40 - Literature, arts and the education of virtuous emotion

Summary

VIRTUE, NATURALISM AND EMOTION

It may be fairly said that past and present day ethics or moral enquiry has its origins in ancient Greek attempts to comprehend the distinctive nature of human virtue (aretē), construed as those qualities that might distinguish human agents as exemplary or flourishing members of their kind. For the sophists, this seems to have implied political or worldly success; for Socrates and Plato (1961) it seems to have meant a kind of moral wisdom or knowledge (the product perhaps of something like Socratic elenchus or Platonic “dialectic”); but for Aristotle, and those who have followed him down to the present day, it is clear that this meant a certain sort of practically focused moral character. Notably, despite the fact that Aristotle identified a peculiar mode of reason or ratiocination as deeply implicated in the possession and exercise of the various virtues – namely, the “intellectual virtue” of phronēsis or practical wisdom – the key concern of phronēsis with character formation has been taken by Aristotelian virtue ethicists to show that virtues are no less qualities of affect or feeling than of reason or cognition. As I have argued elsewhere, it seems to be essentially the Aristotelian view that qualities of virtuous character are more or less equivalent to states of emotion, feeling and appetite ordered in accordance with some deliberative ideal of practical wisdom (Carr 2009).