Virtue and Enkrateia-Issue XII

VOX - The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

VIRTUE AND ENKRATEIA

By James Hodgson

W

HAT IS THE PLACE OF SELF-CONTROL IN ARIISTOTLE’S ETHICAL

system? It is tempting to assume that all theories of morality must award their highest honours to the showing of self-restraint – especially those theories of the ancient world, where the character traits of self-control and toleration were rarely displayed. As we shall see however, the highest form of moral character in Aristotle’s virtue ethics is that which no longer has any need of self-control.

Aristotle divides the virtues into those relating to the part of the soul which reasons (intellectual virtue) and those relating to the part which is guided by reason (moral virtue). Our discussion is confined to moral virtue.

Aristotle defines moral virtue as neither a pathos (passion or emotion) nor a faculty (the capacity to feel emotions), but rather a hexis (state or disposition).

The genus of moral virtue, then, is a state of character – that is, a disposition to experience emotion in a certain way. Aristotle explicates this in the differentia of moral virtue: it is a state of character in which emotions are experienced according to an intermediate or mean. That is, a mean which rests between an excess and a deficiency.

We stand well with reference to our 24

emotions, he claims, if we feel them moderately (p.35) . Likewise, we stand badly if we feel them “violently or too weakly” (p.35).

Aristotle is not, however, saying that we should experience our emotions to an intermediate degree in all situations, but to a degree which is appropriate given the particular circumstances. For example, it is inappropriate to experience the same amount of anger towards a trivial slight and an act of murder. Rather, the mean amount of emotion is that which it is appropriate for the agent to feel in the particular situation – neither always becoming enraged, for instance, nor always being a placid and indifferent observer. Moral virtue is not only concerned with how an agent feels emotions however, but also with which actions he performs, and how he performs them. As with virtuously felt emotions, virtuous acts

Issue XII - Summer 2010

are those which correspond to a mean; instead of acting in a cowardly or rash manner, for example, the appropriate act is that which corresponds to an intermediate of courage.

With regard to the relationship between virtuous feeling and virtuous action, and to what is needed for an act to be virtuous, it is useful to consider Aristotle’s account of how a person becomes morally virtuous. People are not born morally virtuous, as “none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature” (p.28). Rather, they arise as a result of habit. Just as one becomes a musician only by practising the playing of music, one who wishes to acquire moral virtue does so by a process of habituation – a result of practising acts displaying a mean. However, it is not enough for an act to display a mean for it to be considered virtuous. Aristotle gives three conditions for the performance of a virtuous act: the agent must have knowledge of the virtuous act, that is, he must know what it is that he is doing; he must “choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes” (p.34), that is, not as a means to some other end; and the act must arise from a “firm and unchangeable character” (p.34), so that the disposition to act virtuously was not merely a passing inclination.

With regards to virtuous actions, consider the following passage from EN II.4: “Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate

man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them” (p.35).

Acting virtuously is conditional upon experiencing the corresponding emotions in a virtuous way.

What Aristotle claims, then, is that actions can only be virtuous when they are done by a virtuous person – that is, acts arising from a settled disposition to act virtuously. The acts by which we become virtuous, therefore, may appear to an external observer to be acts of virtue as they correspond to a mean. However, they are only approximations to virtuous acts, as they are not yet done in a manner which meets the three set conditions. The virtuous act is the one which is performed just as the virtuous person would perform it – that is, emanating from a virtuous state of character. Therefore, acting virtuously is conditional upon experiencing the corresponding emotions in a virtuous way – that is, to perform a virtuous act the agent must actualise his virtuously felt emotions.

We see Aristotle’s virtuous person more clearly if we examine the contrast between the virtuous and the continent, self-controlled person (enkrates). The virtuous agent knows which actions are appropriate, 25

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experiences emotions with respect to a mean, and so chooses the action which corresponds to virtue. The continent man also knows which actions are proper, and acts in accordance with that knowledge; that is, he outwardly acts in the same manner as the virtuous person. He does not, however, enjoy doing so. He does not experience emotion as the virtuous person does, and so he does not act virtuously. His actions are self-enforced, as he knows the proper course of action but would like to act differently – he experiences inner conflict and must exert control over himself if he is to act according to an outwardly virtuous standard.

The virtuous person, however, is without such friction. The act displaying the mean which he performs is virtuous because it is in harmony with his virtuously felt emotions; indeed, it is an actualisation of his emotions.

Moreover, the virtuous person likes and desires to act in this way without reservation. The difference between the virtuous and the self-controlled person, then, is that the virtuous person performs acts corresponding to a virtuous mean because he feels emotions which also correspond to a virtuous mean, and so wants to perform the act and enjoys it; the continent person, however, performs the same acts, but only because he disciplines himself to do so – not from any established disposition to do so.

For example, in a situation which calls for courage, the continent 26

man may be tempted to act in a cowardly or rash manner, but does not because he knows which act is appropriate and so forces himself to perform it, even though he would like to do something else because his emotions are not habituated to a mean. The virtuous man would feel no such temptation, as it would not occur to him to act rashly; he performs the appropriate act of courage because he desires to do so. It is not that he would not experience fear – to do so would be insensible. Rather, he would experience the correct amount of the emotion of fear – an amount which cautions but does not overpower.

In conclusion, for Aristotle, to feel the temptation to cowardice or rashness, even if one acts appropriately, is to expose a defect of character because one’s emotions are not felt virtuously, however praiseworthy one’s actions may be. For Aristotle, therefore, the superior moral character will have risen above the need for self-control.

All references refer to Aristotle (1998) The Nicomachean Ethics Translated

by W.D. Ross (Oxford World’s Classics Edition, Oxford University Press). _____________________________

James Hodgson is a graduate student reading Political Philosophy (The Idea of Toleration) at the University of York.