The Puzzle of Ethics. Peter Vardy
with the moral virtues. Not only is it necessary for us to feel and behave in the right or appropriate manner, but we should also understand and know why it is important that we feel and act in these ways.
Friendship as the main aim of a moral life
Finally, without friendship none of the virtues – either moral or intellectual – would be of any value. For Aristotle, friendship is essential. We are social and political beings.
Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things (p. 258).
A community, a society, a state, any gathering of two or more people presupposes a notion of friendship, and depends upon it. Households, marriages, partnerships, clubs, societies, etc, all depend upon sustaining a forum within which friendships can be fostered and maintained. Again, Aristotle makes the point that:
Friendship also seems to be the bond that holds communities together … (p. 258).
Indeed, friendship is of such primary importance that it comes before justice itself. In fact without friendship there could be no sense of justice. The lawmaker, the lawgiver and the law-enforcer all derive their rationale from acting as the supposed legally-appointed ‘friend’ of everyone in the community, and of ensuring that the community fosters the right conditions under which friendship may flourish.
… lawgivers seem to attach more importance to it than to justice; because concord seems to be something like friendship, and concord is their primary object – that and eliminating faction, which is enmity … indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense (p. 258–9).
Briefly, there are three kinds of friendship, according to Aristotle: based on utility, pleasure and goodness.
Utility friendships are those which are, as the name suggests, simply useful to us. Utility friends are those with whom we find ourselves in company at work, those next to us on the factory assembly line. It is convenient for both parties to engage in pleasant and friendly conversation in order to while away the time whilst doing something tedious and dissatisfying. The friendship is useful in that it is an aid to comfort. Moreover, there may be more than just pleasant mutual gain in the friendship; it may be useful for the completion of a game or a project. For example, it clearly helps if team members do actually get on with each other when a cricket or netball tour is arranged. Or the friendship may be formed deliberately to cater for plain personal need. Here Aristotle cites the elderly as a group who form utility friendships. For example, someone is needed to push the wheelchair or fetch the shopping. Or again, friendship may be sought in order to further one’s own personal advantage. Here it is the middle-aged who actively cultivate utility friendships – perhaps the businessman who purposefully cultivates a friendship with a local bank manager in order to secure a business loan. According to Aristotle, most friendships in the worlds of industry, business and commerce are utility friendships.
Pleasurable or Erotic friendships are slightly better than the first type. Here, friends give us pleasure, and the friendship evolves through feelings and emotions. The relationship is governed more by the heart than by the head. Friends are pleasurable to be with because they may be witty, amusing or attractive. Friendships between the young are generally of this kind. They tend to be impermanent, and are often based on sexual attraction.
Perfect friendships are based on goodness and are obviously the most valuable. Here friends care more about the other person than about themselves. Moreover, it means liking or loving the other person for what she/he is, not for any incidental quality that they might possess, such as beauty. Such friends have similar attributes, and such friendships only occur after a long while. The relationship needs time to develop. According to Aristotle, ‘You cannot get to know each other until you have eaten the proverbial quantity of salt together.’ This apparently is a medimnos or one and a half bushels. In other words, the friends need to share many meals together; mealtimes traditionally being times of social chatting, anecdote-telling and story-swapping. Finally, there are few truly good friendships for there are few truly good people.
Criticisms
According to some scholars (e.g. Ackrill 1981; Lloyd 1968; Taylor 1955), Aristotle’s account of ethics is, in fact, simply a detailed elaboration of a very orthodox Greek view of aristocratic living. It is easy to cultivate the virtues when the mortgage is fully paid up, the children are looked after by a nanny, and one’s inheritance pays for the daily needs and wants. Life for the Athenian (or Macedonian) aristocrat was relatively easy, being purchased with the help of a slave population and an underclass of women.
And so, from a singular and contemporary vantage point it would not be too difficult to savage Aristotle’s entire system by a process of selective analysis. Firstly, he is, through modern eyes, overtly racist. Any non-Greek is likely to be barbarous and sub-human, and therefore, a clear candidate for slavery. Friendships of utility are the only kinds of friendships one could have with ‘a foreigner’. Secondly, Aristotle appears blatantly sexist. He accepts unquestioningly the supposedly natural, paternalistic hierarchy of relationships in which ‘man rules by merit but hands over to his wife such duties as are best suited to her’(!) (p. 276). Thirdly, he is what Singer would call speciesist. Animals exist on an ontological level clearly below humans and barely above plants. ‘Animals have no share in happiness, being completely incapable of such activity’ (p. 333). According to Aristotle, animals cannot be happy because happiness depends upon the exercise of reason in order to pursue the virtuous life. As animals do not possess reason they, therefore, are incapable of achieving any happiness. However, what we now know of animals’ physiology and behaviour leads us to suspect that, to a degree, they can reason about their environment, and often do exhibit many of the signs of being happy. But, as with all issues in philosophy, it rather depends upon the meanings we wish to attach to words, in this case ‘reason’ and ‘happiness’. Fourthly, Aristotle is ageist given his clear dictum that no one would want to befriend the old and the sour-tempered, the one being synonymous with the other. And fifthly, his moral theory is élitist, in that only magnanimous men, honourable politicians and philosophers can truly know and exercise all of the virtues, and are therefore the only ones to appreciate fully the Good Life.
However, such a critique is unfair. Aristotle was ‘culture-bound’ and could not have transcended all of the conceptual constraints of his time and culture. Our criticism must be tempered by historical understanding. Such a defence cuts no ice with Russell, however, who stated:
The book (Ethics) appeals to the respectable middle-aged, and has been used by them, especially since the seventeenth century, to repress the ardours and enthusiasms of the young. But to a man with any depth of feeling it is likely to be repulsive … There is … an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind … do not move him … More generally there is an emotional poverty in the Ethics (B. Russell History of Western Philosophy, p. 195).
Questions for discussion
1 Argue either for or against the view that the moral life consists in ‘feeling the right things at the right times, on the right grounds, towards the right people for the right motive …’
2 What additions, subtractions and/or modifications would you wish to make to Aristotle’s list of intellectual and moral virtues?
3 Is happiness the Supreme Good? If so, in what does happiness consist?
4 How far does Aristotle’s classification of friendship correspond with what we know about human relationships?
5 Is Russell’s criticism of Aristotle fair? How might the criticism be rebutted?
6 Analyse critically Aristotle’s theory of the soul and his doctrine of the mean.
Aquinas, Natural Law and Proportionalism
To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command of God.