On Plato’s view, virtue is knowledge – Plato did not think anyone willingly acted immorally. People acted wrongly due to ignorance and he effectively denies weakness of the will. If, therefore, people could be brought to understand their error and to appreciate what was right, they would then act accordingly. This approach is based on the Socratic idea that no one would voluntarily choose what was not good for him or herself. Once one comes out of the cave of ignorance and sees the truth or what is morally right, Plato assumes that one will act accordingly. This, however, rests on a considerable error. It is perfectly possible for a person to say:
1 I know that action X is wrong, yet
2 I choose to do action X.
There could be any number of examples of this. Smokers know that smoking will seriously damage their health – yet they go on smoking. St Paul put this point very well when he said:
For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. (Romans, 7:19)
Knowledge does not lead to virtue – and the whole of Plato’s moral philosophy rests on the claim that it does.
For Plato and Socrates behaving morally or justly is always better for the individual even though this may lead to suffering and even to death. This was based on their view that the soul is a prisoner of the body and survives death and that if one does a bad act then one harms one’s soul (which is one’s very self) most of all. This leads to Socrates’ view that it is better to suffer harm rather than to inflict it because if you inflict harm on others the person you are really harming most of all is yourself as you are adversely affecting your soul. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates is portrayed as confronting Polus who holds that immoral acts can often bring an individual the greatest amount of pleasure or be in some way better for the person performing the action. Polus measures actions in terms of their material consequences for the person who performs them, Socrates measures actions by the effect they have on the soul of the individual. Effectively Socrates can be seen as saying:
Think hard enough and you will always find that doing the right thing is best for you
(Quoted in Peter Singer’s A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, p. 125)
However, this will be easier to accept if one first agrees with the presuppositions of Socrates and Plato – particularly those governing the irnmortality of the soul.
One of the gravest problems in Plato’s approach is that individuals can never be sure that they have arrived at a correct understanding of virtue and the nature of the good – how does one know that one has emerged from the cave and is not still in shadow? In his own authorship Plato may have moved from seeing this process as involving the individual thinking by himself to the idea of arriving at these values by looking at the good for the community. However, no clear criteria are provided. The second major problem is that Plato’s approach is far from practical and gives no guidance as to how to act in the day-to-day situations which individuals face. However Plato’s realist understanding of the nature of moral claims is particularly important and still remains an important alternative to moral relativism that merits further consideration and development. As we shall see in a later chapter, an Aristotelian approach to virtue may once again be coming into vogue, but Plato’s understanding remains an alternative which needs to be taken seriously.
Questions for discussion
1 What do you consider to be the most satisfactory solution to the Euthyphro dilemma?
2 Socrates considered that he was ignorant and yet he was wise. How should this be understood?
3 What are the strengths and weaknesses of Plato’s understanding of morality?
4 If I hold that the grass is green and you believe the same thing, how can Plato’s approach help to explain that we are both correctly seeing the same thing?
5 What point does Plato want to make in his parable of the Cave?
6 Why did Plato reject democracy? Do you think he was right to do so and why?
It would be difficult to begin an account of Aristotle’s moral theory without first saying something about where he stands in relation to Socrates and Plato. Socrates (470–400 B.C.), as has already been suggested, is generally regarded as the founding father of western philosophy. Although Socrates never wrote anything, or at least there is almost no evidence to point to his having done so, we know of his existence chiefly through the works of the comic dramatist Aristophanes (448–380 B.C.), the writer and historian Xenophon (430–355 B.C.) and particularly through the philosophical dialogues of Plato (427–347 B.C.). Plato was Socrates’ pupil for approximately ten years prior to Socrates’ death, and Aristotle became Plato’s pupil for roughly twenty years, studying under him at the famous Academy which Plato had established in Athens. These three, then, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, may be referred to as the Three Greek Wise Men as, arguably, they laid the foundations for all philosophical inquiry. Although western philosophy has been described by A. N. Whitehead as merely footnotes to Plato, it is Aristotle to whom, perhaps, the greatest debt must be paid, for in Aristotle’s writings we find the rigorous and systematic treatment of philosophical questions in continuous prose argument, unlike the dramatic and often poetically beautiful dialogues of Plato. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is, effectively, the first major piece of sustained moral argument from a secular point of view.
Biography
Born in 384 B.C. in Stagyra, Macedonia, Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, a wealthy and highly influential court physician to the king of Macedonia. At the age of eighteen Aristotle entered Plato’s Academy where he stayed for almost twenty years. Disappointed at not being given the leadership of the Academy upon Plato’s death, and becoming concerned for his own safety as a result of some racial hatred being whipped up against Macedonians, Aristotle left Athens and moved East. He found relative peace and security in the kingdom of Atarneus, in the Eastern Aegean. Here he married the king’s niece. In 343 B.C. he became tutor to Alexander, later Alexander the Great. According to Bertrand Russell it is inconceivable that Alexander thought anything of Aristotle other than that he was a ‘prosy old pedant’. Nonetheless, enjoying some political and financial support from the king, Aristotle returned to Athens in about 335 B.C. and founded his own school of philosophy, the Lyceum. However, upon Alexander’s early death in a far-flung Eastern campaign Aristotle went into voluntary exile ‘lest Athens should sin twice against philosophy’, that is, execute him as it had done Socrates. He died in Chalcis in 322 B.C. at the age of sixty-two, and his will, which survives relatively intact, suggests that he had led a happy and fulfilled life.
His influence has been enormous for he began sorting human knowledge and inquiry into the various categories and disciplines that we know and use today. He compiled the first ‘dictionary of philosophical terms’ and produced major works in logic (the Organon or Instrument), in the physical sciences (the Physics, On the Heavens), in the biological sciences (The History of Animals, On the Parts of Animals), in psychology (On the Soul), in politics (Politics, The Constitution of Athens) and in ethics (Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics).
Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics, generally regarded as the most detailed and coherent of Aristotle’s works on moral philosophy, is a collection of lectures compiled and edited by his son, also called Nicomachus after his grandfather. Consisting of ten books in all it describes the purpose of life, the divisions of the soul, and the various qualities of mind and character that are supposed to be necessary for moral conduct. It continues with a detailed description of friendship before concluding with the view that contemplation of the Good (that is, the life of philosophic reflection) is the highest form of happiness. For those not fully committed or suited to the life of pure contemplation then friendship becomes the ideal