaged or lost data and programs.

Most “hackers” in Nigeria break into the database of Automated Teller

Machines (ATM) and commercial websites; they carry out illegal fund transfer and steal data of credit cards that are used to transact business on commercial websites like E-bay. These hackers sell the stolen data to people who use them to do e-commerce like buying electronics, downloading games and applications, and booking hotel reservations. This act has become common place in Nigeria and it informs the listing of Nigeria as one of the leading countries where internet scams takes place.75 For example, Daily Mail UK on 16 January 2009 reported a postman who sank into depression and debt after losing £130,000 in an internet scam involving Nigerian fraudsters.76 Also the British Broadcasting

Corporation (BBC) on the 26 November 2003 reported a Nigerian federal lawmaker who was arrested for alleged involvement in computer fraud. This advance-fee fraud is said to be the biggest ever “419” swindle, a $180m fraud that brought down a Brazilian bank.77 Research shows that digital crimes are most perpetuated by young people.78 Young people may be best prepared to use

75 “Advance-fee fraud” (3 May 2010), Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud 76 "Postman loses £130,000 savings to Nigerian internet scam after being duped by a friend he met on MySpace" from Mail Online (16th January 2009), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1116067/Postman-loses-130-000-savings-Nigerian- internet-scam-duped-friend-met-MySpace.html 77 "Nigeria to tackle internet fraud", from British Broadcasting Corporation News (26 November 2003), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3241710.stm 78 Carrie James and Katie Davis et al, Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: 54

new media for good but may also be the most likely perpetrators or victims of ethical lapses.

In James Moor's classic paper, “What Is ?” (1985), he recognized that since computers were introduced, human beings have been able to do things they could not do before, and this creates policy vacuums. Moor recognized that computers are logically malleable, that is, they can be manipulated to do any activity that can be characterized in terms of inputs, outputs, and connecting logical operations.79 Computers are also informationally enriching. Because of their logical malleability, computers are put to many uses in diverse activities and can be modified to enhance capabilities and improve overall performance even further. Often, computerized activities become informationalized; that is, the processing of information becomes a crucial ingredient in performing and understanding the activities themselves.80 In other words, it is done strictly by handling information of all sorts, and by various people. Based on the logical malleability and informational enriching nature of computers, Moor rejects the use of cultural relativism in addressing computer ethical issues in a world which has become a global village. Cultural relativism

A Synthesis from the GoodPlay Project, (London: The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009), p. 5 79 Cf. James H. Moor, (1985). “What Is Computer Ethics?” In T. W. Bynum (ed.), Computers and Ethics. Blackwell, (Published as the October 1985 issue of Metaphilosophy.), p. 25 80 James H. Moor, Ibid., p.24 55

is the theory that ethical issues must be decided situationally on the basis of local customs and . To fill the policy vacuums, he argues that computer users should develop core human values such as: life, health, happiness, security, resources, opportunities, and knowledge. Though human values are relative, they are not simply in the shallow sense of Cultural Relativism.81 These values are so important to the continued survival of any community that essentially all communities do value them. For Moor, if a community does not value the “core values”, it would not have lasting existence. Moor uses “core values” to examine computer ethics topics like privacy and security and to add an account of justice, which he called “just consequentialism”.82 This “human- values approach” to computer ethics has gained wide acceptance by many computer professionals in the computer society and many computer ethicists after Moor see their task as filling the policy vacuums.

Virtue ethics approach is so far the dominant approach to a wide range of ethical issues in the field of computer ethics, since the myriad of laws and codes that prohibit digital crimes has failed to stop or reduce crime rate. Also, professional hackers83 justify their attacks on computers with persuasive reasons

81 James H. Moor, Ibid., p. 29 82 Cf. Terrell Bynum, “Computer and Information Ethics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/ (Oct 23, 2008) 83 The EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker, The Comprehensive Guide to Certified Ethical Hacking, P. 28 56

like: “by writing viruses, I am exercising freedom of speech”, “by penetrating other information systems, I am increasing my knowledge”, “information wants to be free, and I am helping in that mission.” The controversial issue with dealing with the digital crimes hacking and advance-fee fraud is the problem of

Privacy. In an attempt to understand questions like, “what is privacy?” and “why is privacy of value?” some computer ethicists argue that privacy can be reduced to other concepts such as property or ; some argue that privacy is something in its own right and that it is intrinsically valuable; yet others argue that while not intrinsically valuable, privacy has an instrumental value.

Consequentialists, who draw inspiration from Jeremy Bentham, argue that the concept of privacy may lead to “Panopticon”.84 Computerized information- gathering is able to produce the panopticon effect. When human behavior is monitored, recorded, and tracked, individuals could become intent on conforming to norms for fear of negative consequences. Individuals would know that most of what they do can be observed and this could influence how they behave by making them not to act freely.85 Consequently, they suggest that the

84 A panopticon is the effect obtainable from a kind of prison cell which is arranged in a circle with the inside wall of each cell made of glass so that the guards on duty cannot be seen. In fact, a prison guard need not be in the guard tower for the panopticon to have its effect; it is enough that prisoners believe they are being watched. When individuals believe they are being watched, they adjust their behavior accordingly; they take into account how the watcher will perceive their behavior. 85 Cf. Deborah G. Johnson, "Computer Ethics" The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information, edited by Luciano Floridi (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004), Pp. 70-71 57

privacy issues around computer technology go to the heart of freedom and democracy.

Deontologists argue that the panopticon effect will not occur in information societies because data collection is invisible so that individuals are unaware they are being watched. If the individual sees privacy as his moral obligation by observing it, the individual will gradually get accustomed to the practice which makes part of the information society. This approach has speedily become less effective outside the realm of professional computer users.

Due to rapid growth of the internet; the rise of the world-wide-web; increasing

“user-friendliness” and decreasing costs of computer technology, there has been a resurgence of new privacy issues in the information society. Boyd (2007a), for instance, outlined four distinct properties which the internet bear on privacy in new ways. These properties include: persistence (what you post persists indefinitely), searchability, (you can search for anyone and find their digital

“body”), replicability (you can copy and paste information from one context to another), and invisible audiences (you can never be sure who your audience is).86 Despite these features, many young people share deeply personal

86 boyd, d. 2007b. “Why Youth (Heart) Social Networking Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” In Youth, Identity and Digital Media, ed. D. Buckingham, 119– 142. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, from http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/01/08/thecost_of_lyi.html.

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information with one another on websites such as Twitter, MySpace,

Classmates, LiveJournal, U-tube and Facebook.

James Moor, representing the leading computer virtue theorists, argue that all interesting human enterprises, including computing, are conducted within frameworks of values.87 The world has become a global village and the virtuous agent (computer users), regardless of their location and culture, should through their making give sound moral judgments which promote eudaimonia (human flourishing of information society). Consequently, privacy, which is a component of the policy vacuums generated by computing technology, should be regarded as a value which should be promoted in the information society. According to Moor, other core values that promote life and happiness of human beings include ability, freedom, knowledge, resources, and protection.88 A virtuous agent should use virtues (like moderation, magnificence, friendliness, veracity and justice), when acting as free agents (as opposed to panopticon) in obeying the code and laws that guide members of the information society. I think that computer users in Nigeria can learn a lot from Moor’s principle. The way forward will be promoting a virtue-based character formation and moral education.

87 James H. Moor, (1985). “What Is Computer Ethics?” In T. W. Bynum (ed.), Computers and Ethics. Blackwell, pp. 266–75. (Published as the October 1985 issue of Metaphilosophy.) p.30 88 James H. Moor, (1985). “What Is Computer Ethics?” p. 33. 59

3.2 Virtue and social life

In this part of the work we shall begin to look at how virtue can create a special mode of social existence. Man is by nature a rational and social animal.

The need for interaction is innate in man and it is through interaction with other people that man develops his distinct human qualities. Society is usually defined by taking account of three key concepts: people, institutions and relationships. This means that society is not only a unit consisting of institutions and culture which are exclusive to a people; it is also a network of relationships.89 A close look at Nigeria reveals the defectiveness of its social, cultural, economic and political institutions. In other words, the relationship that should exist between people and institutions is faulty. We have already argued that deontology and consequentialism which responds to the ethical dimension of the problem of institutional defectiveness are not adequate. The practice of virtues will be useful for the moral and social reconstruction of Africa and indeed Nigeria.

We can carry out this reconstruction by going back to develop the idea of polis in Aristotle. This does not mean that we accept the idea of polis wholesale, but that we rethink it, thereby; stripping polis of whatever is not helpful for our

89 O. Otite and W. Ogionwo, An Introduction to Sociological Studies (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1990), p. 41 60

modern society. We shall emulate the good qualities of polis while its other attributes like slavery and subordination of women will be rejected. In books VII and VIII of Politics, Aristotle discusses his idea of polis or “the ideal city”. To achieve polis, which is the best form of state, it is necessary to decide first, that it is the most eligible (choice-worthy or preferable) life for individuals. “The best life, both for individuals and states, is the life of virtue.90 In Whose Justice?

Which Rationality?, MacIntyre writes that the polis is defined by the fact that it

“was the institution whose concern was, not with this or that particular good, but with human good as such, and not with desert [that is, reward] or achievement in respect of particular practices, but with desert and achievement as such. The constitution of each particular polis could therefore be understood as the expression of a set of principles about how goods are to be ordered into a way of life”91 Consequently, the essential characteristics of the polis according to

Aristotle include: individual’s pursuit of the highest good, community that makes possible the pursuit of the common good and a framework for determining collective and individual identities and the capacity for acting on those identities.92

90 Cf. Aristotle, Politics [VII.13] 91 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), Pp. 33-34 92 Edward Clayton, “Alasdair MacIntyre on Aristotle and the Polis” The New England Journal of Political Science Volume II, Number 1 (2005) 61

Modern society, such as Nigeria, seems to have lost the “should be” goal or ideal of society whose feature is mentioned above. If we have virtuous individuals, we will have virtuous families and consequently virtuous society.

There is a serious need for the rediscovery of an ideal Nigerian society, such that reflects the good characteristics of the polis. Though, Aristotle does not argue that all citizens of the polis must be equally rational, his general line is to show that ethics and politics are based on a metaphysical understanding of what it is to be a human person; a rational agent with senses and emotions. It should be the collective responsibility of members of a society, regardless of their disparate functions and capacities, to safeguard the community. At this point, for

Aristotle, the constitution becomes necessary to guide the traits which are useful for the end which is the common good. In a good society, the law successfully promotes moral virtues and the practice of virtues in turn promotes the common good.

Some have argued that the Aristotelian virtues which promote common good in the Athenian city state, is such that cannot be applied today because it is more appropriate for oligarchic, democratic and slave owning kind of society.

Modern society not only surpasses Athenian society by population and technological advancement, it is also mainly a society built on liberalism and

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democracy. To explain the viability of virtues in the modern society, MacIntyre introduces the idea of tradition. He writes:

But it is not just that different individuals live in different social circumstances; it is also that we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone's son or daughter, someone else's cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession, I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations.93

He continues:

What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition.94

93 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd Ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 220 94Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 221 63

Such, tradition has to be a dynamic and living tradition which “is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”95 Tradition is, in fact, a necessary condition which makes rational thought possible, for “no human mind can function without accepting authority, custom, and tradition: it must rely on them for the mere use of language.”96 If all knowing depends upon an underlying commitment to a particular tradition, it follows that reason is necessarily embodied in a particular tradition. That being the case, reason and tradition are not opposed to each other. Also, MacIntyre believes that man is a dependent being and needs others to grow in virtues. That is, I can only grow if I can reason with and learn from others, and this requires certain traits from me: the virtues (honesty, courage, and justice, for example). Virtues derive their meaning in particular societies through the underlying tradition and they serve to promote the common good through the practice of internal and external good.97

Consequently, a good society is that whose traditions and customs exude the virtues, and man through interrelationship grows in the virtues, which serve to promote human flourishing.

95 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Pp. 221-222. 96 Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 41. 97 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, P. 191 64

Can virtue ethics be applied to the Nigeria situation? I answer in the affirmative. Some philosophers and educationalists have attempted to apply virtue theory to education. In “The Central Doctrine of the Mean”, Rosalind

Hurtsthouse, a leading virtue , proposes that modern societies adopt the

Aristotelian model of moral education.98 She points out, as an example, The

Virtue ProjectTM.99 The United Nations has recognized The Virtue ProjectTM as a model program for parents in all cultures. This program is currently operating in about 100 countries. The virtue program is a very detailed and practical educational program that is worth giving attention. It shares the Aristotelian premise that “all children are born with all the virtues”, “in potential”, “waiting to grow”. This premise greatly shapes the pedagogy that emphasizes praising virtuous actions of children rather than placing emphasis on actions that can be condemned.

Another instance of the application of virtue ethics in society is the educational principle of Joseph Kentenich, a prominent Christian

98 Rosalind Hurtsthouse, “The Central Doctrine of the Mean”, Pp. 112-113 99 The Virtues Project is an initiative which began in 1991 to empower individuals and families to live by their deepest values. It began with the work The Virtues Guide (by Linda Kavelin Popov, Dr. Dan Popov and John Kavelin) and the seminal book The Virtues Project. The Virtue Project is sourced in the simple wisdom of many world religions, all of which describe the human virtues as the highest aspiration for humanity. For more information on the project visit: www.virtuesproject.com/ orwww.wisdompage.com/virtuesproject.html 65

educationalist.100 Kentenich’s model of education is active in Nigeria and is aimed at promoting the moral and religious renewal of the world. In his

Education and the Challenge of Our Times, Kentenich develops the idea of “the new community”; a society built on the essential structure of man where people live in love; that is, in cordial relationship with one another and for one another.

He pictures the new society as the society in which the “new man” (or the virtuous person) strives for great ideal that fosters common good. Such society is critical of the false images of man, such as, a rationalistic image of man, an economical image of man and a collectivistic or Bolshevistic image of man. For him, the right image of the new man is the Ecce-homo image, that is, man as an image of Christ.101 According to Kentenich, the discovery of Ecce-homo is “a new and deeper discovery of the ‘I’, the ‘you’, the ‘we’ and ‘God’; an all- embracing image which reflects the picture of God, the human person and the community as an organic whole.102 The “new man”, is essentially a free

100 Joseph Kentenich is the founder of the Schoenstatt Movement. He was born on 18th November, 1885 in Gymnich near Cologne and died 83 years later on 15th September, the Feast of our Lady of Sorrows. He was as a thinker, theologian, educationalist and pioneer of a Catholic response to an array of modern issues, whose teachings underwent a series of challenges from political and ecclesiastical powers. He attempted to teach Christians how to live out their faith in a changing world. He rejected Communism and Western materialism and called for a return to virtues in the Christian formation of youths and families. Cf. Wikipedia Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kentenich and 101 Joseph Kentenich, Education and the Challenge of Our Times: Perspectives for Catholic Educators, Translated by Ulric J. Proeller (Wisconsin: International Schoenstatt Center, 1971), p.84 102 Joseph Kentenich, Freely and Wholly Human, edited by Herbert King (Vallendar: Schoenstatt Press, 1998), p. 80 66

personality who strives to strike a balance between culture and spiritual life; he freely practices the virtues within his cultural existence with openness to divine providence. In Kentenich’s model of education, one studies his society’s traditions and institutions and work out ways in which the virtues can bring out the best social, religious and cultural practices that promote common good. The pedagogy aims at forming young people to become free, firm, and virtuous characters that will in turn become instruments for creating a “new society”. I appreciate this model of education because of its ability to work out a beautiful interplay between virtue and social life.

3.3 The Imperative of Virtue Ethics for a New Society

The central points of argument of this essay are the following. First, the proper focus of ethics should be on people’s characters rather than on their actions. Second, the best way to know what one should do is to think of how to behave virtuously, rather than thinking of how to follow a moral principle.

Third, virtue is very important for healthy moral life and consequently a healthy social life.

On the first account, what is morally important is to be a particular kind of person, and to have developed the particular traits of character which are the 67

moral virtues. Moral philosophy has been too long preoccupied with ‘issues’ and moral dilemmas. In other words, its major characteristics has been problem solving. Though we have, in this work, shown that virtue ethics can be applied to solving moral dilemmas (and its problem solving capacity is becoming more popular in the field of applied ethics), our main emphasis is on the character formation of a virtuous agent. To do this we should begin to think of discovering what living a good life requires of us. That is, modern man should begin to decide on what to do by thinking about generosity, or fidelity, or honesty or fairness rather than, say, by doing a utilitarian calculation, or applying a Kantian test.103

In many African countries today, more emphasis seems to be placed on acquiring intellectual knowledge than socio-cultural and moral education. There is an urgent need to bridge this gap otherwise social ills might escalate in the future. There is need for moral education that emphasizes character formation.

The socio-economic problems facing Africans have been precipitated, partly because of the mismanagement of resources by those who are charged with the responsibility of their management. Consequently, increasing crime rate, mismanagement, lack of accountability and transparency in Africa, can be attributed to lack of a solid moral educational background of many Africans. If

103 Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics ( London: Routledge Publications, 2001), p 219 68

we will come out of this misnomer, there is need for better moral education of the young, the leaders of tomorrow.

It is therefore against this backdrop that I argue that for modern society, which is ridden with moral decadence, to get liberated from its present social and moral pitfalls, there is need for moral philosophy to do more than enforcing duty/obligation or using the effect of conduct to determine morality. In fact, building up good characters is needed in the task of reconstructing present day society. Though our culture is different from the Athenian culture in which

Aristotle wrote, the assumptions he makes about the nature, scope and method of ethics are equally applicable in our present day.

3.4 Conclusion

We set out in this essay to show that virtue ethics is necessary in the building of an ideal society. Modern society has relied so much on the obligation based concept of morality. In the first chapter we traced the history of ethics, with devotion to the development of virtue ethics in Aristotle and Aquinas. We see its rejection in the enlightenment era, which was much in favor with deontology and later consequentialism. Elizabeth Anscombe’s insight was relevant here, for in a paper entitled “Modern Moral Philosophy” she was critical of a 'law conception of ethics' where the key focus was obligation and

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duty. She calls for a return to virtue ethics. Many philosophers have heeded

Anscombe’s call, which fact is evident in the increased scholarship in the area of virtue ethics.

In the second chapter, we examined the key concepts in virtue ethics such as human flourishing, moral education and character formation. We also examined the types of virtues and the doctrine of the mean. In the last chapter, we applied the three major normative theories to resolving the some moral dilemmas in Nigeria, where we demonstrated the viability of virtue ethics in resolving moral problems. After these, we showed that there can be an interplay between virtues and social life. This argues for a virtue based moral education with its goal – to create a better society.

It is clear that virtue ethics, as a normative ethics, is important in resolving the various moral problems confronting man in these modern times. It is more important that modern society should begin to place considerable emphasis on moral education and the formation of moral character in order to build a better society. Consequently, I propose that moral education should be such that emphasizes virtue acquisition given how such virtues are beneficial to the individual and the community.

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