Saturday, November 12, 2016


289. Multiple causality of virtues

In a politics of virtue, which values and virtues are to be held in common, and which are to be left to individual choice? If we want to go beyond the negative freedom of being left alone, to include positive freedom for developing and realizing one’s choice of the good life, what competencies and conditions are required, and which corresponding values and virtues? Which are of public and which only of private concern?

In this blog I have employed the multiple causality of action proposed by Aristotle (items 96 – 100). Would that help here as well?

To recall: Aristotle distinguished the following causes: efficient (agency), final (goals), material (means), formal (method, competence, technology), conditional (surrounding conditions surrounding), and exemplary (role models). What is the scope of one’s agency: what room does one have to act, what does one want, what does one need for it in means and method, what are external conditions, and what are good examples to follow?

There, the question would then be: which values or virtues belong to what causes, of action, and to what extent are they public or private?

For agency (efficient cause), the question is whether one is recognized as a legitimate agent, without discrimination, say. That is a public issue of justice, connected to human rights. But it is also a private issue, with the virtue of taking responsibility for one’s actions. 

The final cause is the choice one makes for the good life. That is a private issue, though developed in human relations, in the course of developing one’s identity. It requires the virtue of courage to make a choice and stand by it, with commitment and perseverance. A minimum of courage is needed, but some people more than others relish risk and restlessness, in their striving for excellence, excitement, creative destruction, or adventure. That is fine, provided that it pursues positive, not negative power, as a matter of justice. Other people attach more value to composure, equilibrium, peace of mind. In Nietzschean terms: more Dionysus or more Apollo.  

What is fitting, viable, or desirable, depends on talent, age, stage of development, being single or not, having children or not, the environment one lives in. Different activities have different standards of excellence. What is shared depends on groups. People congregate to share more values or virtues.

I think virtues are dynamic, in a double sense. They change as one develops, and they are needed to achieve development.  

For positive freedom one needs access to what is needed for choosing and realizing the good life, in terms of means (material cause) and competence (formal). Those are in large part a public issue, with sufficient income and housing as a material need, and access to education, schooling, for the formal cause. That is part of social justice.

The conditional cause is the most complicated, in a mix of private and public. It entails legal institutions, ensuring justice. That includes assurance of negative freedom, with constraints on one’s freedom for the sake of the freedom of others, but with a minimum of meddling, control, imposition, constraint. That entails the virtue of moderation and self-restraint, and, again, a matter of taking responsibility.

But since the human is socially constituted, conditions should not only constrain but also enable it in the pursuit of the good life. For that it needs individual values and virtues for human interaction. But institutions also should enable interaction, in competencies for collaboration. This is both a public and a private issue. It is an important part of education, schooling, formation, which should include critical reflection, formation of identity, expression, and social responsibility and capability.

All this requires capabilities and virtues of empathy, patience, openness, willingness to listen, courage to exercise voice, in making and accepting criticism, friendship in the form of philia, in projects with shared interests, with mutual commitment and loyalty, balancing interests of self and other. This requires moderation, and attachment not only of instrumental value to relationships but also intrinsic value. Here we find the old ethical principle of never using people only as means but also as ends in themselves. It requires an ability to engage in contests and accept losing them.  

The core capability here is that of ‘voice’. That requires the virtue of reflection, being reasonable, and the ability to weigh often incommensurable or even conflicting values and virtues, depending on specific circumstances of specific individuals, and to debate the dilemma’s.

That is difficult to do well, and people who are proficient in it serve as role models, in the exemplary cause.       

No comments:

Post a Comment