This is a current draft of Chapter One of the book tentatively titled: The Ehtic of Respect:
Why should we be concerned that our behavior towards others meets any particular standard? Why should I strive to be a “good person,” whatever that means? What do I owe to others and why do I owe it? What, in short, is the point?
The short answer to that question is that it is ultimately good for me to be good to others, or to act appropriately toward others. Human evolution has favored the strong, the healthy, and the capable. But it has also favored those who cooperate with others. The sharing of resources, division of responsibilities, and mutual security arrangements, for example, have all required cooperation for mutual benefit. And the benefits of that cooperation have exceeded the perceived costs. Those who opted out of the cooperative arrangements, or were excluded from them for some reason, generally did not survive.
That is not as true today, of course, as it was in the days of the hunter-gatherer, but humans were hunter-gatherers, or engaged in rudimentary agriculture, for a very long time; much longer than we have been living in modern societies. And the genetic legacy of those early eras of human experience is still within us. It is still natural for us to seek mutual security and support. It is still natural for us to avoid ostracism, rejection, and hostility. It is natural for us to seek harmonious relationships with those around us.
It is no longer the case, of course, that ostracism from the group is likely to end in death. So, while the natural impulse toward mutual support is still a part of our DNA, there needs to be some additional motivation for good behavior. Self-interest isn’t only about survival. We want to do more than just live. We want to enjoy our lives. We want to feel good about ourselves. We certainly want to be free from physical pain and want, but we also want the positive emotional and psychological benefits of being at peace with ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. We want to feel that we are a constructive and positive force among those we live and work with and even among those we do not know but whom our behavior might influence.
For most of recorded history, mankind’s great thinkers and teachers approached the issues of ethics and proper behavior through the lens of virtue. Their lists of virtues and the importance of each virtue did vary among cultures, but the pursuit of virtue was a common element in the thinking about human flourishing and about the responsibilities we have toward one another. That began to change in the eighteenth century when Jeremy Bentham and, later, John Stuart Mill proposed the idea of utilitarianism, and when Immanuel Kant devised the categorical imperative. We will discuss each of those more fully later.
There has been another change in focus in recent years, particularly among psychologists. Rather than ask, how should we properly behave towards others, or what is the proper goal of human life, the question of the current century has shifted to, how can I be happy?
The psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar made news when his course on happiness became the most popular course ever taught at Harvard University, attracting thousands of students. The course was first offered in 2006 and very soon one in every five Harvard students would sign up for that course. Many universities have since followed Ben-Shahar’s lead and created popular courses on the subject. The positive psychology movement, which has grown from the wonderful work of Martin Seligman, has moved increasingly in the direction of the pursuit of individual happiness.
Like Aristotle, though, Seligman understands happiness in a way that is different from our typical sense of the word. Susan Sauvé Meyer points out in her discussion of Aristotle’s idea of happiness or flourishing; a typical translation of the Greek eudaimōn; that he uses the Greek term makarios as a near synonym of eudaimōn. The King James Bible translates makarios as blessed in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed is a deeper and more substantial idea than our modern understanding of happiness and closer to the idea of flourishing. Flourishing, whether we think about it in the way that Aristotle viewed it, or broadly as “goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience,” as Frederickson and Losada have defined it, is about more than happiness.
What is wrong with happiness? Nothing is wrong with happiness unless it is the singular focus of an individual’s striving. The singular pursuit of personal happiness is self-referential, self-centered, and subjective. As the philosopher Rosalind Hursthouse puts it, “If I think I am happy, then I am—it is not something I can be wrong about.” But the “rightness” of my happiness is not necessarily anchored to anything that is broadly understood as good. We do not think of happiness today in the same way it was considered in the past, as the condition of living “an objectively worthwhile life,” as Dorothea Frede puts it. And it is not likely to actually make one happy. Matthieu Ricard, the Buddhist monk who is called “the happiest person alive” is quick to point out that a singular focus on “me, me, me” actually makes everything else in the world a threat. That increases anxiety, not happiness. And happiness, at least in the real world of human experience, is necessarily transitory. Happiness, as we know the term today, only has meaning to the extent that it is a state distinct from other states. If I am never “not happy,” whether that means I am unhappy or just not happier than some baseline, what does “happy” actually mean?
It is interesting to track the progression of titles of Professor Ben-Shahar’s books. The first, in 2007, was titled Happier. It was followed in 2009 by Being Happy and Even Happier. In 2021 Happier No Matter What was published. There is nothing wrong with selling books, of course, but if the answer to being happy was found in Happier why would Even Happier have been needed? Dan Harris’s popular book 10% Happier implicitly acknowledges the incremental nature of the pursuit. As we saw in the Introduction, the period during which the happiness movement has exploded is the period during which anxiety disorders have also exploded, fertility rates have plummeted, suicide rates have skyrocketed, and trust in the fundamental institutions of society has deteriorated.
It seems likely that the tremendous rise in popularity of happiness courses at universities simply reflects an increasing focus in our society on the self in its many manifestations. That is, the courses and the happiness movement are probably an effect rather than a cause. And it is possible that societal conditions would have deteriorated even more dramatically without the happiness movement. But it is also possible that an ever increasing focus on the self is a contributing cause of the deterioration of societal conditions.
The contemporary Advaita Vedanta teacher, Swami Sarvapriananda, points out the inevitable stress created by the search for happiness as it is typically understood. The search itself arises from desire. The objects of desire are finite but the desire itself is not. Once a desired object is obtained or a desired state is attained, desire shifts to the next object or state. A finite acquisition, he points out, cannot satisfy an infinite impulse, and so happiness in the sense of acquisition, attainment, or gratification, must ultimately fail. And that failure creates stress and anxiety, which only builds as the perceived importance of the failure increases.
As an aside, a fascinating study just published awarded Harvard University a score of zero on a scale of zero to 100 on the metric of openness to free speech. (Foundation on Individual Rights and Free Expression) In 2022 Harvard ranked 173 out of a universe of 203 universities on that metric. The university that has the longest experience with the happiness curriculum now ranks at the bottom of the list on the metric of freedom of expression. If we were to consider that through a virtue lens it would generate a failing score on tolerance. In the long and rich history of virtue ethics, personal happiness—that is, happiness as we might define it today—has not been a primary goal.
For the early Greek philosophers of the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, for example, beginning with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, happiness in the sense described by eudaimonia, usually translated as “flourishing,” might be a result of living virtuously, but to live virtuously came first. Courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance were ends in themselves. Reason and intellectual inquiry were tools of character development and personal excellence. But the Greeks understood that living virtuously and striving for excellence did not, in themselves, guarantee a state of eudaimonia. For that, certain external factors—some of which were clearly beyond the control of the individual—were also necessary. Lack of health, for instance, could be an impediment, as could poverty or simply misfortune. The pursuit of virtue and the achievement of excellence were the work of the good person, regardless of the presence or absence of those external factors. Virtue was its own goal. If it led to flourishing, that was a welcome outcome. If it did not, though, the value of virtue achieved was not diminished.
At about the same time as the ancient Greeks, the early Chinese ethical traditions, principally represented by Confucius and the Daoists, were also grounded in virtue. The principal virtues in the Confucian tradition were humaneness or benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi), propriety (li), wisdom (zhi), and integrity (xin). The Confucians understood the goal of virtuous living to be the creation and maintenance of an orderly and harmonious society. While the virtues were personal, the goals were more importantly familial and communal. The Greek idea of eudaimonia is most closely paralleled by the Confucian virtue of ren, or benevolence. Ren is a complex idea in that it is both a virtue and the ultimate personal goal of a virtuous life. Its meaning is closer to harmony or a state of moral excellence, than to our notion of happiness. It could be cultivated through education, purposeful action, and practice of the other virtues.
Daoism arose in roughly the same period as Confucianism and its ethics were also grounded in virtue. While the goal of Confucian virtue was primarily the promotion of social order and harmony, Daoist teaching was focused more on the individual. For the Daoist, both spiritual development and development of character were stressed. Individual development in accordance with Daoist ethics would inevitably have a positive impact on society, creating a more just and harmonious world, but the effect on society was of more secondary importance in Daoism than in Confucianism. The Daoist approach to life was more restrained than the Confucian, emphasizing the avoidance of forced or artificial action (wu wei), and living with naturalness (ziran), compassion, humility, simplicity, and moderation. The Daoist sought to live in harmony with the natural world and with one’s own true nature, avoiding anything artificial, forced, or unnatural; treating others with kindness and respect; practicing humility and simplicity.
The ethical teachings of the early Greek and Chinese cultures were not grounded in religious beliefs. They represent the most influential philosophical teachings of those cultures on the question of the proper way for humans (or in some cases, specific classes of humans) to live their lives. Their answers differ in specifics, but they share a crucial underlying assumption. That is, humans could and should strive to develop their own capacities for good to the greatest extent possible, and they should seek the good of the society in which they live.
So, the development of human culture, through the many millennia of our evolution, seems to have resulted in very similar understandings during the last few centuries BCE on the question of a person’s approach to life. In both the East and the West, the pursuit of virtue was understood as the proper course. The best way for a person to live was to be good and to do good; for their own good and for the good of all. What constitutes the “good” or “a good life” was understood somewhat differently, but the aspiration toward growth, improvement, and the achievement of excellence in specific traits, characteristics, and actions was common.
The dominance of secular Greek and later Roman thought in the West gave way to Jewish and Christian thought as the era turned. The concept of the appropriate human life began to change, reflecting the ascendency, particularly, of the Christian religious worldviews. But virtue remained an important element of those worldviews and Jews and Christians held in common the essential value of several core virtues including temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice.
A key distinction between early Jewish and Christian thinking was the Jewish emphasis on behavior versus the Christian emphasis on belief and on grace. The key early difference in belief, of course, concerned the nature and the role of Jesus. The imitation of Christ, as the embodiment of virtue, became the overarching aspiration of the Christian believer. The achievement of an everlasting life in heaven became the ultimate good. Original sin, a doctrine developed during the second, third and fourth centuries CE by the early Church fathers; Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine; was an obstacle to the achievement of that good. The Christian pursued a life of virtue, and the cultivation of specific virtues, with the understanding that virtuous action alone was insufficient to achieve true excellence in this life. Grace, faith, and the dispensation of the church were required for achievement of the ultimate good. But pursuit of a virtuous life was, nevertheless, a key element of Christian teaching as it was in Judaism. The ultimate end of the pursuit was understood differently and some of the means of pursuit were different, but both traditions clearly taught the value of being good and doing good for the sake of the person and the community.
During the medieval period, from about 500 to about 1500 CE, the development of philosophy and ethics in the West was principally carried forward by thinkers in the three main religious traditions. Influential representatives of those traditions in that period were: in Muslim thinking, Averroes (1126–1198); in the Jewish tradition, Maimonides (1135–1204); and in the Christian, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). While the religious beliefs of those thinkers certainly influenced their teachings, there are more similarities than differences in their views on the subject of virtue, which might be expected since all studied the teachings of Aristotle.
The works of the early Greeks were largely lost to the West when Latin supplanted Greek as the language of the Roman church in the fourth century. For hundreds of years thereafter the works of the Greeks had no real influence on Jewish or Christian thought. During the ninth and tenth centuries, though, the early part of the Golden Age of Islam, the Greek texts were translated into Arabic. From the Arabic they made their way into both Latin and Hebrew, or Judeo-Arabic. And so they came to inform the works of Maimonides and Aquinas, the most influential philosophers of the next half-millennium.
In each of the three Western religious traditions the list of primary virtues includes, in essence, the four core Aristotelian virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. But humility, generosity, truthfulness, and compassion are also specifically identified in the Jewish and Muslim traditions, while the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, are found only in Christian teaching.
In the East, at the same time, virtue teaching came under the growing influence of Buddhist thought, which brought to the Confucian tradition a new emphasis on inner cultivation and moral perfection. That did not supplant the Confucian focus on family ideals and the orderly society, but it did bring more inner-directed meditation and mindfulness practices into the mainstream of neo-Confucianism. An influential voice of the medieval period in China was Zhu Xi (1130–1200), whose list of virtues added loyalty, humility, and diligence to the five primary Confucian virtues.
There are obviously significant differences in the religious views of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist teachers and those differences affect the views of appropriate behavior found in the virtue ethics of each of them. For our purposes, it is not necessary to detail minor differences; what is important for us are the commonalities. If we put the uniquely Christian ideas of faith, hope, and charity to the side, what remains is the array of what are known generally as character virtues. And if we also put aside the notions of reward and punishment in an afterlife, we can compare their views in the context of our topic, which is the proper voluntary behavior of persons in this lifetime. What we find when we compare them in that way is that there was as much fundamental agreement in the medieval period as there was during the classical period. All, in general terms, held these views, in common:
- The goal of the individual human life is growth, self-improvement, and the achievement of moral and spiritual excellence (the definition of which did vary).
- Cultivating virtue is essential to living a good life, to flourishing, and to achieving life’s ultimate goal.
- The character virtues can be (or must be) acquired through education and action, through habituation and practice.
- To live properly is to live and to act in ways that foster the acquisition and strengthening of those virtues.
- The obligation to strive for self-improvement continues throughout our lives.
But the medieval period gave way to the Renaissance in the 16th century. The Protestant Reformation split and then splintered the Christian community. The printing press facilitated the rise of secular scholarship and began to democratize learning opportunities. Scientific advances began to provide natural explanations for things that had previously been explained in religious terms. And the relative commonalities of and influence of the religious traditions were weakened. The importance of the virtue ethics taught by the Western religious traditions began to decline, and during the Enlightenment period, which began in the late 17th century, virtue was largely abandoned as the primary study of proper behavior.
In the West, the virtue ethics that had provided relatively consistent guidance on proper (non- religious) behavior for over two thousand years was supplanted during the 18th and 19th centuries by two diametrically opposed secular philosophies. The consequentialist or utilitarian view held that the “rightness” of an action was only to be judged by its consequences. The intention or virtue of the one who performs the action was essentially irrelevant in that view. The opposing position argued that the outcome of an action can never be known in advance with any certainty and so the “rightness” of an action is purely a matter of the actor’s proper intent, or the consistency of the action with established rules or principles. We will discuss the implications of the shift toward these opposing views more fully later. For the current discussion it is enough to point out that, for the purposes of guiding the voluntary behavior of one person towards another, neither of those provides practical, real-world guidance on individual behavior. Both are essentially academic approaches in the sense that they are theoretical rather than practical. There is nothing wrong with academic approaches unless we try to apply them strictly in real world situations. It is true, of course, that we can never know with certainty what all of the consequences of our actions will be. But it is equally true that the consequences of our actions do matter. Both intent and outcome matter but the weight of their importance will depend on the specific situation.
Whenever we act, whether we are aware of it or not, we exercise the faculty that philosophers call “practical wisdom,” in which the entire context of the action is reflected. That context includes our assessment of the need for action, our assessment of the likely consequences, our own personal stake in the action, and the entirety of the perceivable situation within which the need for action arises. Life is far too complex for any single principle or criterion to provide the answer to what action is right.
J.B. Schneewind cites two additional causes for the decline of virtue ethics in the modern West. The rise of individualism, which focuses on the good of the individual to the near exclusion of the common good, and the decline in the influence of religion. (See Schneewind, The Misfortunes of Virtue, 1990) Since Schneewind wrote, both of those forces; the focus on the individual and the decline of religion, have only intensified.
To maintain our parallel analysis, we should look briefly at the trajectory of Chinese virtue ethics since the medieval period. Neo-Confucian teaching continued to dominate in China, stressing the same array of values, through the transition of dynasties in the 17th century. In the late 19th century, the Qing dynasty declined as the result of war, internal corruption, and rebellion and in the early 20th century it fell. The Republic of China was then established, and neo-Confucianism fell out of favor. The Confucian teachings have begun to re-emerge, though, and in the past several decades Confucian virtue ethics have begun to be taught in many settings alongside the modern versions of Daoist and Buddhist teachings. The core Confucian virtues continue to be valued by many in China.
By the mid-20th century, the problems with the Kantian rule-based ethics and the Utilitarian outcome-based ethics, especially in their application to individual decision making, became apparent. Virtue began to reassert itself among both philosophers and ethicists. That trend has continued. There are still strong proponents of Kantian and Utilitarian approaches, but among those who are concerned specifically with the behavior of individuals, virtue once again dominates the conversation.
One more major point needs to be made about virtue before we move forward. While we speak of the plural “virtues” in both Eastern and Western thought, and we compare the arrays of virtues identified by the major traditions over time, there is another idea found in the work of many major teachers. That idea is known as the “unity of virtue.”
From Socrates and Confucius in the early pre-Christian traditions, to Calvin in the 16th century and Hegel in the 18th, and to scholars like Alasdair MacIntyre and Phillipa Foote in recent decades, we can find the unity idea expressed. In one sense, the idea of the unity of virtue is that each virtue is dependent on all virtues; that they are all interconnected and interdependent; that strength or weakness in one strengthens or weakens all. So, growth in courage is likely to be accompanied by growth in justice, for instance. Or a person who is generous is likely to also be kind.
Another approach to unity, though, suggests that all of the character virtues are actually different manifestations of a single, underlying virtue. That might be a matter of knowledge, so a person who knows what is good will act in a virtuous manner reflecting that knowledge. It might, on the other hand, be a virtue or state like eudaimonia in the Aristotelian tradition, or ren in the Confucian. In Confucianism, ren is the foundation of all other virtues and all other virtues strengthen and support ren. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is both the result of and supports virtuous action and virtuous living. In that sense, eudaimonia or ren are certainly interconnected with and interdependent on the other virtues but they also stand apart and above them in an important way.
Virtue ethics operates, in a sense, between the poles of the rules/intent-only model and the outcome-only model. It recognizes that the individual living a human life in the real world cannot operate at either pole. She lives in the ambiguity between the poles, in the place of aspiration toward growth and toward the good. But she will inevitably make mistakes and will cause harm, even if unintended. She will strive to learn from her errors, modify her future behavior, and improve in virtue over time. She cannot consult Kant or Mill for advice when making a decision and, if she could do so, they would not be able to help her. She lives in a world where decisions must be made on the basis of incomplete or even faulty information. And she is faced with decisions that require immediate action. What she needs is the practical wisdom taught by Aristotle, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, the Dao De Ching, Aquinas, MacIntyre, and others.
The term, practical wisdom, clearly implies the need to practice. A need to practice implies a less-than-perfect ability. Cultivating the virtues requires purposeful and directed effort. Practice implies ongoing assessment and correction of efforts. Correction implies the existence of an identifiable goal toward which effort is directed. In the context of voluntary human behavior towards others, the most respected of our teachers in all times, places, and traditions have been remarkably uniform in their positions. That is, that the goal of human life is to attain a state of goodness, of flourishing or eudaimonia in the Western tradition; of moral virtuousness, benevolence, or ren in the Eastern tradition. To attain this state, that is, to be good in whatever terms we choose to communicate that idea, we must do good. Our actions must support the growth in our characters necessary to reach that goal.
So that is the point. The experience of the millennia of human evolution, and the teaching of the wise from the earliest days of both the Eastern and the Western traditions, tell us that achieving the highest human goal depends on our behavior. And that raises the question to which we will now turn.
It is one thing to identify the goal of human life and to acknowledge the need to grow towards it. It is another to say that the practical wisdom that we need to generate that growth requires purposeful practice. The question is, what does that practice look like? How are we to act in such a way that our virtues are strengthened and a correct trajectory toward our ultimate goal is maintained? That is the subject of the rest of this book.