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A VirtuCon Manifesto
That’s a VirtuCon manifesto, not the VirtuCon manifesto. I suspect there are more visions of how virtue theory and conservatism could interact than there are actual VirtuCons. This rough first draft is a contribution to the conversation Rachel Lu rekindled last week — see Tom Meyer’s response and the conversation that followed it as well — about what an emphasis on virtue means for other parts of the conservative worldview.
Please note: The word “virtue” has recently (in the last century or so) undergone something of a change in meaning. The “virtue” in virtue theory harks back to the older meaning. Do not be misled by this choice of vocabulary, imposed by some 2,000 years of philosophical reflection.
- There is such a thing as human nature.
- There is such a thing as a form of life that promotes human flourishing. In the past this was also referred to as “happiness.”
- Virtues are those habits of character that tend to human flourishing. In the past, the development of these habits was also referred to as “the pursuit of happiness.”
- Virtues are not general understandings, but the application of general understandings to particular cases. This is known as practical wisdom.
- The virtues are inculcated in childhood through the enforcement of rules, in adulthood through deliberative practice, and in both stages of life through example. Enforcement by — and examples found in — family, local church, and one’s immediate community are better (more effective) than those enforced by or demonstrated in more distant institutions.
- Politics is an important area of human flourishing. Real participation in the life of a community requires that the rules and norms of that community are decided by its members, not imposed from afar.
- For these reasons, virtue requires a “hard” subsidiarity, where power is (sparingly) delegated upwards from the local to the general polity. (This contrasts with ‘soft’ subsidiarity, where the higher power delegates downwards, but always maintains real control, usually disguised as “support”).
- In the past, this was also referred to as “liberty.”
- Poverty, ignorance, and dishonour are the enemies of virtue. All three are opposed by the voluntary institution of the free market. Free markets create wealth, spread knowledge, and do not require social position to succeed. A free market requires the exercise of virtues, and assists in promoting them.
- In the past, this was also referred to as “life.”
- The realization of a continent-spanning republic amenable to human flourishing is a daunting task, but it requires an exquisite modesty. Fortunately, that modesty is the sure route to success, eschewing all temptation to tyranny. We need only have regard to three things:
- Life – adequate means of existence, provided by the voluntary interactions of persons making choices in a condition of freedom.
- Liberty – the room to learn and grow in practical wisdom.
- The pursuit of happiness – the exercise of wisdom and the road to human flourishing.
Agreed, except that it seems everything is subject to endless disagreement so all foundations for building a reasoned argument are poor. Yet life necessitates that we build reasoned arguments on some foundation nonetheless.
I think you are being unfair to yourself Ed. You make some good points, and certainly present some novel views. I just think that some of your threads of thought are left incomplete, because you haven’t followed them all the way to a defensible conclusion.
Sure. Nevertheless, some foundations are stronger than others. I am suspicious of premises that allow one to sneak one’s one predilictions and prejudices into an argument, disguised as something else. I think that making pronouncements that “thus and such” is a part of human nature is an open invitation to such self-deception. I agree that perfect answers to these questions are beyond human capacity, but we ought not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. So let us look for strong, even if not perfect, foundations for our thinking.
Thank you, but don’t get me wrong: I have an ego and I’m pretty confident in myself generally, certainly in my powers of criticism. I suspect that in the weeds we’ve been chatting in, defensible is still a relative term and “incomplete” is the inherent nature of things.
Nice remarks. I didn’t notice anything for me to object to or any need to add to in this string of remarks!
Indeed, one learns little if anything from the mere existence of human nature. That’s why the great commentators on human nature (including Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Aquinas, and MacIntyre) go to such wonderful lengths explaining the characteristics of that nature.
So we have an agreement here (amongst these philosophers, Larry, and myself), and it is something like this: IF there is no available knowledge of human nature, THEN the notion of human nature does us no good.
Is the IF clause true?
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Here’s Larry’s objection to the IF clause:
Aristotle suggests one response: We can only expect as much clarity from ethics as the subject matter admits of. When we study ethics we are studying the the health of the soul, or the proper functioning of the whole human person. And we take that human person to be one dwelling in community with others. (For the nearest contemporary approximation not coming from folks steeped in the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition, see positive psychology.)
Spiritual/psychological and social flourishing, like biological flourishing, is understood according to generalizations.
Mrs. Augustine’s father seems pretty healthy eating a ton of protein; I could do ok on a tenth of the meat and thrice the potatoes. Medical science has to cope with a zillion other “particular characteristic[s],” “individual prediliction[s]”, and “peculiarit[ies.” Yet medical knowledge is real, and there’s a lot of it.
The same is possible for knowledge of human nature.
We could also look to C. S. Lewis for a response. Specifically, in The Abolition of Man he speaks for Greek, Roman, Hindu, Confucian, Hebrew, medieval European, and Englightenment European civilizations and finds significant agreement on human nature.
Well, I guess Aristotle and I certainly have a problem there. (One of many, many problems I have with Aristotle.) Because when I study ethics, that is not at all what I am studying. First of all, I wouldn’t have a clue how to examine even the existence of the human soul, much less its “health.” And second, I don’t have any idea what the phrase “proper functioning of the whole human person” might mean. Nor do I think that Aristotle, or you, or anyone else, has any idea what that phrase might mean.
When I phrase a question, I try to phrase it so that it is susceptible of being answered. At least theoretically, if nothing else. But I don’t see how these questions could ever be answered by anyone, other than through unsupported assertions of someone’s own opinions and prejudices.
How, exactly, do you go about measuring the health of someone’s soul, Auggie? I mean, is there a multiple choice test, or something?
Despite the fact that it invites endless disagreements about its exact definition, I find reasoning about “human nature” very helpful in figuring out how to act towards others as one citizen among many. Of course, in this capacity, I don’t risk imposing any errors I make about human nature on the whole populace. A government does.
Midge, I’ll stick with trying to behave in ways that increase happiness and decrease suffering. That, at least, I can measure. Measure imperfectly, but at least I kind of think I can recognize happiness and suffering when I see it. But “human nature”? Even if I knew what human nature was, I don’t think it would be a very good guide on how to behave.
Interesting. I think rights talk is clear and bright; you seem to think it muddies the waters. Here’s why I think it’s clear:
Properly understood, natural/individual rights belong to all adults (some subset to children). And, they can’t be self-contradictory. Person A has no natural or individual right to anything person B has to produce, e.g., since that would violate/contradict person B’s right. Natural/individual rights are only the so-called negative rights.
I can’t help it if liberals/leftists/progressives have corrupted the language with the silly notion of “positive rights”.
(Or, did I misunderstand your point, as I sometimes do?)
But how do you know what steps to take to increase happiness or decrease suffering until you have some ideas of how humans work?
Commonplace observations about the psychology of ordinary people, for example, are observations about human nature. It needn’t be rocket science, or even high philosophy. Knowledge of human nature can be as simple as observing that people – especially men and older people – prefer to back down during conflicts in ways that save them face, and may just dig in their heels if they don’t see a way to back down without saving face; or that men and women do tend to treat sex differently.
Some people have great intentions, but poor understanding about how the people around them work. These people tend to lessen their own or others’ happiness, suggesting that such understanding is instrumental to achieving happiness.
I’m in agreement with all of that. But if I know what makes my wife happy, I don’t care whether it’s human nature or just her nature. Just so it makes her happy.
Psychology is one thing, and a valuable thing at that, but I don’t think that’s what Auggie has been talking about when he brings up human nature.
Agreed. Especially when we know a person well, we address their nature in particular. For people we know less well, we fill in with what we have already learned about “human nature” until we find out specifics.
I wonder… Shouldn’t psychology, rightly understood, address human nature?
Naturally. (See parenthetical remark # 426.)
I’m not criticizing psychology at all. And it certainly should tell us something about people, of course. That’s its function. But as I understand Auggie, his version of “human nature” refers to something like an owner’s manual for a human life. He’s not talking about understanding how people do think and behave, but rather about how they should think and behave. That is the question posed by ethics, to be sure. But Auggie is suggesting that there is something intrinsic to the human being that answers that question.
There is some truth to the proposition. By of example, most of us have learned that we will get better outcomes in our lives if we take personal responsibility for what happens to us, and that we will get worse outcomes if we think of ourselves as helpless victims of external forces which we cannot control. As an empirical observation, or as a matter of psychology, that is almost always true. At least, that is my conclusion. My personal belief and prejudice. And so I choose to live my life that way. I’m perfectly happy to discuss such insights on a case by case basis. But such insights derive from experience.
As I see it, saying that people will be happier if they take personal responsibility is empirically true. But what Auggie would want to say (assuming he agrees with me on this point) is that “human nature” requires people to take responsibility. It doesn’t. In fact, “human nature” as you are using that term (i.e., as a descriptive rather than normative term) certainly includes a tendency to make excuses and avoid responsibility.
So, in short, if we evaluate behavior as an empirical matter, judging behavior by the results it produces (and, more specifically, by whether it leads to happiness or suffering), then I think we can produce some valuable insights. If, however, we start by claiming as a first principle that there is such a thing as human nature, and then start making pronouncements about what human nature requires of us, it is my opinion that we are merely obscuring the actual basis for our judgments.
Larry3435, how does one know the difference between a healthy soul and an unhealthy–between a flourishing life and one that isn’t flourishing?
Stay close to the medical analogy when studying Aristotle: How do you know the difference between a healthy body and an unhealthy?
Consider a healthy lung and a tarry lung. You can list all the empirical data about them in two separate columns. But how can you look at one list and say “This lung is better than the other?” That judgment can only be made in one of three ways:
I think it’s safe to say that Aristotle will be thorough and take all three approaches.
And the same applies to human lives: Substitute “life” for “lung;” “wise, courageous, moderate, and just” for “healthy;” and “foolish, cowardly, indulgent, and unjust” for “tarry;” and everything else will turn out the same.
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Now it was a pleasure to defend you, Larry, from what I took to be an unnecessary critique. I hope I did a good job of it!
But now I must be frank and firm. In the foregoing, whichever way one goes, one must accept at least one first principle without evidence.
Now you speak of “unsupported assertions of someone’s own opinions and prejudices.” You even say that your adherence to the principle that happiness is good is “an act of irrational faith.”
Yet you also claim that your first principle is “obvious and self-evident” and say we should “look for . . . strong foundations for our thinking.”
So which is it? Are first principles believed without evidence thus to be deemed irrational? Or are first principles the foundations of rational thought precisely because they are rational first principles?
You see, our irreconcilable epistemological differences really do matter. More precisely, you seem to have irreconcilable epistemological differences with yourself. And those differences matter, for you seem to be touting the obviousness and self-evidence of your own first principle–which lacks evidential support. And you seem to be charging another man’s first principle with being a subjective (and thus unimportant) preference–precisely because it lacks evidential support.
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Much more consistent and edifying is C. S. Lewis:
They must simply be accepted: as both true and rational. (For goodness’ sake, if empirical knowledge depends on true and rational first principles, so can moral knowledge.)
(You know, I lost a whole lot of text back there. I hope I didn’t say anything stupid as a result. At least it was more concise when I rewrote it. Providential, perhaps.)
Right! Aristotle!
I am not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that I think some reality intrinsic to the human being provides the answer to the question posed by ethics? (Or that something intrinsic to all humans knows the answer? Or something else?)
Has no one yet told you that Aristotle is an empiricist? (On which, see above.)
Auggie, C’mon now. Stop hiding behind Aristotle; come out and defend your position yourself. Namedropping philosophers is not an argument. I read Aristotle in high school. I thought he was mostly wrong then, and I think he was mostly wrong now. Aristotle said that if you drop a rock it falls to Earth because it was in the “nature” of a rock to fall to Earth. That is a good example of how ridiculously wrong one’s thinking can go if one starts explaining things by appeals to their nature.
Regarding “rational first premises,” we’ve gone through that in detail. I have explained how I use the word “rational.” You conceded (I think) that my usage was one legitimate way to use the word. You want to use that same word to mean something additional. I use it to mean a belief derived from reason based on sound but unprovable premises and empirical evidence. You use it to mean a belief that is either (a) derived from reason; or (b) justified or warranted, through some process that I don’t understand. (Even after reading Plantinga, I don’t understand it. The premise is either self-evident, or it isn’t. Nothing Planginga says adds anything to that dichotomy, so far as I can tell.) I prefer to use words with precision. Using the same word to mean two entirely different things is the opposite of precision. It is fuzzy thinking. I reject your approach.
Now, about “human nature.” If that’s where you are going, I really don’t see why you have bothered. We started out talking about “virtue.” About “virtue conservatism.” If you want a fuzzy-thinking word that gives you the opportunity to make unsupported assertions, that are not self-evident, about how humans ought to behave, then you had might as well have just stuck with “virtue,” instead of taking the long way around to “human nature.” Either one of those terms gives you free rein to make any unsupported assertions you want. Saying that behavior X is “virtuous” is no more or less persuasive than saying that behavior X is “consistent with human nature.” Either approach is just a way to import your own personal predilictions and prejudices into the argument.
So if that is your goal, let’s stop with the preliminaries and get to it. I’ll concede, for the sake of moving the discussion along, that there is such a thing as human nature. So the next step is for you to list those attributes that you believe comprise human nature. What ya got?
One more thing, Auggie. I think your lung analogy is far off base. Unlike a soul, I can see a lung. I can biopsy it (or, at least, someone with a medical license can biopsy it). I can X-ray it. I can examine it at autopsy. You can’t do any of that with a soul. You can’t see it, touch it, or even prove that it is there.
More importantly, we can agree that the function of a lung is to extract oxygen from the air and deliver it to the blood stream of an organism. That is clear enough to be self-evident. I doubt we could reach such agreement on the function of a soul. A lung is healthy if it is capable of performing its oxygen-extracting function properly. There is no equivalent test for whether a soul is healthy.
I was. I follow Aristotle some (though I have problems of my own with him.) And I don’t follow him in physics, but in ethics (and sometimes metaphysics).
I wasn’t giving an argument with all the Aristotle stuff: just responding to your objection.
Indeed, your sense of “rational” is fine; that’s not the issue. The issue is that you refuse to recognize number 1 from the dictionary, or any other definition that would allow an “obvious and self-evident” first principle to be “rational.”
I don’t think I’ve done that even once! You’re confusing a (partial) definition of knowledge with a definition of rationality; for the latter, see my repeated references to the dictionary.
Naturally! He is terribly unclear, unless you’re going to read a couple of thousand pages of him. If you want to understand him, read someone who did that reading. You could read me; I overview Plantingian warrant on the empiricism thread, and I have a published article on the guy.
Or you could forget about Plantinga. But please don’t object to his ideas (whether in his writings or mine) without understanding them.
You misunderstand my goals, as usual. Now since my thinking on human nature is modeled after Aristotle primarily (with assistance from MacIntyre et al), would you mind answering some questions about Aristotle:
I hardly see any point in moving the discussion past Square 1 when Square 1 is such a muddle.
–CUT–
After writing some preliminaries on this, I realized I’d already said plenty about the attributes of human nature and can thus repeat, staying within the bounds of basic Aristotelianism. Here it is: The proper function of “the whole human person . . . dwelling in community with others” is to live by the virtues of courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom, along with some other virtues (such as those listed in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, though my own list of virtues wouldn’t be identical to his).
No need to overly-Platonize Aristotle! Forget the soul if you have no use for the idea. You can certainly know about “the whole human person . . . dwelling in community with others.” That’s plenty for getting the basics of Aristotle down.
Would you go so far as to say that this is a description of the lung’s nature–referring to, as previously explained, numbers 8, 10, and 18 from the dictionary?
#1 Obviously. Haven’t I said so?
#2 Lots of them.
#3 I base my ethics on a proposition that I believe is a self-evident truth. That human happiness is good, and human suffering is bad. Since you have agreed with that proposition, we can have a rational discussion. As I have said many times, there can be no rational discussion between parties who do not agree on first principles.
Like the Founders of our Republic, I rely on first premises which I believe are self-evident. I admit, this is an act of faith. I try to be very open and honest about my own acts of faith. I do not cover them up with convoluted reasoning that is intended to obscure the underlying faith-based acceptance of those principles, or recharacterize them as “rational.” But I readily admit that if someone does not agree with my first principles, then there is no basis for further rational discussion.
So, you claim to have some first principles. Let’s see if they are self-evident…
Okay, are these asserted “virtues” supposed to be self-evident? You list “courage” first among your list of virtues. Is “prudence” also a virtue? You would say, I assume, that the opposite of courage is cowardice. Is the opposite of prudence “foolhardiness”? Or “arrogance”? Or “stupidity”? Personally, I would say that charging a grizzly bear armed with nothing but a pocketknife is courageous. But also foolhardy, arrogant, and stupid. Is charging the grizzly bear an act of virtue? Was Alexander courageous to try to conquer the entire world on behalf of tiny Macedonia? What about Caesar? Genghis Khan? Hitler?
Or to put it slightly differently, I do not see how your claim that “courage” is a virtue has any meaning whatsoever, taken without context. Courage can be a virtue or a vice, depending on the context. Courage can be used in service of good or evil, depending on the context. Making a generalized assertion that “courage is a virtue,” without any context, is far from self-evident. Far from “rational.” And, as I see it, far from true.
A softball question for Aristotle: No, it’s the vice of rashness. (The virtue of courage is closer to that vice than it is to the vice of cowardice, however.)
Another softball question (for me). I have a published article on these matters: Courage is, strictly speaking, a virtue only in the presence of wisdom enough to know what sort of matters one should be courageous.
(This is called the idea of “the unity of the virtues.” The thesis is variously formulated: Some formulations will allow for the imperfect character trait you describe to be called “courage,” and some won’t; some will say it’s simply vicious, and some will treat it as a sort of corruption of courage or imitation of courage; etc.)