Virtue, competence and vice management - thoughts on Nicomachean Ethics

I’ve been reading Aristotle and enjoying it quite a bit. Let’s have fun together with a hypothetical.

Courage

Dexter has been doing MMA for a few years now. He is confident that, for the most part, he can handle an aggressive rando who threatens his friends or family. He does fear getting injured (quite a lot, actually), but he knows that he is competent enough at this point that this is unlikely to happen. However, if he thought he’d likely get hurt he’d turn tail and potentially abandon his loved ones.

Andrew, on the other hand, has never had a serious fight. Not because he avoids them, he just had a good environment and a bit of luck. He never felt the need to learn how to punch or kick, but he doesn’t fear fighting very much. He might or might not know this, but he’d never run away if he ever had to protect his loved ones, even if he is very likely to lose, get hurt and maybe even fail in his mission.

Two questions:

1. Who is more courageous?
2. Who would you rather have around if there is trouble? (Assume you know everything I said, including their proclivity to run away or not).

I think Andrew is more courageous, but in most scenarios you’d prefer to have Dexter around.

The point of this story is that competence can substitute for virtue narrowly understood: if we had to choose, we’d often rather rely on someone competent than on someone “merely” virtuous. Sure, we’d want both, but which is preferable? And what is all of this even for?

For Aristotle, the answer is quite clear, actually: you want to be virtuous because it’s part of the good life (eudaimonía),¹ and that is the purpose (telos) of human beings.

To the philosopher we might counter with something along these lines:

How eudaimonic is a life like Andrew’s? If your loved ones got hurt because you were courageous but incompetent, is that a good life? Sure, there might be some consolation in the fact that you tried, and that you showed that you cared, that you are a noble fellow, and so forth. But your family suffered under your watch anyway.²

Of course, this is a false dilemma, you can have both virtue and competence. In fact, the MMA training probably did make Dexter more courageous. Whatever irrational fears he had of fighting, they are probably long gone. He must know by now that getting punched in the face is not such a big deal, and the things he actually fears are truly the ones he should be afraid of, like getting permanently disabled. Of this last fear, Aristotle would approve: part of being courageous is fearing things in proportion to how bad they actually are. But so is overcoming physical and psychological pain and doing what is virtuous regardless.³ That’s what Dexter is missing, the ability to overcome his fears for the sake of what’s noble. We (XXI century people) might add that what he’s missing is a real commitment to do what he’s morally required to do.⁴

What should Dexter and Andrew do?

Though Aristotle does call out people for omissions like being ignorant when they shouldn’t be, I’m not sure he’d call out Andrew for his incompetence. Let’s do it ourselves.

If you are incapable of performing a moral duty, and you knew this, and it was fixable, you have been morally negligent. Or, to put it less harshly, at the very least you’d be more virtuous if you fixed the situation than if you didn’t. In saying this, we are extending the concept of virtue to encompass some amount of competence, to better account for the necessity of getting good outcomes.

To illustrate, suppose you’re a father with $X$ hours that you’re willing to commit to making your family safer. Here are some of the things you might want to purchase with that time if you don’t already have them:

1. Get in shape.
2. Learn martial arts.
3. Learn to shoot, if you have a gun or can get one.
4. Learn how to de-escalate tricky situations.
5. Learn first aid.
6. Investigate which places are dangerous (for example if you’re going to travel).
7. Improve your courage, in the sense of becoming more willing to endure pain for the sake of others.

I think the virtuous thing to do here is to allocate your time to the things that will reduce the probability of harm to your family the most. Note, however, that only the last one improves courage narrowly defined. And it’s unclear how to even go about it, we’d need to make it more concrete first, and even then I’m not sure it would make any noticeable difference (though I’m happy to hear ideas).

To answer the initial question, Andrew should probably spend some time doing several of the things above. And perhaps Dexter should spend some time pondering what kind of man he wants to be. Is his own safety so valuable that he is willing to betray people who are counting on him and cannot protect themselves? What exactly is he trying to protect?

Being competent enough to help others

Some people are very willing to help others, and we all appreciate their disposition. We are particularly moved when kids do it, because we recognize their good character and their desire to grow. But kids are not really helpful; for the purposes of accomplishing anything, they are a nuisance. We gladly accept it because we love kids and it’s good that they learn to be helpful. We encourage them and give them things to do, and cross our fingers that they don’t mess up too much.

However, if as an adult your help is more a burden than actual help, you are missing some important dimension of virtue, and it reads very differently in your case than it does for kids. People will still appreciate your disposition behind it: that you care and want to show love in this way. But in the end, if you aren’t competent enough they’d rather you didn’t take the task on.

To me, a virtuous person is someone who, when he offers help, others are happy to take it. Someone who gives others peace of mind because they know the task is pretty much taken care of. In short, reliability is a virtue.⁵

Not just competence

I hinted at this earlier, but the choice is not just improving narrowly understood virtues vs. improving competence. You can also learn to avoid dangerous situations. The best test, in these matters, is the one that never happens. For example, many of us avoid buying junk food because we know that it’s easier to resist temptation when there is no temptation at all. We are not exercising the virtue of temperance (as maybe Aristotle would want us to?⁶) because there’s no junk food at home. Yet, it’s clear which approach has the better outcomes.

Another one. If you know that you are likely going to cheat on your partner if you drink alcohol with certain people, the virtuous thing to do is probably to not drink; not just somehow trying to become the sort of person who won’t do it even if drunk. It’s not at all clear how you could train yourself to resist such a temptation without risking falling for it in the first place.

On generosity and actually making money

Aristotle has a rather modern view on generosity. When giving to others, he doesn’t care very much about the size of the donation in monetary units; rather, his definition of generosity is concerned with how much you are giving in relation to how much you have.⁷

But consider another two characters:

Ernest always cared about getting a good job. He picked an employable degree and made himself an attractive hire. A big part of why he did this was to avoid becoming a burden to anybody and to put himself in a position to help others. He is generous with his friends and relatives (in terms of how much he gives away), but it doesn’t come easy for him, despite having money. He pretty much forces himself to do it.

Charity (I couldn’t come up with a better name) never cared much for money, nor about making herself employable. She followed her passion and now she can barely support herself. She is not a burden, but doesn’t have much to spare. She is generous and it comes to her naturally, but there’s only so much she can give away before she’s unable to pay her bills, so she refrains.

Who is more generous?

According to Aristotle, the answer is likely Charity. This is because she has a habit of/strong preference for giving, yet she stops before she runs out for herself (good).⁸

As you might guess, my answer is Ernest.⁹ Let me explain.

When Charity chose a career path unlikely to give her a decent living (in the sense of having a decent cash buffer and some capacity to save money) she took a risk. If she ever got fired and couldn’t find another job quickly she might need other people’s help. Some of that risk therefore falls on her family and friends, or on the state and ultimately the taxpayers. They are the ones that are going to cover for her. Because yes, people get fired all the time through no fault of their own, but well… this does happen, and it’s known that it happens, and Charity is the one putting herself in this fragile position that can potentially render her unable to exercise her generosity, and can even force her to take from others. She is also making things morally difficult for others, since they now have to decide whether to help, to what extent, whether it’ll solve the problem, etc, choices they would rather not make.¹⁰ This does not mean, of course, that she is a bad person or that her life choices are wrong. People are entitled to choose risky careers and accept financial fragility. But externalizing this risk to others is a real cost, and I wouldn’t call that generous. The more generous thing to do is to prepare beforehand for predictable financial setbacks.

In short, Ernest’s preparation is an act of generosity, and that counts.

The broader point for societies

What we have discussed so far doesn’t just work for individuals. This is not a political post, but especially with the generosity example, you can imagine a poor country where people have somehow learned to be extremely generous, and another where people are simply rich, have much less need for generosity, and are hardly ever tested on it anyway. It’s easy to see that the second country is preferable even if it’s less generous.

So what we said before seems to carry to societies at large. In fact, we routinely build things in our own countries to make them less test-prone: we consider systems better when they don’t require heroes to be run. We don’t want firefighters or pilots to be heroes, we want all the protocols, checklists, and tools in place so that, to the extent possible, it’s just a job. Of course, no amount of “engineering” will remove all need for virtue, but to the extent that it’s doable we can, should and do in fact engineer things to make them boring in this regard.

Aristotle is also interesting here because he gives importance to the laws and (I’d say) also culture. This is closer to the systems thinking that I just talked about. He wants people to internalize virtues through good education and good habits, with which the state can help, according to him.

Closing remarks

A morally good person is one concerned with producing good outcomes. They pursue this by cultivating good character, becoming competent, and arranging things so that difficult situations arise rarely. They try to ensure that people aren’t needlessly morally tested, but they are reliable when tests come.