Class Reflections: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics books 3-4
the point of the semester where I give my students a vote
Last week in my Foundations of Philosophy class sections at Marquette University, I led my students through examining some key topics in the first two books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, including what virtues and vices are in general. Yesterday, we went into specifics about the particular virtues and vices Aristotle discusses in books 3 and 4.
I do the same thing with my students each time I teach that part of his work, but it turns out a bit different with every class session, in ways that are a bit unpredictable. First I write a list of ten virtues on the chalkboard. These are the moral virtues that Aristotle discusses in the second part of book 3 and then throughout book 4. He also considers justice a moral virtue. But since he devotes all of book 5 to analyzing the varied meanings of justice, and since we don’t study that part of the work in our class, I leave that one off the list. Here it is:
Courage
Temperance
Good Temper or Gentleness
Generosity or Liberality
Magnificence
Right Ambition
Magnanimity
Friendliness
Truthfulness (about oneself)
Good Humor or Wit
I say a bit about the subject-matter for each of these virtues, that is, what the virtue bears upon.
And then, I announce that we are going to take a vote about which of these virtues (and their associated vices) they would most like to examine in our class session. In the past, I used to give each of them one vote, but now I tell them that each of them gets to vote for the two they are most interested in. That tends to give me better information, knowing not just which one single virtue any given student decides sounds most interesting, but also their second choice. And for those who waver between two they might most want to explore, that makes it much easier for them.
For my morning section, the winners were:
Good Temper, with 11 votes
Truthfulness, with 9
Generosity, with 8
Right Ambition, also with 8
For the afternoon session:
Good Humor, with 12 votes
Truthfulness, with 11
Generosity, with 10
A three-way tie with Temperance, Good Temper, and Right Ambition getting 7 votes each
Generally, we only have enough time to go through the top three, because we go into a good bit of detail and discussion with each virtue and its opposed vices.
I put the same basic schema up on the board, which they’re now fairly familiar with, since I introduced Aristotle’s doctrine of virtue as a mean or middle state between vice(s) of excess on one side and vice(s) of deficiency on the other. I used the Goldilocks analogy, tapping into a story they all heard as kids, with virtue being the “just right”, and then “too much” and “too little” on either extreme.
Beneath the just right, I also write down a number of “rights” (more literally, in Aristotle’s Greek, dei “as one ought to”). Certain of these are more relevant for some virtues than for others, but they include:
the right person(s)
the right amount
the right time or occasion
the right reason or motivation
the right way or expression
I stress to them that the virtuous mean isn’t just about finding some middle point numerically. All, or at least some, of these other aspects need to be taken into consideration. And as Aristotle tells us, it’s not easy for everyone to figure these out, let alone consistently act upon them.
The goal of the class session is to get my students, who generally have never read any Aristotle during their previous education, and who, if they had any exposure to virtue ethics, probably got something rather watered-down and formulaic, to come away with a solid understanding of how an Aristotelian would make sense of traits of character not just in Aristotle’s time and culture but in our present day. There are a few tricks I’ve developed to foster that.
One of them is for us as a class to figure out what sort of contemporary language we use to denote these virtues and vice or describe the people we associate with them. So when it comes to the vices, I’ll give a description of how a person who has that vice characteristically behaves and what sort of motives typically lie behind that behavior. And then I’ll ask them: “What do we call people like that in our time?”
Marquette students are usually a bit shy about using what they view as profanity in class (at least in Philosophy classes!), but I’ll stress to them that it’s all right to swear. So, in place of the “buffoon” who jokes too much, and about the wrong subjects, and at the wrong times, I’ll ask what words we use. And sooner or later, someone will say “jackass”. And that’s great, since this naming lets them incorporate these Aristotelian ideas and distinctions within the framework of their own experience.
Aristotle provides us with examples, some of which still resonate with most people today, but some of which are a good bit more dependent upon knowing something about ancient Greek culture. So I give them a number of more contemporary examples of what virtuous and vicious behavior and motivation would look like, and I actively solicit examples, objections, and applications from them, which we discuss as long as their interest holds (one reason why we generally only get to three virtues at most in a class session).
Determining and evaluating motives turns out to be pretty important for most Aristotelian virtues and vices. Behavior that might appear to be genuine generosity can turn out to be something different when we figure out that the person is engaging in it in order to be a “show-off” or “big shot”, or to impress someone they have asked on a date. Making jokes to humiliate and hurt other people, rather than to give pleasure through one’s humor, is a sign of vice rather than virtue.
We also talk about how sometimes, both in Aristotle’s own times and in our own, some vices masquerade as facsimiles of genuine virtues. How do we tell them apart from each other? We have to attend to multiple features of a person’s behavior and motivations, over time and in differing situations and contexts, in order to make good determinations about these matters.
The last thing I’ll mention is that I stress to my students that we want to study and understand Aristotle’s position in depth not just so we can make general determinations about virtues and vices, nor to apply primarily to other people. These are both useful to us, but it’s perhaps most important that we apply this knowledge about virtuous and vicious dispositions Aristotle offers us to the one person we are always stuck with, that is, our own selves.
I’m very candid with my students about my own moral development, where I was with virtues and vices when I was their age, and which virtues I possess and which vices I am still working on at present. I do that partly to establish or reinforce a connection with them, and partly to encourage them to engage in honest self-assessment themselves. You never really know what the effects of these classroom discussions will turn out to be, but in my view, it’s important to open up space for students to mull these matters over.