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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.
Well, I think it’s possible to prove whose intuitions are right and whose are clouded by incorrect biases. Sometimes it’s possible to show that an intuition may be folly based on an experiment. Now, a particular person may not be convincible, but that’s not the same as there being no way to tell who’s right.
Perhaps. I would be interested to see an example. (I don’t think the Milgram experiment disproved anyone’s intuition, but it certainly shows that moral intuition can be subjugated to an authority figure, which is one of the risks I have been trumpeting about “virtue conservatism” throughout this thread.)
I will say this: The fact that a particular intuitive premise is universal, or nearly so, does not necessarily make it right, but it does make it damn useful.
Yes, I would say the Milgram experiment should give us strong suspicions about our intuition to obey authority figures, or that some central authority is necessary or good.
Except that there’s very little that’s common about intution. Slavery, genocide, theft, rape – there are instances throughout history (and today) where these things are not widely considered to be unconditionally wrong, where instead of referring to them in these morally judgmental terms they might be referred to with neutral (killing, taking, sex) or even morally positive terms (defending, avenging, incorporating, winning).
After 2000 years of Christian Western Civilization, the intuition installed by it is still largely in place, though crumbling daily. I think it can be difficult to separate genuine factory default intuition (if any) from the effects of any upgrades.
The upgrades are correct though. They always were true, and many people throughout history felt empathy, but for one reason or another it was pushed out of most. It’s hard to hold fast to eternal intuitive truths when you’re starving or in constant fear of death and you can’t count on anyone around you having empathy for you.
I agree with this statement with one modification: people have consistently been happier when they are left free to pursue their happiness in their own way – within limits, some established by the community, some established by religion, some established by their own intuitions and experiences.
I think it’s pretty obvious that isolation does not lead to happiness. I think it’s pretty obvious that anarchy does not lead to happiness. I think it’s pretty obvious that Whittaker Chambers’ line is true:
The trouble with this in our system is that the central authority (I assume you mean pretty much any governmental unit) is not some wholly separate entity apart from the governed that simply imposes its will independent of any of the checks, balances, levers, controls, inputs, available to the governed in our system.
Correct on what basis? Why do you get to claim that your intuition is correct while mine is wrong? Why do we get to claim that our code is progress while the Egyptian’s code was wrong? The answer is not some objective or self evident reality, but the necessity of having to pick something and having to impose that to some degree on the world around you in order to live any kind of fulfilling and meaningful life. I happen to think there should be plenty of room for competing visions to coexist; libertarians to a greater degree and progressives to a lesser degree. I’m afraid we’re no closer to removing the subjectivity and element of imposition from any of these questions.
Does that include the nearly universal view throughout history that the individual is subject to the community in ways you’d find abhorrent? That the individual is not some wholly separate entity choosing to occasionally go into town and agree to follow the town rules, but is instead an embedded part of a community from the start?
I should have kept my mouth shut and continued to lurk because I’ll be detained by work obligations and I won’t be able to respond or even check back in regularly. so sorry for the hit and run (though I think for those remaining on the thread these points of disagreement aren’t new or surprising ground).
Moral intuition can also be subjugated to biology. To pleasure. To peer pressure. To necessity. To spirituality.
It’s plausible to me that moral intuition is forged and shaped by these things rather than simply constrained by them.
Moral reasoning is difficult. It’s taken millennia to get where were are now. You bring up hypothetical disagreements about intuition in general as if it’s on the table that the Egyptian code is correct. This type of argument feels like nihilism. (oh right, now I recognize that tree.) When we have actual disagreements about moral conclusions we can argue about which one is right. We agree about so much it feels a little strange arguing about some vague theoretical disagreement.
If we have a specific disagreement, we could see if intuitions we agree about might lead us one way or another. But there are no guarantees that we can reconcile our differences, even if one of us is in fact correct. Humans are hard headed, myself included.
Lots of things are plausible.
Yes. I’m skeptical, as well.
Ed, I guess you are never going to accept that there is a difference between a community of individuals who voluntarily join together, by choice, based on common interests and purposes; and a group that is subservient to a central authority, without their consent. You want to think that everyone who believes in libertarian principles is Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. I can’t persuade you otherwise, but Wow! are you ever mistaken.
That’s interesting Owen, because you are the one who has been arguing for a “rights-based” system of morality. Where do those “rights” come from, if not moral intuition? It is because moral intuition is fallible, and because we do not always agree on it, that I think it is insufficient to proclaim certain “rights,” and let everything sort itself out from there. Don’t get me wrong. Rights are good. I like rights. I love rights. But I don’t think that is the end of the story.
I’m thinking….
I’m [referencing my intuition]… ;)
Of course I accept a difference between these things.
Hee-hee. But, seriously, I’m skeptical that intuition alone can point to something objective. If I intuit X, and hope to persuade others of its validity, don’t I have a responsibility to find a more reliable way to support X? And then, if I can do that, the intuition may have pointed the way to X, but is not the reason others should embrace X.
(Or, <sigh>, maybe that’s what you guys have been doing since you first locked horns. And, perhaps I don’t have as rich an understanding of what you mean by “intuition” either.)
Well might Owen respond of your view, Larry:
Where does belief in the importance of happiness come from, save intuition? It is because moral intuition is fallible, and because we do not always agree on it, that I think it is insufficient to proclaim the importance of “happiness,” and let everything sort itself out from there.
But perhaps this would be an unfair description of your view. (And perhaps yours was an unfair description of Owen’s.)
Applesauce and jiggery-pokery. If it’s true, there is nothing more useful. This objection only works if it’s false, which you deem yourself unable to argue, and so you can’t make an objection based on usefulness.
If you really think this then, despite your protestations that you know my views and Rachel Lu’s and genferei’s and Aristotle’s so well as to be able to dispute them, you have never understood them at all.
I’ve told you several things in fact, but you seem not to have noticed them.
You actually described it as a first principle, as “obvious and self-evident.” But no matter; some first principle must lurk behind this assessment, as previously explained.
I think you may be trying to cheat again: Experience can tell us what lungs do well, and the conclusion derives that Lungs have a function in terms of which they can be evaluated as properly or improperly functioning lungs. You ignore the fact that the empirical facts entail no evaluative information, but appeal to that fact to reject the existence of a function for the human.
Less importantly, this objection is useless. The number of things done by a thing with a function is irrelevant. The brain has a function, despite doing a great deal more than the lungs.
Poor reasoning again. Lungs do things not according to their function. (It’s why I’ve taken so much albuterol.) You know what behavior is according to its function and what behavior is improper function. So you can’t appeal to this sort of thing when it comes to the function of the human person.
You’re changing the subject. The point here, which you evaded, was that there was content both included in and referenced by my responses–and that they are thus circularity.
In any case, this objection manifests poor reasoning unless you are prepared to object in similar fashion to knowledge of healthy behaviors, basing your objection on all the gray areas between healthy and unhealthy eating, sleeping, drinking, exercising, etc.
You’ve managed to completely evade the point of comment # 473, which is that you have already embraced the entire methodology of Aristotelian ethics. You’ve approved of the reasoning from start to finish, leaving only one premise unaffirmed.
And this premise is one you cannot tell me is false, and you have steadfastly refused to say that it is any less rational or reasonable than your own premises, saying only that it is not intuitively obvious.
Meanwhile, it (or whatever first principle it’s based on if it is itself a second or third principle) is to me a perfectly obvious intuition, on a par with your intuition regarding the function of lungs (or whatever first principle it is based on).
Auggie, Your last several comments have gone so far off the rails that I don’t have much of an idea how to respond. You have attributed several positions to me. Every one of them is totally wrong. I don’t mind you getting it wrong in your own positions. But I do object to you wrongly attributing wrong positions to me.
On the subject of your assertion that there “is such a thing as human nature,” I stand by my claim that this statement is absolutely useless. It becomes useful only when you use it as a Christmas tree on which to start hanging various attributes of “human nature” (attributes which you call “virtues”). You say I don’t understand the purpose of the assertion that there “is such a thing as human nature.” I have an understanding of it, and you have said nothing that disabuses me of my understanding. The purpose is to allow you to smuggle any prejudice or prediliction you want into your theory of ethics, by your unsubstantiated claim that it is a “virtue.”
It’s ridiculous. You have given no definition of “virtue.” You give only examples. In fact, you don’t even give many examples. You mostly just say, “go look it up in Aristotle.” You give no test for determining whether a particular behavior is virtuous. And even the examples you give fall apart at a glance. Courage is a virtue; rashness is a vice. But, standing alone, they are indistinguishable.
Now a word about “function.” I determine the function of a thing objectively, by observing what it does or how it is used. In my world, the “function” is not inherent in the “nature” of the thing.
You (and Aristotle), on the other hand, want to argue that there is a “nature” of the thing, and that the nature determines the function of that thing. Hence, your insistence on the proposition that “there is such a thing as human nature.” You want to claim that there is such a thing a the “nature” of a human, and this nature determines the proper functioning of a human.
Now I offered to assume, arguendo, that there is such a thing as human nature, just to see where you would go with it. You went nowhere. So I will admit, my offer was not really honest. It was, very much, arguendo. I do not accept the proposition that anything has a “nature.” Not people. Not lungs. Not rocks, or trucks, or pianos. Nothing. And if there was a “nature” to anything, I reject the proposition that you have the capacity to discern that nature. And if you could discern that nature, I reject the proposition that the nature of the thing determines its function. And if the nature of the thing did determine its function, I reject the proposition that it could do so in a normative way.
(Continued)
So don’t tell me, please, that I have one foot in the door of accepting your analysis. I reject it utterly, and at every step. And you have said nothing to justify it. Nothing at all. Even Aristotle never really tried to justify it. He just takes it as a given. If you are aware of something Aristotle wrote that might persuade me that things have a “nature,” or any of the other steps in your analysis, then by all means quote it to me. Maybe I missed it.
I have said that we can have a meaningful conversation based on intuitively obvious premises that we agree upon. The Aristotalian “nature” analysis is not such a premise. To me at least, it is not intuitively obvious. It is, in fact, intuitively ridiculous. There is nothing you can say about the “nature” of anyone or anything that is not (in my opinion) just a subjective and unsupported assertion on your part.
I have said that premises are necessarily intuitive and beyond proof. But that is not an open invitation to make up any subjective assertion you want, and call it a premise. Because I have also said that premises must be mutually agreed-upon. Which is why I limit myself to premises that are universally accepted, or nearly so. Premises like “human happiness is good.”
The premise you have offered, “there is such a thing as human nature” is not in the same ballpark. Sure, that statement could easily be mistaken for an assertion that people have certain tendencies, both individually and collectively, both good and bad. I don’t think that’s a premise. It’s just an observation. But you and I both know that this is not what you mean by human nature.