Pleasure, Pain, and Moral Virtue: On Aristotle's Index to Human Characteristics
Exploring Book 2, of the Great Philosopher's Ethics
One might assess the greatness of a teacher by the magnitude of his scholarship’s impact, and the magnitude of his students’ achievements. By this metric, Aristotle, son of Nichomachus, pupil of Plato, and famed product of Stagira, in Northern Greece, must surely rank as history’s greatest teacher. Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great - perhaps the very archetype of human excellence embodied within a single individual. He was perhaps the most dogmatically dominant of all Philosophers too, matched only in influence by Plato. He is the godfather, so to speak, of systematic theology, his works having found synthesis with Church teaching through the exhaustive writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, most conspicuously in the conception an ‘unmoved mover’ whose first action is prior to all subsequent motions of the Universe. It is to Aristotle that we owe modern perceptions of the nature of godliness, the functioning of human habit, and the science of logic. Dante called him “the master of those who know”. In Political Theory he is unsurpassed but for Plato. It was Aristotle, after Plato, who first classified political regimes; Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Polity, or, in their negative inversions, Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Democracy. It was Aristotle too, who prepared the way for later theories of human equality and exceptionalism, with his division of souls into three categories: Nutritive (Plants), Sensitive-locomotive (Animals), and Rational (Humans).
Aristotle’s most consequential work is most probably his Ethics. The work is commonly called the Nichomachean Ethics, but it is not clear whether or not this was titled in tribute to his Father, or to Aristotle’s son by the same name, who likely edited the work from Aristotle’s lecture notes. Book Two of the Ethics deals with the problem of man’s intellectual and moral virtue. For Aristotle, the development of moral virtue is distilled to an individual’s habituation toward good action. A good contemporary reflection of this philosophy lies in Catholic social teaching, and the notion that one must actively practice good works, not merely reflect good sentiments felt internally, in order to live a good and virtuous life. The interpretive essay that follows examines the arguments set forth by Aristotle here, in Book Two.
Aristotle here states that “An index to our characteristics is provided by the pleasure or pain which follows upon the tasks we have achieved.” I take this to mean that who we are - innately - in character, should be measured not by the objective, universally-agreed quality of a given action, but rather, by the subjective feeling (by degrees painful or pleasurable) that that given action effects upon its executant’s soul. What Aristotle presents here is the idea that different men may undertake identical good actions, but feel differently in regards to those actions. This is hardly controversial, and to my reckoning, comports entirely with our modern conception of man’s psychological disposition as both subjective and individual. However, Aristotle also makes a concomitant observation that this divergent nature in separate mens’ feelings pertaining to an identical action distinguishes one man as innately ‘better’ (or, more morally virtuous) than the other. This is what Aristotle seems to suggest when he says that “a man who endures danger with joy, or at least without pain, is courageous; if he endures it with pain, he is a coward”.
It is in this argument that Aristotle might be seen as provoking a challenge to our common conception of the metric by which a morally virtuous man should be judged. Recall that Aristotle has, from the outset, specifically framed pleasure and pain as constituting this metric. He reinforces its importance when he says later in the chapter, that “it is not unimportant for our actions whether we feel joy and pain in the right or wrong way.” This takes the argument one step further. I say this because here, Aristotle seems to be suggesting that the action itself may be coloured by the pleasure or pain felt by the executant. That perhaps, is why he includes the phrase “not unimportant for our actions” within the text.
I will set aside this question of whether or not man’s subjective feeling can affect the quality of his objective action, because this in itself requires extensive discussion. It is sufficient here however, to note that such a presupposition would add further urgency to Aristotle’s arguments concerning the utility of pain and pleasure. I believe also, that we now have, in outline, two more important primary questions which should guide further inquiry into Aristotle’s scheme. One is of what utility pleasure and pain are in guiding man to moral virtue. The other is whether or not Aristotle is well-grounded in suggesting moral virtue should be measured, as it were, internally, by way of this ‘index of characteristics’. I use the adverb ‘internally’ as this system must necessarily deal not with a community standard of moral virtue (as an objective external index would), but by the private observations man needs to make upon his own soul.
At face value, I would posit that pain and pleasure are useful in guiding man’s actions toward moral virtue. Aristotle seems to say so too, when he notes that “in our actions we use…pleasure and pain as a criterion” So then, is the utility of pain and pleasure merely reflective of a kind of risk matrix of punishment and reward? Does man’s soul develop in the manner a child’s sensibility does in relation to the touching of a hot stove (corrected by pain), or the eating of his vegetables (rewarded by parentally-dispensed leisure time)?
In some way this is the case. When Aristotle says that “punishment is a kind of medical treatment, and it is the nature of medical treatments to take effect through the introduction of the opposite of the disease,” he is supporting this view. Aristotle is presenting pain as an antidote to bad behavior, and pleasure as an encouragement to the good. But as the philosopher continues, it would appear things become more complex:
“But it is through pleasures and pains that men are corrupted, i.e., through pursuing and avoiding pleasures and pains either of the wrong kind or at the wrong time or in the wrong manner, or by going wrong in some other definable respect.
This further dialectic exposition moves us away from a simplistic, binarily-effected view of pain and pleasure’s utility. If both the positive and negative feelings of man can perform the task of leading him away from moral virtue and toward the corruption Aristotle speaks of, then it would follow that there is a limitation to the direct utility of pain and pleasure as a guide to man’s moral virtue.
When Aristotle speaks of pleasures and pains of the wrong kind or wrong time, he seems to be suggesting that man (lest all men suffer from some degree of imperfection of soul) within himself is an unreliable witness in applying the lessons of either feeling. In other words, it is necessary but not sufficient for man to be guided to receiving pleasure in doing good by being punished for what is bad. This is because, according to Aristotle, pleasure in the wrong things can in fact mislead morally deficient men into wrong-action.
Aristotle suggests that the antidote for this lies first in education, to properly orient the young, and secondly in deliberately chosen personal action, to correct the negative predispositions of the old. As he refers to Plato’s prior arguments in The Republic and The Laws, “men must be brought up from childhood to feel pleasure and pain at the proper things; for this is correct education.” To the degree in which this education is lacking, men may compensate in later life: Aristotle says in chapter 4, that “Thus our assertion that a man becomes just by performing just acts and self-controlled by performing acts of self-control is correct: without performing them, nobody could even be on the way to becoming good.”
Aristotle has now unveiled to us a deeper origin to the utility of pain and pleasure. We are pointed to a higher value for these human feelings within his scheme. Now, we see that pain and pleasure are not primarily external indicators of right action. Although they do have a prima-facie capacity as behavioral spurs and correctives, their real value lies in the more fundamental, subjective assessment of whether or not one’s character comports with true moral virtue.
This observation points directly at the second question I posed upon Aristotle’s scheme: whether or not Aristotle is well-grounded in suggesting moral virtue should be measured, as it were, internally, by way of this ‘index of characteristics’. I think that indeed, he is well-grounded here. It is true that common sense would present us a strong case against leaning too heavily on the soul’s innate ‘goodness’ as a marker of moral virtue. “But I’m a good person inside!” is a poor excuse in light of deplorable conduct. But to exercise this interpretation would be to misunderstand what Aristotle is advocating. What he proposes is a deeper challenge to the popular conceit that a good man may be judged to be so by his material status as an entity constructed of objectively good actions. Aristotle frames this challenge - man in pursuit of achieving true moral virtue - as resting contingent on his soul also comporting with a habituated love of that virtue.
The picture that emerges from Aristotle’s scheme is one where the soul cannot escape severe judgment (whether in the affirmative or negative), regardless of how well meaning, well executed, and well appearing man’s actions in the material world are. In so doing, Aristotle has constructed a system by which the necessity to be good, holds primacy over the inclination to do good. It is critical to recognise however, that in this being good, Aristotle is not diminishing the capacity of doing good. For Aristotle, the two are mutually beneficial, not mutually exclusive. The primacy of being guarantees the execution of doing. As he says so eloquently: “the act must spring from a firm and unchangeable character.”
We can see now that although Aristotle might appear at first to discount the real and definable sphere of ‘action’ in favor of the nebulous realm of ‘character’, instead of turning man away from inclination to do good, Aristotle’s system in fact effects the opposite: Through habituation toward a higher-order ‘index of characteristics’, the inclination to do good can be properly served as a corollary, not an antithesis, to the cultivation of a truly virtuous man. If then, I were to ponder the use of Aristotle’s, ‘index to our characteristics’, properly viewed, I would say that despite the severity of its initial impression, it might inform man of the true nature of his soul, in all cases where the very best of outward appearances may but deceive.
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Ben Crocker is Academic Programs Manager at the University of Austin, Texas, and Research Fellow at Common Sense Society, in Washington DC.