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We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Hastings Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Hastings Center Report. http://www.jstor.org F:ROM HOMER TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN l The Nature of the Virtues by ALASDAIRMacINTYRE ourselves. For we would now seem to be saying that Ho- mer's concept of an arete, an excellence, is one thing and O ne responseto the historyof Greekand medieval that our concept of a virtue is quite anothersince a particu- thoughtabout the virtuesmight well be to suggest thateven lar qualitycan be an excellence in Homer's eyes, but not a within that relativelycoherent tradition of thoughtthere are virtue in ours and vice versa. just too many different and incompatibleconceptions of a But of course it is not that Homer's list of virtues differs virtuefor there to be any real unity to the concept or indeed only from our own; it also notablydiffers from Aristotle's. to the history. Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, the New Testa- And Aristotle'sof course also differsfrom our own. For one ment and medieval thinkers differ from each other in too thing, some Greek virtue-wordsare not easily translatable many ways. They offer us different and incompatiblelists into English or ratherout of Greek. Moreoverconsider the of the virtues;they give a differentrank order of importance importanceof friendshipas a virtuein Aristotle'slist-how to differentvirtues; and they have differentand incompati- differentfrom us! Or the place of phronesis, the virtue ex- ble theories of the virtues. If we were to consider later hibited in excellence of practicaljudgment-how different Western writers on the virtues, the list of differences and from Homer and from us! The mind receives from Aristotle incompatibilitieswould be enlarged still further;and if we the kind of tribute which the body receives from Homer. extendedour enquiryto Japanese,say, or AmericanIndian But it is not just the case that the differencebetween Aris- cultures, the differences would become greater still. It totle and Homer lies in the inclusion of some items and the would be all too easy to conclude thatthere are a numberof omission of othersin theirrespective catalogues. It turnsout rival and alternativeconceptions, but, even within the early also in the way in which those catalogues are ordered, in Westerntradition, no single core conception. which items are rankedas relativelycentral to humanexcel- The case for such a conclusion could not be better con- lence and which marginal. structedthan by beginningfrom a considerationof the very Moreover the relationshipof virtues to the social order differentlists of items which different authorsin different has changed. For Homer the paradigmof humanexcellence times and places have included in their catalogues of vir- is the warrior;for Aristotle it is the Athenian gentleman. tues. Let me recall some of the key features of some of Indeedaccording to Aristotlecertain virtues are only availa- these catalogues-Homer's, Aristotle'sand the New Testa- ble to those of great riches and of high social status;there ment's-and then introduce for further comparison Ben- are virtues which are unavailableto the poor man, even if jamin Franklinand Jane Austen. he is a free man. And those virtues are on Aristotle'sview ones centralto human once The first example is that of Homer. At least some of the life; magnanimity-and again, translationof is items in a Homeric list of the aretai would clearly not be any megalopsuchia unsatisfactory-and munificence are not but virtues counted by most of us nowadaysas virtues at all, physical just virtues, important within the Aristotelianscheme. strengthbeing the most obvious example. To this it might At once it is to the remarkthat the most be replied that perhapswe ought not to translatethe word impossible delay contrastwith Aristotle's is to be found arete in Homer by our word 'virtue,' but instead by our striking catalogues neither in Homer's nor in our but in the New Testa- word 'excellence';and perhaps,if we were so to translateit, own, ment's. For the New Testamentnot virtues of the apparentlysurprising difference between Homer and only praises which Aristotleknows and love-and ourselves would at first sight have been removed. For we nothing-faith, hope aboutvirtues such as which are cru- could allow without any kind of oddity that the possession says nothing phronesis cial for but it at least one as a of physical strengthis the possession of an excellence. But Aristotle, praises quality seems to count as one of the vices in fact we would not have removed, but instead would virtue which Aristotle relativeto Moreover,since merely have relocated, the difference between Homer and magnanimity,namely humility. the New Testamentquite clearly sees the rich as destined for the pains of Hell, it is clear thatthe key virtuescannot be ALASDAIR MACINTYRE is Henry Luce Professor in the Philos- availableto them; yet they are availableto slaves. And the ophy Department at Wellesley College. This article, which is New Testamentof course differs from both Homer and Ar- with the the author and the University of reprinted permission of istotle not only in the items included in its catalogue, but Notre Dame Press, is excerptedfrom Chapter 14 of After Virtue: once in its rank orderingof the virtues. A Study in Moral Theory and contains only a preliminary ac- again count of the concept of a virtue, an account which is extended Turn now to compareall three lists of virtues considered elsewhere in the book. Copyright ? 1980 Alasdair Maclntyre. so far-the Homeric, the Aristotelian,and the New Testa- The HastingsCenter 27 ment's-with two much later lists, one which can be com- does becomes intelligible at once when we recognize that piled from Jane Austen's novels and the other which the key virtues thereforemust be those which enable a man Benjamin Franklinconstructed for himself. Two features to excel in combatand in the games. We cannotidentify the stand out in Jane Austen's list. The first is the importance Homeric virtuesuntil we have first identifiedthe key social that she allots to the virtue which she calls 'constancy'.In roles in Homeric society and the requirementsof each of some ways constancyplays a role in JaneAusten analogous them. The concept of what anyonefilling such-and-sucha to that ofphronesis in Aristotle;it is a virtue the possession role ought to do is priorto the concept of a virtue;the latter of which is a prerequisitefor the possession of othervirtues. concept has applicationonly via the former. The second is the fact that what Aristotletreats as the virtue of agreeableness (a virtue for which he says there is no name) she treats as only the simulacrumof a genuine vir- And Hector killed a tue-the virtuein Periphetes, Mycenaean, genuine questionis the one she calls ami- son . .the son the ability. For the man who practices agreeablenessdoes so of Kopreus. outstripped fa- from considerationsof honour and expediency, according ther in every kind of virtue, in swiftness of to Aristotle; whereas Jane Austen thought it possible and foot and as a soldier and he ranked high necessary for the possessor of the virtue to have a certain the his real affection for people as such. (It mattershere that Jane among Mycenaeansfor understanding. Austen is a Christian.)Remember that Aristotle himself had Homer, Iliad XV 638-643 treated military courage as a simulacrumof true courage. Thus we find here yet anothertype of disagreementover the virtues;namely, one as to which human qualities are gen- On Aristotle's account matters are very different. Even uine virtues and which mere simulacra. though some virtues are available only to certain types of In BenjaminFranklin's list we find almost all the types of people, none the less virtuesattach not to men as inhabiting differencefrom at least one of the other catalogueswe have social roles, but to man as such. It is the telos of man as a considered and one more. Franklinincludes virtues which species which determineswhat humanqualities are virtues. are new to our considerationsuch as cleanliness, silence We need to remember however that although Aristotle and industry;he clearly considersthe drive to acquireitself treatsthe acquisitionand exercise of the virtues as means to a partof virtue, whereasfor most ancientGreeks this is the an end, the relationshipof means to end is internaland not vice of pleonexia; he treatssome virtues which earlierages external.I call a means internalto a given end when the end had consideredminor as major;but he also redefinessome cannotbe adequatelycharacterized independently of a char- familiarvirtues. In the list of thirteenvirtues which Franklin acterizationof the means.