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The phenomenology of virtue

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Abstract

What is it like to be a good person? I examine and reject suggestions that this will involve having thoughts which have virtue or being a good person as part of their content, as well as suggestions that it might be the presence of feelings distinct from the virtuous person’s thoughts. Is there, then, anything after all to the phenomenology of virtue? I suggest that an answer is to be found in looking to Aristotle’s suggestion that virtuous activity is pleasant to the virtuous person. I try to do this, using the work of the contemporary social psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the ‘flow experience’. Crucial here is the point that I consider accounts of virtue which take it to have the structure of a practical expertise or skill. It is when we are most engaged in skilful complex activity that the activity is experienced as ‘unimpeded’, in Aristotle’s terms, or as ‘flow’. This experience does not, as might at first appear, preclude thoughtful involvement and reflection. Although we can say what in general the phenomenology of virtue is like, each of us only has some more or less dim idea of it from the extent to which we are virtuous—that is, for most of us, not very much.

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Notes

  1. See ‘Against Virtue Ethics,’ Chapter 8 of Hurka (2001).

  2. Nicomachean Ethics, 1103 a 32–b 2 (Bywater 1970).

  3. Nicomachean Ethics 1107 a 17–22 (Bywater 1970).

  4. Keller (2007)

  5. They are thus transparent to the agent, unlike consequentialist thoughts which have to be carefully kept opaque to everyday deliberations.

  6. This point is important, since on most versions of virtue ethics the virtuous person’s feelings and emotions will have been educated and transformed by his increasingly virtuous deliberations and thoughts, virtue being a matter of right feeling as well as right action and deliberation. Obviously it is not this role of feelings that is at issue here.

  7. Haidt and Joseph (2004). Cf Haidt (2001).

  8. It is not terribly clear on their account how virtues are developed; we find only that ‘These flashes are the building blocks that make it easy for children to develop certain virtues and virtue concepts’ (Haidt and Joseph 63).

  9. Haidt and Joseph 56.

  10. But it is outrageous for them to characterize such a view as typical of ‘virtue theory’ in general, and as Aristotelian in spirit. Most versions of virtue ethics follow Aristotle in making deliberation central to the development of virtue. The authors are also mistaken in seeing Aristotle as a forerunner of the neural network theory of morality developed by Churchland and Clark (62 and n 13); these theories see moral development as an adjustment to social reality, whereas Aristotelian theories stress aspiration to ideals.

  11. I shall, of course, not be dealing here with theories of virtue which, like Kant’s, have a rather different view of the relation of the virtuous person’s deliberations to his inclinations.

  12. Nicomachean Ethics 1104 b 3–8 (Bywater 1970).

  13. Compare the following from Plutarch On Moral Virtue, which presents it as account acceptable to a wide variety of philosophies: ‘People do not yet consider self-control a complete virtue, but rather less than virtue. For it has not yet become a mean state as a result of harmony of the worse part in relation to the better, nor has the excess of feeling been removed, nor is the desiring part of the soul obedient to and in agreement with the intelligent part; rather it pains and is pained and is repressed by necessity, and lives alongside [the intelligent part] like a hostile enemy element in a civil war.’ (de Virtute Morali 445 c–d (Helmbold 1970))

  14. Nicomachean Ethics 1117 b 15–16 (Bywater 1970).

  15. See, for example, Sidgwick (1907): ‘[T]hough Virtue is distinguished by us from other excellences by the characteristic of voluntariness – it must be to some extent capable of being realized at will when occasion arises – this volutariness attaches to it only in a certain degree; and...though a man can always do his Duty if he knows it, he cannot always realize virtue in the highest degree.’

  16. Csikszentmihalyi (1991). The book summarizes many years of research experiments.

  17. I first encountered reference to Csikszentmihalyi’s work with reference to ancient ethics in a paper by Naomi Reshotko, with reply by Jennifer Baker, on sophia and eudaimonia in Plato, at the 8th Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, February 2003. Reshotko follows Csikszentmihalyi himself in seeing his work as relevant to happiness, rather than to virtue.

  18. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 31.

  19. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 37.

  20. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 39.

  21. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 40.

  22. Much of Csikszentmihalyi’s voluminous output focusses on areas of work, relationships or other areas of everyday life where people’s experience can be improved by their coming to see their activities as intrinsically valuable, rather than merely having instrumental value as a means to money, status and the like.

  23. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 64. Associated with this is the frequent phenomenon of loss of sense of time passing, so that time seems to have flown when we are involved in our activities.

  24. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 49: ‘[B]y far the overwhelming proportion of optimal experiences are reported to occur within sequences of activities that are goal-directed and bounded by rules—activities that require the investment of psychic energy, and that could not be done without the appropriate skills. Why this should be so will become clear as we go along; at this point it is sufficient to note that this seems to be universally the case.’ I am grateful to Chris Freiman for bringing this passage to my attention.

  25. Arguably Aristotle’s own account wavers here, and the Stoics are more consistent.

  26. Csikszentmihalyi develops thoughts about ‘the autotelic personality,’ the person whose experience as a whole facilitates flow, and the way such a person can deal with misfortunes in an unforced and harmonious way. ‘The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony’ (p. 209).

  27. Csikszentmihalyi (1991), 157; cf. pp 155–157. I am grateful to Chris Freiman for drawing my attention to this passage. Of course no job guarantees flow; surgeons can come to find their work unrewarding if they come to treat it as routine, or as a mere means to a paycheck.

  28. Amy Coplan brought to my attention the description of brain surgery in Chapter 5 of Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday (McEwan 2005), which gives the reader a sense of the surgeon’s flow and unawareness of the passage of time, while he still remains keenly aware of the extremely precise decisions he is taking and movements he is making. The description is compelling, but of course limited by the fact that McEwan is not himself a brain surgeon but a novelist describing something he has researched and frequently observed.

  29. Csikszentmihalyi (1991) passim, but see especially 59 ff, 201–213. 59 ff discusses the ‘paradox of control’; enjoying an activity may involve a sense of control or lack of ‘the sense of worry about losing control that is typical in many situations of normal life’ which is so enjoyable that it can lead to a felt need to engage in that activity, which can thus become addictive, leading to the person’s losing control over the direction of their life. Virtuous activity does not seem to lead to this problem.

  30. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong suggested this kind of case at the Tucson Workshop, and I have found that many other people have come up with similar cases.

  31. I was greatly helped, in producing a final version of this paper, by comments from participants in the Tucson Workshop on moral phenomenology, where the first version of this paper was read. I am particularly grateful to Mark Timmons, Terry Horgan and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and to Uriah Kreigel for very useful written comments. I am also grateful to participants in an invited symposium at the 2006 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, where a later version was read, especially Gary Watson, Christine Swanton and Thomas Hurka.

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Annas, J. The phenomenology of virtue. Phenom Cogn Sci 7, 21–34 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9068-9

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