Aristotle →
Nicomachean Ethics →
Book Ⅳ (some moral virtues)
In the opening section of the fourth book of The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the first of the moral virtues that concern money.
This, potentially, has clear relevance to the issue of taxes and tax resistance, so I’ll pay close attention.
As you can see in the following table, the various translators I’ve been referring to have come up with a number of terms to describe the vice of deficiency in liberality, but are pretty settled on the other vice and the virtue.
Various translations of the first virtue and vices concerning money
The most popular renderings are illiberality, liberality, and prodigality.
Unfortunately, these terms are today uncommonly used, or, in the case of “liberality” and “illiberality,” uncommonly used at least in the sense that Aristotle is using them.
Someone who is prodigal squanders resources, spends unwisely and to excess, and even if he or she has some liberal instincts, gives money away so haphazardly that there isn’t much left to give wisely and well.
Someone who is liberal, on the other hand, is generous, almost to a fault, but gives properly and to the right people and spends for the right reasons.
Someone who is illiberal is stingy and clings to money and is described well by those various other translations in the table above (“sordid” has a now-uncommon definition of “meanly avaricious; covetous; niggardly”).
There are a couple of parts of this section that caught my interest that I’ll address before I start rooting out the tax resistance angle.
First, there’s this quote: “[I]t is more characteristic of virtue… to do
what is noble than not to do what is base.” This is another contrast between
Aristotle’s ethics and the various “thou shalt not” varieties; Aristotle’s
is more positive, affirmative, and active — a pursuit of virtue rather than
a shunning of sin.
Second are these passages:
Now virtuous actions are noble and done for the sake of the noble.
Therefore the liberal man, like other virtuous men, will give for the sake of the noble, and rightly; for he will give to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time, with all the other qualifications that accompany right giving… But he who gives to the wrong people or not for the sake of the noble but for some other cause, will be called not liberal but by some other name.
The form of these statements seem to me to be very similar to the ones that caused us so much trouble in one of the chapters about the virtue of courage.
In that chapter, I went along with what seemed to be the consensus of the translators that when Aristotle said that the brave man does courageous things from motives of honor that this meant courageousness itself was honorable.
A dissenting opinion said that this meant that the only things that can be said to be courageous are those things that are done for honorable goals.
But in this chapter, Aristotle seems to be unambiguously taking the second,
minority position, at least concerning the virtue of liberality.
How do the other translators tackle this passage?
I’ll look particularly at the ones who most explicitly translated the courage passage in what I took to be the majority opinion (Chase, Hatch, Stewart, Moore, & Peters):
“[A]ll the actions done in accordance with virtue are noble, and done from noble motives; and the Liberal man, therefore, will give from a noble motive, and will give rightly; I mean, to proper persons, in right proportion, at right times, and whatever is included in the term ‘right giving’…
But the man who gives to improper people, or not from a motive of honour, but from some other cause, shall be called not Liberal, but something else.”
(Chase)
“[A]ll actions that are conformable to virtue have in themselves a noble effect and are inspired by a noble motive.
If, therefore, a man has the virtue of charity, he will give from a noble motive, and his gifts will have a noble effect.
Those to whom he gives will be deserving recipients of his bounty; and both the amount and the occasion of his bounty will be equally suitable and appropriate.
He will invariably observe the conditions requisite to rightful giving…
If a man fail to meet these tests — if he gives to unworthy objects, or if he gives without any reference to a virtuous ideal, but to satisfy some lower aim, he is not a charitable man, but must be styled by some other name.”
(Hatch)
(I didn’t find anything in Stewart to address this)
“[A]s all virtue has a noble end in view, mere giving freely is not enough to constitute Liberality.
Regard must be had to certain conditions, [which include] 1. A noble motive. 2. Due consideration of the recipients, the amount, and the occasion of the gift…”
(Moore)
“[V]irtuous acts, we said, are noble, and are done for the sake of that which is noble.
The liberal man, therefore, like the others, will give with a view to, or for the sake of, that which is noble, and give rightly; i.e. he will give the right things to the right persons at the right times — in short, his giving will have all the characteristics of right giving…
He who gives to the wrong persons, or gives from some other motive than desire for that which is noble, is not liberal, but must be called by some other name.”
(Peters)
So in this case, clearly, the noble motive of liberality for the sake of liberality is not enough to make an action virtuous — the liberality must be done correctly by some standard, aimed in the right direction.
I wonder what it was about the way the courage section was worded that made the translators so reluctant to draw the same conclusion there.
Or maybe I’m just being obtuse.
Aristotle did qualify his section on courage by saying
The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs.
So maybe when some of the translators said that the courageous person is courageous for the sake of courageousness, this same sort of thing — courage done correctly by some standard, aimed in the right direction — was just implicitly imported into the definition of courageousness.
If so, though, I wonder why many of the translators left the comment open to misinterpretation, and why many of the others seemed to want to caricature or exaggerate Aristotle’s viewpoint.
This segues well into a discussion of conscientious tax resistance, since this question has everything to do with spending money “for the sake of the noble, and rightly” and making sure to give your money “to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time, with all the other qualifications that accompany right giving.”
Unfortunately, Aristotle seemed to feel it was outside of the scope of his argument to specify more precisely how you go about deciding who the right people are, what the right amounts are, when the right time is, and what these other qualifications are (or perhaps he did this elsewhere and I just haven’t gotten to it yet).
Whether or not tax resistance itself is part of the virtue of liberality depends on your answer to the question of whether paying taxes is giving money to the right people, in the right amounts, at the right time, and in the right way, and Aristotle doesn’t give us enough to go on (here) to indicate what his answers would be.
I’ve got my own answers to those questions, so for me anyway, that aspect of the virtue is satisfied.
But certainly even if you are practicing tax resistance for the right reasons, liberality-wise, you can practice tax resistance in a more-or-less liberal manner.
Someone who lives a life of poverty or gives away everything they own in order to resist taxes, and who thereby becomes a burden to others, could be said to be practicing tax resistance prodigally.
Similarly, perhaps, someone who withholds taxes from the government and then donates an equivalent amount to charity, who then becomes penniless when the government seizes the back taxes, could be faulted for prodigiality in the way they resist.
On the other side of the scale, there are those who practice tax resistance but who don’t really put their money to much better use than the government does, but who hoard it or use it to buy mountains of consumer baubles for themselves.
They could be said to be resisting taxes in an illiberal fashion.
Aristotle suggests that virtue is more shown by doing the right thing than in not doing the wrong thing, and that the liberal person “is more annoyed if he has not spent something that he ought than pained if he has spent something that he ought not” so someone who concentrates more on resisting taxes than on better uses for the resources not being given to the government might also be said not to be resisting liberally.
More vexing is this idea that the motivation for being liberal should be your love of the virtue of liberality and, in general, of virtue and things that are noble.
Most conscientious tax resisters I know of seem to have more complicated motives than this: a desire not to be complicit in evil, an eagerness to protest wrongs via an act of civil disobedience, a feeling that the tax system and the government it supports are unjust and unworthy of support.
These, I suppose, could all be considered evaluations of the “right people, right amounts, right time, right way” part of the equation, and could still be subsumed under a liberal virtue that is motivated primarily by the love of nobility and the desire to be a flourishing person, where a liberally-practiced tax resistance is just one manifestation of this virtue.
What about taxpaying?
Is this something that can be done in a liberal manner?
Maybe it can.
If you are paying taxes because you think your tax bill is the right amount, being spent at the right time and in the right way, and going to the right people; and if you are doing so not grudgingly because it’s the law or from fear of the consequences of being caught evading taxes, but gladly because your love of noble virtue motivates you to be generous with your money in that way, then perhaps you are being a liberal taxpayer.
Occasionally you do run across someone who at least professes to be behaving this way.
I think, though, that those who do are acting from (likely willful) ignorance of how the government is using their tax money in ways that aren’t “right” by any reasonable standard, and as Aristotle has told us that willful ignorance is no excuse for vice, this is a hurdle the prospective liberal taxpayer will find it hard to clear.
One thing I neglected to say in my discussion of the previous section, on liberality, was that to Aristotle, liberality concerned both the giving/spending and the taking of money.
The liberal person both dispersed and obtained money properly.
Magnificence is different: it’s something like a magnified version of the giving/spending part of liberality, but with a twist.
All magnificent people are liberal; but not all liberal people manage to be magnificent.
“The magnificent man is like an artist,” says Aristotle, “for he can see what is fitting and spend large sums tastefully.”
To be magnificent requires a very public-spirited generosity, good sense and fine aesthetic taste, and lots and lots of money.
vulgarity vulgar profusion want of taste bad taste ostentation vulgar ostentation ignorance of what is elegant
Aristotle summarizes magnificence like this:
[T]he result should be worthy of the expense, and the expense should be worthy of the result, or should even exceed it.
And the magnificent man will spend such sums for honour’s sake; for this is common to the virtues.
And further he will do so gladly and lavishly; for nice calculation is a niggardly thing.
And he will consider how the result can be made most beautiful and most becoming rather than for how much it can be produced and how it can be produced most cheaply.
Whereas in liberality, the emphasis seemed to be on spending/giving the right amount and for the right purpose and with the right attitude, in magnificence there is much more emphasis on spending for a grand, splendid, fabulous, and yet absolutely tasteful, public result (although those other elements are also important here).
The scale is larger, and also the stakes are higher.
If the liberal person spends badly, well, that’s just one of those things (“[I]f he happens to spend in a manner contrary to what is right and noble, he will be pained, but moderately and as he ought”) — learn from it and move on.
On the other hand, if the magnificent person falls short of the mark or, from lack of taste, embarrasses him or herself with some expensive and vulgar grotesque — it’s a magnificent failure.
There is an emphasis on the public nature of the giving — receiving foreign dignitaries, making religious offerings, erecting public buildings, funding festivals and entertainments, throwing weddings, lavishly decorating your home (“for even a house is a sort of public ornament”).
There is something wonderful about magnificence as Aristotle describes it.
is the last day of this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.
This is a free, weekend-long set of concerts in Golden Gate Park, and this is the ninth year it’s been put on.
It is free (to attendees) because it is paid for by a billionaire named Warren Hellman who uses his money magnificently.
And that’s damned beautiful.
But it can grate on the nerves to think that there’s a virtue out there that’s really only available to the wealthy.
What if you want to collect the complete set, but you aren’t rich?
It’s hard to get rich if you’re practicing the virtue of liberality, and magnificent people are also liberal people, so it seems like the only way to become magnificent is to start out avaricious and unvirtuous and get rich first or to be born into money.
There are occasions on which ordinary schmoes like you and me can try out our magnificence.
In my culture, weddings are the typical opportunities for magnificence: people often go to great expense to put these on, and run the risks of misplaced penny-pinching or of gaudy vulgarity when they do so.
The Burning Man festival is another example that comes to mind, an opportunity for people of means to build grand installations and public displays from motives of generosity and a striving for the fabulously beautiful.
On the other hand, some of us can barely afford to consider a Burning Man ticket, much less an installation that would be grand enough to attract any notice.
What’s left for us?
Aristotle does throw us a bone:
[G]reatness in the work differs from greatness in the expense (for the most beautiful ball or bottle is magnificent as a gift to a child, but the price of it is small and mean)
Great-souledness is the virtue of someone who is fully virtuous with respect to the other virtues, and knows it, and is aware of the honor that is due him or her for this.
He “thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them.”
humility small-mindedness mean-mindedness mean-spiritedness want of spirit little moral dignity little-mindedness pusillanimity narrowmindedness
pride great-mindedness noble-mindedness magnanimity great-souledness elevation of soul high-mindedness
vanity vainglory conceit pride[!] chirking vanity
This virtue gave some trouble to the translators I consulted, and some put in extra effort to try to explain it (Moore’s note is a good example).
Most of the trouble comes because “pride” underwent a shift in Western philosophy.
Aristotle could speak of it matter-of-factly as a virtue, but under Christianity, pride became a sin, and today it remains something that is mostly held in contempt.
Even people who achieve great things or receive great honors are expected to express themselves modestly and self-effacingly on the occasion.
Aristotle’s portrait of the great-souled man is not particularly flattering, either.
He skips opportunities to describe the great-souled man’s most attractive qualities, and lingers over his haughty unconcern and disdain and his presumption and self-regard and the way he works to dominate others and put them in his debt.
It seems to me that there’s more to it than this.
As I read this section, it seems to me that Aristotle’s portrayal of the great-souled man is slightly comical, even somewhat mocking, which is strange.
It also seems to me that he is deliberately glossing over the more attractive parts of the great-souled man and lingering on the less attractive ones as a way of rubbing our noses in the fact that virtue in general, unlike the specific virtues he’s just been covering (liberality, magnificence), is meant for the benefit of the virtuous person, not for the rest of us.
We should not expect a great-souled person to be the sort of person we’d want as a best buddy, but as someone who is far above us and, probably, as a result fairly contemptuous of our affairs.
The word Aristotle used for this virtue, megalopsyche, translates literally to the sanskrit word mahatma, or mahā ātman — both meaning “great soul.”
But it’s hard for me to read this section of Aristotle and see Mahatma Gandhi described in it.
Among the traits of a great-souled man:
He deserves and claims great things, but above all, honor.
He is good in the highest degree, great in every virtue.
You never see him behaving in a cowardly manner or wronging another person, because, loving honor above all, he has no motive to do such things.
He will be moderately pleased at receiving great honors from good people, but just thinking these his due, in fact less than his due, but as the best honors perhaps that are available under the circumstances, he will make allowance.
Casual honors from middling people, he will despise.
He is indifferent to what fate brings him — “neither over-joyed by good fortune nor over-pained by evil” and cares not for power and wealth, except as a means to honor.
Even honor, which he loves above all, he doesn’t make a big deal over.
It doesn’t hurt if he’s rich, powerful, and well-born, though none of these things are sufficient.
He doesn’t court danger, particularly since there’s not much he finds worth courting danger for.
But when he encounters danger, he faces it “unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth having.”
He asks for nothing, but gives readily.
He gives benefits and gifts, but hates to receive them, and hates to be in another’s debt, but will overpay a debt so as to turn the tables.
Similarly, he remembers (and prefers to be reminded of) the services he has done for others, but not those he has received (for those things are reminders of having been in an inferior position, and the proud man prefers to be superior).
He does not stoop but projects his dignity before people of high position and riches, but he behaves in an unassuming way towards ordinary folk, as it’s a vulgar thing to lord it over people below one’s station.
He doesn’t exert himself for the sorts of honors most people strive for, but only for the best of the best.
He’s a man of few deeds, but those few are fantastic.
He’s a straight-talker.
He respects truth more than people’s opinions of him, so he doesn’t hesitate to share his contempt and doesn’t waste time trying to be diplomatic.
(This, amusingly, “except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar.”)
He will not put himself in service to any so-called superior, but may choose to serve a friend.
He doesn’t much go in for admiration, since to a great person like him, nothing else is particularly outstanding.
He doesn’t tend to bear grudges or remember wrongs against him.
He doesn’t gossip or praise or bad-talk others, mostly because he doesn’t much care about the things that typically motivate people to do these things.
He prefers to possess beautiful things of no particular use more than useful, profitable things.
He moves slowly and deliberately, not in a rush, and speaks in a deep, level voice.
He is, most assuredly, not he-or-she, though Aristotle doesn’t think he needs to point this out.
The great-souled man is a great-souled man.
It’s almost like an action movie hero.
More James Bond than Mahatma Gandhi.
And it reads more like a laundry list of what the great-souled man would be like than a description of what he is like.
A fictional character, an avatar, The Übermensch.
Or perhaps this is the man Thoreau was speaking of when he wrote:
It makes for a peculiar section of the book, odd also for its placement — why is this virtue, which “seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them,” found here, tucked away in a chapter in the middle of all of the other virtues?
Aristotle says there isn’t really a word in Greek that unambiguously stands for the virtuous golden mean with relation to ambition.
When contrasted with an unseemly lack of ambition, you use the word “ambition” to describe the contrasting virtue.
But when you contrast the virtue with an unseemly abundance of ambition, you can use “unambitious” to describe the same middle point.
Most of the translators and commentators have followed Aristotle’s lead, saying that the same thing holds true more-or-less in English.
When pressed to describe the mean, they’ll usually tack an adjective like “proper” or “laudable” onto ambition.
One lecturer whose recordings I’ve been listening to suggests “industriousness” as a good word for the virtue, as it implies putting forth good effort in a good way for a good end, but doesn’t have any implications of having your sights set above your station.
(sometimes ambition, sometimes unambitiousness, depending on which vice-extreme it is being contrasted with) industriousness laudable ambition proper ambition
ambition love of honor
In the same way that magnificence was a sort of grandiose version of liberality, great-souledness is a sort of grandiose version of this virtue we’re considering now.
It, too, concerns honor, but in more modest quantities, and it is more accessible to ordinary people.
Honor is the sort of kudos and rewards you get, from people who know what they’re doing, when you deserve them for your demonstrations of virtue.
Someone who is too ambitious is too hungry for the honor, for these rewards, and is apt to accept them from the sorts of people who give them out casually or indiscriminately, or to accept them despite not having earned them.
Someone who is not ambitious enough is not willing to be honored even when honor is due them.
Given this description, I think industriousness doesn’t work too well for the virtue.
“Drive” maybe?
For this one, he has an especially difficult time finding the right words for either the virtue or the vices, and, as you can see from the table below, the various translators I have been consulting also had trouble coming to any consensus on good English words for the concepts.
Various translations of the virtue and vices concerning anger
Vice of deficiency
Virtue (golden mean)
Vice of excess
inirascibility angerlessness insensibility to anger incapacity of feeling just provocation impassionateness wrathlessness slavishness stupidity lenity a phlegmatic disposition
good temper meekness mercy patience gentleness mildness
irascibility over-aptness to anger a choleric disposition passionateness wrathfulness angryness
But even if shorthand words are hard to come by, this virtue and these vices seem fairly easy to picture.
We’ve all known someone who is a hot-head and flies off the handle easily, quick to take offense and getting all bent out of shape over some little thing.
And we’ve all known someone who’s a pushover, wimpy, a Caspar Milquetoast who lets people walk all over him without raising a protest.
And, too, we’ve all admired someone who, at the appropriate time and in a confident manner, stood up and said “enough is enough” when an insult or injustice became too great; or, on the other hand, someone who patiently bore with minor annoyances that would have driven a lesser person to stomp their feet and pull out their hair.
Aristotle, and the translators, believed that people tend to err on the too-quick-to-anger side of the continuum, which is why most of the words suggested for the virtue suggest a tamping-down of anger: meekness, mercy, patience, gentleness, mildness.
These days, I could see an argument either way.
There is a lot of stupid belligerence, but on the other hand, I’m amazed at the variety and severities of insults to dignity that people routinely put up with without complaint.
Aristotle believed that the excess of anger is worse to have around than a deficiency of anger, and that this too is a good reason for setting up the opposition the way he did.
Even that I’m not too sure about.
If people habitually put up with gross insults to their dignity then these insults can become unexceptional.
The commonplace mendacity of politicians or advertisers is such a variety of insult — accepting it without complaint has become so habitual that it looks eccentric to behave as though one took offense at being lied to.
Perhaps this sort of corrosion is as bad or worse than that caused by irascible people.
The excess of anger has, in Aristotle’s view, a number of different varieties.
The hot-headed person that I described is one — he or she gets angry at the wrong things, and to an excessive extent, and on too much of a hair-trigger.
But someone like a “sulky” person who holds grudges can exhibit the same vice but in a different way: by being angry at (possibly) the right things and the right amount and after the right amount of consideration, but not expressing that anger in a satisfying way and so holding on to it long after its time has passed, finally expressing it as some misdirected act of revenge.
The various translators I’ve been consulting have come up with an evocative set of prospective translations for the words Aristotle uses to describe people who have an excess or deficiency of amiability, or who hit the mark and approximate the golden mean of just enough:
Various translations of the descriptions of people who have the virtue and vices concerning agreeability
Ross goes with “friendliness” to describe the virtue, but this can be a little misleading, since the virtue doesn’t have to do with forming or maintaining friendships so much as it has to do with how you relate to people whether or not they are your friends.
(In Ross’s defense, he seems to be following Aristotle’s lead, as he says that there is no word in Greek for the virtue, but “friendship” is closest.)
“Amiability” seems the best of the lot to me, of the English language proposals.
At first, this looks like just sort of a common-sense “things I learned in kindergarten” sort of virtue.
But it actually has a very commonplace and challenging element of conscience attached to it: A good example of a situation in which we struggle to find the golden mean of this virtue would be one in which we are among a group of casual acquaintances and one of them tells a joke that depends for its humor on the shared assumption of an offensive racial stereotype.
Do we laugh in order to be agreeable, or do we signal our disapproval?
When does our obligation to be agreeable and tolerant get eclipsed by our obligations to insist on better standards of behavior or our disgrace at being associated with shameful behavior?
“Go along to get along” is a real problem, and it comes from being inattentive to the balancing act this virtue requires.
An amiable person regularly is pleasing to those around him or her, and avoids giving offense.
But when a harsh word is called for, or “when acquiescence in another’s action would bring disgrace,” he or she will draw the line and not be afraid to offend.
In the seventh
section of the fourth book of The Nicomachean
Ethics, Aristotle discusses the virtue of truthfulness — or at
least truthfulness of a certain sort. He seems mostly concerned here with
how people represent themselves to others: Do they brag about their skills
and experiences and credentials, do they with false modesty self-deprecate
in an annoying and dishonest way, or do they straightforwardly share an
honest assessment of themselves?
This is related to a more general version of honesty, in that people who lie
about little things for the sake of their reputations are also more likely
to lie about big things in order to take advantage of and cheat people. And
the boundary between these different sorts of honesty isn’t exact. But
Aristotle plans to deal with this other form of honesty when he discusses
Justice later on.
But because of this, the variety of virtue discussed in this section seems
almost trivial: the golden mean between being all hat and no cattle on the
one hand and failing to toot your own horn on the other — the virtue of a
straight shooter who knows his or her own worth.
The vices associated with this virtue are most evident, Aristotle says, when
there is no ulterior motive for deception, but when such deception has simply
become habitual. At such times, the vices are evidence of a person’s
character, and not just evidence that a person has given in to
temptation.
Aristotle deliberately pairs this virtue with
the previous one (amiability).
One way of looking at this is that amiability is the virtue of honestly
assessing and expressing our opinions of the good features of those around
us, while this virtue of truthfulness is the virtue of honestly assessing
and expressing our opinions of the good features of ourselves.
As you should expect by this point, Aristotle thinks that there are those who are overly-serious, those who try to make a joke out of everything, and pleasant people who find the sweet spot in the middle.
(The “urbane” vs. “rustic” terminology hints at an interesting investigation, but I’ve got too much on my plate to look in to it right now.
Any pointers?)
Much of this section is predictable from the pattern shown by the previous ones and from common sense.
But Aristotle lets slip a passage that allows us to take an interesting detour.
[Of t]he man who jokes well… There are… jokes he will not make; for the jest is a sort of abuse, and there are things that lawgivers forbid us to abuse; and they should, perhaps, have forbidden us even to make a jest of such.
The refined and well-bred man, therefore, will be as we have described, being as it were a law to himself.
The “a law to [or unto] himself” translation is common to all of the translators I have been referring to (Ross, Chase, Browne, Gilles, Grant, Hatch, Moore, Peters, Stock, Taylor, Vincent, Welldon, Williams), though some say that the refined man behaves “as though” he were a law unto himself, others say that the refined man “is” a law unto himself (in these matters).
Stock goes so far as to add (in his paraphrase) “It is the use of philosophy to render law superfluous.”
I assume the translators used the phrase “a law unto himself” to translate “νόμος ὢν ἑαυτῷ” because they were following the lead of the translators of the King James Bible, who used a similar phrase to translate the similar Greek phrase “ἑαυτοῖς εἰσιν νόμος” in Romans 2:14 (“a law unto themselves”).
For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
Both Aristotle and Paul are saying that in the absence of explicit laws, a righteous person still has a conscience that can guide them and act as an internal lawbook.
But both Aristotle and Paul seemed to believe that there is or ought to be a set of explicit external laws that takes priority.
In Paul’s case, these laws were the revealed commands of God; in Aristotle’s case, the considered and codified guidance of the enlightened polis.
(Aristotle seems to believe that the whole point of having a government and laws is to train people in virtue, punish vice, and enforce Justice.
This seems a naive and limited view of what governments are actually for, but, on the other hand, most people who criticize governments but who believe in them tend to implicitly make their criticisms by way of contrasting an existing government with an ideal one that is much like Aristotle’s. So maybe Aristotle is just fleshing-out this ideal government that people use for such comparisons.)
Thoreau upended this hierarchy: he put conscience first, and said that the written laws of governments and religions are only fall-back measures for people with simple minds or faulty consciences.
He wrote a number of times of the tension between law and conscience, law and freedom, and even conscience and freedom.
Not all of what he said seems to cohere into a single point of view, but much of it is, as you might expect, thought provoking and rhetorically powerful.
Here are some examples:
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey.
We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.
The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker.
The stern command is—move or ye shall be moved—be the master of your own action—or you shall unawares become the tool of the meanest slave.
Any can command him who doth not command himself.
Let men be men & stones be stones and we shall see if majorities do rule.
“And I reason without obeying, when obedience appears to me to be contrary to reason,” rejoined Mirabeau.
This was good and manly, as the world goes; and yet it was desperate.
A saner man would have found opportunities enough to put himself in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society, and so test his resolution, in the natural course of events, without violating the laws of his own nature.
It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he finds himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government.
Cut the leather only where the shoe pinches.
Let us not have a rabid virtue that will be revenged on society — that falls on it, not like the morning dew, but like the fervid noonday sun, to wither it.
Any man knows when he is justified, & not all the wits in the world can enlighten him on that point.
I do not believe in lawyers—in that mode of defending or attacking a man—because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, & in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not.
Let lawyers decide trivial cases.
Business men may arrange that among themselves.
It is comparatively a different matter.
If they were interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing.
Being shameless or incapable of shame when shame is called for is a vice, and
being constantly ashamed — bashful, I guess, or of low self-esteem — is no
virtue either. Ideally, you’ll be ashamed at the right things, to the right
extent.
And so this looks like something that fits the template for virtues that
Aristotle has established. But, he says, you only feel shame as the result of
doing the wrong thing, so it would be a mistake to call shame a
virtue.
In youth, particularly, shame is attractive, since young people are expected
because of their inexperience to make mistakes, and responding to these
mistakes with appropriate shame is admirable. In adults, though, who
presumably have had opportunities to learn their lessons already, shame
is not praiseworthy (though its absence, when appropriate, would be worse).
Given this troublesome nature of shame, I’m a little surprised that Aristotle
didn’t try a little harder to fit it into his scheme. Changing the virtue
from “feeling shame” to “having the capability to feel appropriate shame”
or “judging oneself well” or “a capacity for self-criticism” would, I think,
get rid of the “quasi-”.
I think Aristotle is trying to work with the similarity he sees between the
emotions of anger, of fear, and of shame. In the case of anger, his virtue
concerns being angry at the right things, in the right way, and so forth.
In the case of fear, though, his virtue concerns courage — that is,
responding to fear in the right way. But strangely, he explicitly
notes the similarities between fear and shame (one makes you go pale, the
other makes you blush, thus both seeming to have sub-rational roots), but then
treats shame more like anger in the way he describes the (quasi-)virtue
associated with it. It seems like he could have made the comparison to
anger even more easily (anger makes your blood boil, makes you flush), and
the parallel would have been stronger, but he doesn’t explicitly make the
connection.
This concludes book four of The Nicomachean Ethics.
The entirety of book five will concern the virtue of Justice, and promises
to be a much more in-depth investigation than those of the virtues in books
three and four — as well as one with lots of relevance to the hot topics
of The Picket Line.
