WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.480 Okay, let's get started. 00:09.820 --> 00:11.060 Good afternoon. 00:11.060 --> 00:13.040 I am Professor Franco Trevino. 00:13.040 --> 00:16.080 Today we'll be focusing on virtue ethics 00:16.180 --> 00:18.260 as an approach to normative ethics. 00:18.740 --> 00:23.920 This is our first reading in the section of the book on doing, 00:24.080 --> 00:26.920 that is that we're moving now away from metaphysics 00:26.920 --> 00:28.540 and epistemology over to ethics. 00:28.540 --> 00:32.280 So my lecture today is going to have five parts. 00:33.160 --> 00:36.860 So first I want to talk about doing, just broadly speaking, 00:36.860 --> 00:39.080 what are the kinds of questions we're going to be asking 00:39.080 --> 00:41.280 in this last section of X-FIL. 00:41.280 --> 00:45.460 Then I'm going to move on to talk a little bit 00:45.460 --> 00:48.340 about the core concepts of virtue ethics, 00:48.340 --> 00:49.720 that is virtue and happiness. 00:49.720 --> 00:52.060 Talk a little bit about how you should understand those. 00:52.500 --> 00:55.360 They're a little bit unfamiliar notions, and I'm going 00:55.360 --> 00:56.800 to be asking you to understand them 00:56.800 --> 00:58.700 in a slightly unfamiliar way. 00:58.700 --> 01:00.660 So that's why I'm going to use some time talking 01:00.660 --> 01:01.500 about the notions. 01:02.880 --> 01:05.860 Then in the third section we'll move on to book one 01:05.860 --> 01:08.220 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. 01:08.220 --> 01:11.780 Talk about Aristotle's views on human nature and happiness. 01:13.640 --> 01:18.340 Then moving on to Aristotle's account of what virtue is, 01:18.460 --> 01:21.680 what virtuous actions consist of, and talk a little bit 01:21.680 --> 01:24.340 about one particular virtue that is courage. 01:24.340 --> 01:27.960 So you get a sense of the structure of Aristotle's theory. 01:29.540 --> 01:32.760 And then finally we'll spend a little bit of time, 01:32.760 --> 01:34.100 we won't have a ton of time to talk 01:34.100 --> 01:36.620 about Foote's article on euthanasia. 01:37.120 --> 01:41.220 Here you can see a contemporary philosopher applying 01:41.420 --> 01:44.200 Aristotle inspired virtue ethical ideas 01:44.200 --> 01:46.960 on a contemporary issue that of euthanasia. 01:49.020 --> 01:51.700 Okay? So let's start. 01:51.700 --> 01:53.920 So do it. 01:53.920 --> 01:55.940 What are the questions we're going to be asking 01:55.940 --> 01:57.660 in this section of the course? 01:57.660 --> 02:01.520 Now I'm going to give you these questions, 02:01.520 --> 02:03.500 I'm not going to give you the answers to these questions. 02:03.500 --> 02:06.660 We will get some answers to these questions along the way, 02:06.660 --> 02:08.220 but of course all these answers are going 02:08.220 --> 02:09.680 to be contested answers. 02:10.180 --> 02:13.760 So one question, what is a good life for human beings? 02:14.360 --> 02:17.140 What is happiness? 02:19.140 --> 02:20.400 What is the right thing to do, 02:20.400 --> 02:21.880 and how do I figure that out? 02:23.780 --> 02:25.700 What is genuinely valuable in the world? 02:26.120 --> 02:29.760 Right? These are all big, difficult questions, 02:30.060 --> 02:32.820 and one thing that the first three theories 02:32.820 --> 02:36.240 in this section are going to be doing is giving you kinds 02:36.240 --> 02:37.800 of answers to those questions. 02:37.800 --> 02:42.840 And then we'll be asking, taking a step back 02:42.840 --> 02:45.420 and asking questions about the nature of morality. 02:45.420 --> 02:48.000 This is the Sharon Street article, 02:48.000 --> 02:49.980 is morality merely subjective? 02:49.980 --> 02:52.040 Is it just a projection of my desires 02:52.040 --> 02:53.240 or something along those lines? 02:53.240 --> 02:54.260 Or is it objective? 02:54.780 --> 02:57.900 Are there real truths about value in the world? 03:00.180 --> 03:03.700 Then it will be sort of broadening our perspective 03:03.700 --> 03:05.160 to the nature of society. 03:05.160 --> 03:06.860 What makes a society just? 03:06.860 --> 03:09.120 What's the best way to organize a society? 03:10.400 --> 03:13.560 And asking more specific questions about gender and race. 03:13.560 --> 03:15.380 What role do they have in society? 03:15.380 --> 03:16.820 What role should they have? 03:16.820 --> 03:19.620 And finally, broadening our perspective even more. 03:19.620 --> 03:21.460 We'll be asking whether we have duties 03:21.460 --> 03:23.180 to animals and the environment. 03:25.180 --> 03:27.820 Now just to give you a brief sort of taste 03:27.820 --> 03:31.700 of what these three theories are going to be doing, 03:32.260 --> 03:34.800 I want you to just think for a second 03:34.800 --> 03:39.180 about different ways you can talk or think about an action. 03:39.180 --> 03:41.860 And I have an example of action. 03:41.860 --> 03:47.700 So imagine someone who lies in order 03:47.700 --> 03:49.700 to avoid hurting someone's feelings, 03:50.260 --> 03:53.340 but the other person ends up being publicly embarrassed. 03:53.340 --> 03:56.460 Other people perceive the lie, and it doesn't go well. 03:56.460 --> 03:58.320 So you have an action. 03:58.320 --> 04:01.260 You have someone who's trying to accomplish something, 04:01.540 --> 04:05.980 maybe with good intentions, acts in a certain way, lies, 04:06.400 --> 04:09.160 and here we have the consequences of the action. 04:09.160 --> 04:14.140 So we can look at this action from the perspective 04:14.140 --> 04:19.420 of the agent, the person who's engaging in the action 04:19.420 --> 04:21.420 or acting, the actor. 04:21.420 --> 04:24.380 We can look at it just from the perspective of the action, 04:24.380 --> 04:27.580 the thing that the agent did, or we can look at it 04:27.580 --> 04:30.100 from the perspective of the consequences. 04:30.100 --> 04:33.020 And these are three different but natural ways 04:33.020 --> 04:36.460 of thinking about how to evaluate an action. 04:36.460 --> 04:39.820 And so the first one, the agent perspective, 04:39.820 --> 04:41.060 you might ask something like, well, 04:41.060 --> 04:43.340 what kind of person does such a thing? 04:43.340 --> 04:46.900 Do I want to be the kind of person who does such things? 04:46.900 --> 04:51.700 That's the agent perspective on this kind of action. 04:51.700 --> 04:55.620 Is this action right or wrong? 04:56.180 --> 04:58.540 Does it violate any norms or rules? 04:58.540 --> 05:03.380 Now we're focusing on the action parts of this little scenario. 05:03.380 --> 05:07.420 And then are the consequences of the action good or bad? 05:07.420 --> 05:09.940 What is the state of the world as a result of the action? 05:09.940 --> 05:12.660 What happens as a result of the thing that I do? 05:12.660 --> 05:17.620 And so these are three different perspectives on how to assess, 05:17.620 --> 05:22.620 look at, and consider a scenario like the one I have up here. 05:23.620 --> 05:28.620 Now the agent perspective is inhabited in the sense 05:28.620 --> 05:33.260 that the agent perspective is inhabited 05:33.260 --> 05:35.300 in what's called normative ethics, 05:35.300 --> 05:37.540 that is ethics about trying to figure out 05:37.540 --> 05:39.780 what kind of person you want to be and what to do. 05:39.780 --> 05:43.900 The agent perspective we see represented by virtue ethics. 05:43.900 --> 05:46.580 Virtue ethics approaches these questions 05:46.580 --> 05:50.680 from the perspective of the agents who are acting. 05:53.100 --> 05:57.660 Deontology, represented by the Kant envelopment readings, 05:57.660 --> 05:59.900 approaches these questions from the perspective 05:59.900 --> 06:03.460 of the action itself, the nature of the action itself. 06:06.660 --> 06:10.780 And utilitarianism, represented by Mill and Benatar, 06:10.780 --> 06:13.340 approaches such questions, ethical questions, 06:13.340 --> 06:16.020 from the perspective of the consequences. 06:19.500 --> 06:23.220 And in each case we look not only at, 06:23.220 --> 06:26.300 in each case these theories are telling us something about 06:26.300 --> 06:30.380 both how we're supposed to think about an action, 06:30.380 --> 06:33.540 so I'm going to act, I need to figure out what to do, 06:33.540 --> 06:35.700 that's deliberation, that's future oriented, 06:35.700 --> 06:39.060 it's gonna tell us how to think about what to do, 06:39.060 --> 06:40.900 sometimes called moral reasoning, 06:40.900 --> 06:43.860 and then also tells us how to think about 06:43.860 --> 06:45.780 what has been done, right? 06:45.780 --> 06:47.740 It's both about deliberation, 06:47.740 --> 06:49.860 thinking about from a first personal perspective 06:49.860 --> 06:52.580 what am I to do, and about evaluation 06:52.580 --> 06:54.460 from a third personal perspective, 06:54.460 --> 06:56.660 thinking about that person did that, 06:56.660 --> 06:58.140 how do I evaluate that action, 06:58.140 --> 07:01.100 was it good or bad, right or wrong, et cetera. 07:02.300 --> 07:05.020 Okay, that's a very sort of rough overview 07:05.020 --> 07:08.420 and comparison of these different theories. 07:08.420 --> 07:11.020 One of the things I want you guys to be doing 07:11.020 --> 07:12.660 in the course of the next three lectures 07:12.660 --> 07:16.900 is thinking about the differences between these theories, 07:16.900 --> 07:18.900 and we'll be talking a little bit about 07:18.900 --> 07:21.960 what kinds of advantages and disadvantages they have 07:21.960 --> 07:24.740 relative to one another. 07:26.580 --> 07:30.380 Okay, so, core concepts of virtue ethics. 07:30.380 --> 07:32.660 I've already told you what these things are 07:32.660 --> 07:34.680 by way of introduction, right, 07:34.680 --> 07:37.380 it's an approach that focuses on the character 07:37.380 --> 07:38.700 or the nature of the agent, 07:38.700 --> 07:41.680 and its two main notions or concepts 07:41.680 --> 07:43.780 are virtue and happiness. 07:43.780 --> 07:46.420 And I wanna say a little bit about what these things are, 07:46.420 --> 07:48.620 because you may have some notions about 07:48.620 --> 07:51.300 or understandings of what virtue and happiness are, 07:51.300 --> 07:53.060 that are a little bit different from the way 07:53.060 --> 07:56.060 contemporary virtue ethicists understand this, 07:56.060 --> 07:57.920 and the way contemporary virtue ethicists 07:57.920 --> 08:00.320 understand these notions is very much indebted 08:00.320 --> 08:03.400 to the way Aristotle and Plato and others 08:03.400 --> 08:05.660 have developed these notions. 08:05.660 --> 08:07.460 So because they're a little bit unfamiliar, 08:07.460 --> 08:08.860 I wanted to spend a little bit of time 08:08.860 --> 08:10.740 talking about them first, 08:10.740 --> 08:12.700 before we launch into Aristotle. 08:14.860 --> 08:19.860 So the term virtue is one way of translating 08:19.860 --> 08:23.220 what the Greek term arete, 08:24.660 --> 08:26.820 another way of translating it, 08:26.820 --> 08:31.540 which is the way that your translator does in this book, 08:31.540 --> 08:33.180 is excellence. 08:33.180 --> 08:35.660 This is actually one thing that's really important 08:35.660 --> 08:37.540 for you guys to remember, 08:37.540 --> 08:41.260 is that when you read the word excellence in this book, 08:41.260 --> 08:45.500 in the Ross translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, 08:45.500 --> 08:50.500 that is, behind that word is the Greek word arete, 08:50.500 --> 08:52.260 and that's the word for virtue. 08:53.260 --> 08:55.980 So these are sometimes, 08:55.980 --> 08:57.900 so this word is sometimes translated as virtue, 08:57.900 --> 09:00.100 sometimes translated as excellence, 09:00.100 --> 09:01.500 but I want you to think, 09:01.500 --> 09:06.340 when you see the word excellence in here, virtue. 09:06.340 --> 09:07.900 And it's important that you think that 09:07.900 --> 09:09.680 otherwise you won't understand at all 09:09.680 --> 09:11.780 what Aristotle is talking about. 09:11.780 --> 09:15.500 And there's an important reason why excellence 09:15.500 --> 09:20.500 is also a good translation of the term virtue. 09:21.180 --> 09:23.500 And we'll see why that is, hopefully, 09:23.500 --> 09:25.120 a little bit later on. 09:26.580 --> 09:29.620 So what is a virtue or an excellence? 09:29.620 --> 09:34.700 Well, it's a character trait or a disposition 09:34.700 --> 09:38.220 that's manifested in the world in habitual action. 09:38.220 --> 09:42.220 So just think about how we use virtue terms. 09:42.220 --> 09:44.580 He's an honest person. 09:44.580 --> 09:47.280 She's a compassionate person. 09:47.280 --> 09:48.460 What we mean by that, 09:48.460 --> 09:52.060 we're saying something deep about those people. 09:52.060 --> 09:54.340 We're saying something that, 09:54.340 --> 09:57.300 both about how they behaved in the past, 09:57.300 --> 09:58.660 so the honest person is someone 09:58.660 --> 10:00.820 who habitually tells the truth, 10:00.820 --> 10:04.460 and how we expect that person to behave in the future. 10:05.380 --> 10:06.980 So if you say someone's an honest person, 10:06.980 --> 10:08.460 you don't say that because they acted, 10:08.460 --> 10:11.020 they were told the truth once. 10:11.020 --> 10:14.700 It's because they have told the truth, 10:14.700 --> 10:16.100 they tend to tell the truth, 10:16.100 --> 10:18.140 and we expect them to tell the truth in the future, 10:18.140 --> 10:20.740 or act in all the ways that honesty entails. 10:20.740 --> 10:23.040 Honesty entails more than just truth telling. 10:26.340 --> 10:27.940 For virtue ethicists, 10:27.940 --> 10:32.500 a virtue has both cognitive and affective components. 10:32.500 --> 10:33.500 What does that mean? 10:33.500 --> 10:37.260 It just means it involves both thinking in a certain way, 10:39.020 --> 10:40.260 so if you're compassionate, 10:40.260 --> 10:43.620 it's not just about having certain feelings. 10:43.620 --> 10:45.940 A compassionate person has certain feelings, 10:45.940 --> 10:49.120 and then has thoughts about how those feelings 10:49.120 --> 10:52.600 are gonna translate into compassionate actions. 10:53.540 --> 10:57.240 So virtue is not just a way of feeling about the world, 10:57.240 --> 11:00.140 it's a way of deliberating and thinking 11:00.140 --> 11:04.060 about how to make the world a better place, 11:04.060 --> 11:06.660 or how to do well in the world. 11:06.660 --> 11:09.380 So it's a rational capacity, 11:09.380 --> 11:11.740 but it's also an emotional capacity. 11:16.420 --> 11:18.020 So it's also, in a certain way, 11:18.020 --> 11:21.740 you can think of it as also something that's holistic, 11:21.740 --> 11:25.840 in the sense that a virtue is something that happens 11:25.840 --> 11:30.180 both, as it were, in your mind, or in your soul, 11:30.180 --> 11:31.380 as Aristotle would say. 11:31.380 --> 11:33.700 It's a way of thinking and feeling, 11:33.700 --> 11:36.340 and it's a way of acting. 11:36.340 --> 11:41.340 So it's manifested both in the world and in your mind. 11:42.100 --> 11:47.060 So that's why, for example, say a kind person, 11:47.060 --> 11:50.780 it's not just about whether a kind person 11:50.780 --> 11:55.780 has, does kind actions, but has kind thoughts. 11:55.780 --> 12:00.780 Kind reactions to other people and how they behave. 12:01.660 --> 12:06.660 So kindness then isn't just about doing stuff in the world, 12:06.660 --> 12:11.660 it's about being a certain way internally, in your mind. 12:14.380 --> 12:18.980 The last point is that virtue is developed 12:18.980 --> 12:23.420 through habituation and education. 12:23.420 --> 12:27.660 So if you understand what I'm getting at about virtue, 12:27.660 --> 12:30.060 it's not the kind of thing you can just do 12:30.060 --> 12:31.520 as a one-off thing. 12:31.520 --> 12:33.340 You have to actually practice at it. 12:33.340 --> 12:34.500 You have to train at it. 12:34.500 --> 12:37.740 You have to be trained in it by others 12:37.740 --> 12:39.900 in order to develop virtue. 12:39.900 --> 12:42.940 And we'll see this is also an important part 12:42.940 --> 12:44.380 of Aristotle's view. 12:47.060 --> 12:49.060 Okay, so I'll leave that as just a, 12:49.060 --> 12:51.620 I mean, one reason I spent, again, time 12:51.620 --> 12:54.700 on the nature of virtue because the term virtue 12:54.700 --> 12:56.260 is kind of old-fashioned. 12:56.260 --> 12:59.740 It's often used in a kind of Victorian sense 12:59.740 --> 13:02.420 about sort of abstinence from sexual activity 13:02.420 --> 13:03.540 or something like that. 13:03.540 --> 13:05.060 That's not what we're talking about 13:05.060 --> 13:06.860 when we're talking about virtue. 13:06.860 --> 13:10.180 We're talking about being a good person. 13:10.180 --> 13:13.320 Being, put it this way, an excellent specimen 13:13.320 --> 13:14.900 of a human being. 13:14.900 --> 13:17.440 That's what virtue is in this sense. 13:17.440 --> 13:21.640 And so we have examples, charity, kindness, courage, 13:21.640 --> 13:23.560 honesty, et cetera. 13:23.560 --> 13:25.300 Okay, happiness. 13:26.320 --> 13:29.820 I'm throwing some more ancient Greek at you there. 13:29.820 --> 13:31.360 The Greek term is eudaimonia. 13:33.320 --> 13:35.440 Sometimes you'll see the word eudaimonia used, 13:35.440 --> 13:38.500 a transliterated word in English. 13:38.500 --> 13:42.460 This is translated either as flourishing or happiness. 13:42.460 --> 13:47.460 This also is a term that needs to be understood 13:48.520 --> 13:51.600 in a particular way in order for you to understand 13:51.600 --> 13:52.880 the virtue ethical perspective 13:52.880 --> 13:54.840 and to make sense of Aristotle. 13:56.320 --> 13:59.960 As we'll see in the first book of Nicobitian Ethics, 13:59.960 --> 14:04.400 happiness is the thing we all strive for. 14:04.400 --> 14:08.160 That is to say it's the thing we want most of all. 14:08.160 --> 14:13.160 And it's not merely on this perspective of feeling. 14:15.000 --> 14:19.920 It's rather the state of one's life as a whole. 14:19.920 --> 14:23.240 So when an Aristotelian or a Neo-Aristotelian 14:23.240 --> 14:27.220 or a virtue skeptic says everyone wants happiness, 14:27.220 --> 14:30.960 they don't mean everyone wants to feel good. 14:30.960 --> 14:34.280 They mean everyone wants to lead a good life. 14:34.280 --> 14:39.280 Everyone wants to live well. 14:42.520 --> 14:46.280 So it's not how I feel right now. 14:46.280 --> 14:48.660 That's one way of thinking about happiness. 14:48.660 --> 14:51.760 But it's how my life is going as a whole. 14:51.760 --> 14:55.640 That's the notion of happiness that we're interested in. 14:55.640 --> 14:58.840 It's not merely a subjective or momentary feeling of pleasure. 14:58.840 --> 15:03.400 It's very, very important in order to understand 15:03.400 --> 15:07.880 virtue ethics in particular because 15:08.920 --> 15:12.160 utilitarians also speak of happiness. 15:12.160 --> 15:15.000 That their notion of happiness is more like 15:15.000 --> 15:17.500 a subjective momentary feeling of pleasure 15:17.500 --> 15:20.080 rather than this way of understanding happiness. 15:20.080 --> 15:21.080 So if you're gonna be able to understand 15:21.080 --> 15:25.480 the difference between utilitarianism and virtue ethics 15:25.480 --> 15:26.640 when it comes to happiness, 15:26.640 --> 15:30.400 this is one thing that's important to have on the table. 15:30.400 --> 15:35.400 Now don't get me wrong when I say that, 15:36.720 --> 15:40.240 and again we'll see this when we get to Aristotle, 15:40.240 --> 15:45.040 the point is not that the flourishing or happy life 15:45.040 --> 15:50.000 doesn't involve pleasure on a virtue ethical perspective. 15:50.000 --> 15:55.000 It's rather that pleasure isn't what makes the life happy. 15:56.000 --> 16:00.200 Pleasure isn't the goal of life. 16:00.200 --> 16:01.640 Now when we say happiness is the goal, 16:01.640 --> 16:03.920 we don't mean that pleasure is the goal. 16:03.920 --> 16:06.840 We mean that your life's going well is the goal. 16:06.840 --> 16:09.500 That's gonna involve pleasure, 16:09.500 --> 16:13.220 but that doesn't mean that what makes that life good 16:13.220 --> 16:15.680 is the fact that it has pleasure in it. 16:15.680 --> 16:17.160 So it's not gonna be a painful life 16:17.160 --> 16:18.760 or a neutral life or something like that. 16:18.760 --> 16:20.320 It will have pleasure in it. 16:20.320 --> 16:23.360 It's just that pleasure isn't the thing 16:23.360 --> 16:25.200 that makes the life go well. 16:25.200 --> 16:30.200 Okay, so I'm gonna, I wanna say now just a couple of things 16:32.280 --> 16:37.280 very briefly about how these two things relate to each other. 16:39.400 --> 16:43.960 Just one or two things here that's also again very important 16:43.960 --> 16:46.280 and hopefully will help you see why it's important 16:46.280 --> 16:47.980 that we understand these notions. 16:49.420 --> 16:53.640 First virtue in a virtue ethical perspective 16:53.640 --> 16:58.640 is necessary for and the most important component 16:58.640 --> 17:00.840 of happiness, right? 17:00.840 --> 17:05.840 Said another way, being a good person is necessary 17:07.120 --> 17:09.900 for living a good life. 17:14.960 --> 17:19.640 Said another way, you can't have a good life 17:19.640 --> 17:23.800 if you're a bad or evil person. 17:26.640 --> 17:28.780 So now if you sort of think back to the difference 17:28.780 --> 17:31.320 between happiness and pleasure, right? 17:31.320 --> 17:33.640 Say, well, you can have a pleasurable life 17:33.640 --> 17:35.380 if you're an evil person, right? 17:35.380 --> 17:37.760 That's true, but on this perspective, 17:37.760 --> 17:41.160 you can't live a good life if you're an evil person. 17:41.160 --> 17:43.080 And again, because the notion of happiness here 17:43.080 --> 17:45.620 is not made up by the notion of pleasure. 17:45.620 --> 17:50.620 And then because of this, right? 17:50.820 --> 17:53.540 So since I started by saying, 17:53.540 --> 17:54.760 when I was talking about happiness, 17:54.760 --> 17:57.060 everyone wants to be happy. 17:57.060 --> 18:00.020 If it's true that everyone wants to be happy, 18:00.020 --> 18:02.580 everyone wants to live a good life, 18:02.580 --> 18:07.060 then everyone should be motivated to become a good person. 18:07.060 --> 18:09.780 And to become a good person means then to develop 18:09.780 --> 18:12.480 these character traits called the virtues. 18:12.480 --> 18:16.640 So you should all want to become virtuous. 18:18.320 --> 18:22.120 Are these virtues defined by itself 18:22.120 --> 18:25.320 or what is considered virtues by society? 18:25.320 --> 18:26.160 Good. 18:26.160 --> 18:30.320 The question is, are the virtues defined by yourself 18:30.320 --> 18:31.760 or by society? 18:31.760 --> 18:32.840 The answer is neither. 18:33.840 --> 18:36.560 The virtues here are gonna be decided by 18:36.560 --> 18:39.420 in a function of human nature. 18:39.420 --> 18:42.100 So they're not relative to individuals. 18:42.100 --> 18:45.240 They're not supposed to be relative to society. 18:45.240 --> 18:46.640 They're supposed to be relative 18:46.640 --> 18:48.880 to our nature's qua human beings. 18:48.880 --> 18:51.640 And that's one of the first points that Aristotle 18:51.640 --> 18:52.600 makes in book one. 18:52.600 --> 18:54.160 So then we'll talk about that. 18:56.660 --> 18:59.400 So before we move on to Aristotle, 18:59.400 --> 19:02.600 I wanna just say a couple of things very briefly 19:02.600 --> 19:06.040 about what advantages virtue ethics has 19:06.040 --> 19:07.680 over the other theories. 19:07.680 --> 19:10.340 Very briefly because we obviously haven't seen 19:10.340 --> 19:11.940 the other theories yet. 19:11.940 --> 19:14.200 But this is something maybe you can come back 19:14.200 --> 19:16.920 and look at after we have gone through the other theories 19:16.920 --> 19:20.220 and see why it has some of these advantages 19:20.220 --> 19:22.420 and disadvantages versus the other theories. 19:23.380 --> 19:25.360 So one advantage is that it has 19:25.360 --> 19:27.360 a richer ethical vocabulary. 19:28.480 --> 19:31.460 So in deontology and utilitarianism, 19:31.460 --> 19:33.680 you can say about an action that it's wrong, 19:33.680 --> 19:38.480 it's forbidden, you ought not do it. 19:38.480 --> 19:42.960 But in virtue ethics you can say it is cowardly, 19:42.960 --> 19:46.120 it is unjust, or you can say things 19:46.120 --> 19:49.840 that don't just communicate the fact that it's wrong, 19:49.840 --> 19:53.580 but something more interesting about why it's wrong. 19:53.580 --> 19:55.360 And then you can say about actions, 19:55.360 --> 19:58.240 it could be both unjust and cowardly. 19:58.240 --> 20:00.120 And I was saying something really interesting 20:00.120 --> 20:02.720 about why the action is wrong apart from the fact 20:02.720 --> 20:05.440 that it is forbidden or immoral or wrong 20:05.440 --> 20:06.720 or something like that. 20:06.720 --> 20:10.680 So some people think that virtue ethics 20:10.680 --> 20:12.640 has an advantage here because it gives you 20:12.640 --> 20:15.680 more information about what makes the actions 20:15.680 --> 20:16.720 both right and wrong. 20:16.720 --> 20:18.360 So you see the same thing on the other side. 20:18.360 --> 20:22.740 That was both honest and courageous and noble. 20:22.740 --> 20:25.300 So you can give a fuller description 20:25.300 --> 20:29.240 about why the action is a good one 20:30.140 --> 20:32.680 apart from saying it's obligatory or it's right 20:32.680 --> 20:34.520 or it's moral or something like that. 20:34.520 --> 20:38.120 Another thing, so I've already mentioned 20:38.120 --> 20:40.880 that feelings play a role because virtues 20:40.880 --> 20:43.600 are constituted partly by feelings. 20:43.600 --> 20:45.600 And another advantage is that emotions 20:45.600 --> 20:48.800 seem to play an important role in the theory. 20:48.800 --> 20:53.800 And this just isn't true in deontology and consequentialism. 20:54.560 --> 20:56.600 In fact, as we'll see on both deontology 20:56.600 --> 20:59.520 and consequentialism, emotions are the sorts of things 20:59.520 --> 21:01.220 that basically get in the way. 21:01.220 --> 21:04.300 So you're really not supposed to listen 21:04.300 --> 21:06.100 to what your emotions tell you. 21:06.100 --> 21:07.580 Whereas in virtue ethics, you're supposed 21:07.580 --> 21:09.340 to train your emotions in such a way 21:09.340 --> 21:13.160 that they're part of feeling the right way 21:13.160 --> 21:15.900 as part of being a good person. 21:15.900 --> 21:18.700 And you might think that actually that is a better way 21:18.700 --> 21:20.900 of thinking about how to become a human being 21:20.900 --> 21:22.880 is to think about how the emotions 21:22.880 --> 21:24.680 are gonna play a supporting role. 21:26.400 --> 21:30.080 And another advantage that virtue ethics has 21:30.080 --> 21:32.940 is that moral education becomes really important 21:32.940 --> 21:33.780 on this view. 21:34.660 --> 21:36.580 It becomes really important to think about 21:36.580 --> 21:41.580 how to train oneself to become the sort of person 21:41.940 --> 21:46.940 that is kind, generous, courageous, et cetera. 21:48.060 --> 21:49.900 Those things don't just happen overnight. 21:49.900 --> 21:52.580 They certainly don't happen by themselves. 21:55.260 --> 21:59.860 So it's a lifelong project on this view. 21:59.860 --> 22:02.180 And so it's not just moral education then 22:02.180 --> 22:04.620 in terms of like, well, your parents raised you 22:04.620 --> 22:06.660 and then you're virtuous or you're vicious. 22:06.660 --> 22:08.140 No, rather your parents raised you 22:08.140 --> 22:09.740 and that's your starting point. 22:09.740 --> 22:12.400 And then you have to think on your own, 22:12.400 --> 22:14.980 how do I become a better person? 22:14.980 --> 22:16.660 I have these reactions I don't like. 22:16.660 --> 22:18.580 How do I stop having those reactions, 22:18.580 --> 22:20.140 start having better reactions? 22:21.980 --> 22:23.300 Am I selfish? 22:23.300 --> 22:24.660 Am I jealous? 22:24.660 --> 22:27.540 Am I cowardly? 22:27.540 --> 22:30.100 How can I better myself? 22:30.100 --> 22:34.340 That's important pressing questions for all of us. 22:36.220 --> 22:38.300 So of course, a couple of drawbacks. 22:38.300 --> 22:42.380 And these drawbacks, often philosophical theories, 22:42.380 --> 22:45.780 the drawbacks are connected to the advantages 22:45.780 --> 22:46.700 in certain ways. 22:46.700 --> 22:50.300 So, oh, well, you have all this upbringing 22:50.300 --> 22:52.220 and this training and this education 22:52.220 --> 22:53.460 and you have role models, 22:53.460 --> 22:55.740 but then it seems like you're always gonna be stuck 22:55.740 --> 23:00.020 with this, whatever the previous generation thought, 23:00.020 --> 23:04.140 it doesn't seem like it has radical critical potential 23:04.140 --> 23:05.900 because you always seem to be relying 23:05.900 --> 23:08.540 on what previous generations were thinking. 23:08.540 --> 23:11.220 So that's one thing that virtue ethics 23:11.220 --> 23:12.420 has been criticized for it. 23:12.420 --> 23:14.540 It doesn't seem like it has critical potential. 23:14.540 --> 23:16.380 It seems conservative. 23:16.380 --> 23:21.100 Another thing is that it doesn't really give action guidance 23:21.100 --> 23:23.700 in a very straightforward way. 23:23.700 --> 23:26.180 It doesn't behave in a courageous way, 23:26.180 --> 23:27.020 do the honest thing. 23:27.020 --> 23:30.060 Those don't necessarily tell us specifically what to do. 23:30.060 --> 23:32.380 And as we'll see when we get to the other theories, 23:32.380 --> 23:35.940 what they offer you is what's called the decision procedure, 23:35.940 --> 23:39.100 whereby you just kind of use the procedure 23:39.100 --> 23:40.980 and you can figure out what to do, 23:40.980 --> 23:43.340 at least ostensibly in every single case. 23:43.340 --> 23:46.180 Virtue ethics doesn't give you a decision procedure. 23:46.180 --> 23:48.740 And some people think that's a weakness in theory. 23:50.460 --> 23:51.300 Okay. 23:51.300 --> 23:54.940 All right, so now we take a pause. 23:54.940 --> 23:57.580 I'm gonna take a pause and take a sip of water. 24:02.100 --> 24:05.980 Okay, now let's move on to Aristotle. 24:07.660 --> 24:11.700 So the first question that Aristotle is asking 24:11.700 --> 24:14.740 in the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics 24:14.740 --> 24:17.960 is what is the good for a human being? 24:17.960 --> 24:21.680 And what he means by that is, right, 24:21.680 --> 24:23.400 so what is valuable? 24:23.400 --> 24:28.140 What is the thing that human beings want? 24:29.440 --> 24:33.920 What is the thing that makes a human life go well? 24:33.920 --> 24:38.440 That's the question that starts the Nicomachean Ethics. 24:38.440 --> 24:41.800 And he starts his answer 24:41.800 --> 24:44.960 by looking at the nature of an action. 24:44.960 --> 24:49.000 And so what does it mean to act? 24:49.000 --> 24:51.840 How do actions function? 24:53.540 --> 24:56.200 And the first thing he notices, 24:56.200 --> 24:58.640 and this is the very first sentence of the Nicomachean Ethics, 24:58.640 --> 25:00.260 I won't read it for you, 25:00.260 --> 25:04.000 is that all action is goal-directed. 25:04.000 --> 25:05.540 All right, another way of saying 25:05.540 --> 25:10.540 that it aims at some good or some end. 25:11.400 --> 25:13.160 Right, when you do something, 25:13.160 --> 25:17.520 and someone says, why did you do that? 25:18.560 --> 25:21.120 You're generally able to say, 25:21.120 --> 25:24.880 unless you are, I don't know, dreaming or really intoxicated, 25:24.880 --> 25:29.720 because, and tell what you were trying to accomplish 25:29.720 --> 25:31.160 by doing that action. 25:33.640 --> 25:36.880 So what that gives you then 25:36.880 --> 25:40.840 is the beginnings of a hierarchy. 25:40.840 --> 25:42.680 Right, because you do the thing, 25:42.680 --> 25:47.200 you commit the action in order to achieve some other thing 25:47.200 --> 25:51.340 that already tells you that the thing you did 25:51.340 --> 25:55.440 is instrumental to the thing that you wanted. 25:56.520 --> 25:59.720 All right, why did you go to the store? 26:00.720 --> 26:02.400 Oh, I wanted to buy bread. 26:03.780 --> 26:06.920 So you have the going to the store is your action, 26:06.920 --> 26:10.160 and in order to buy bread was your goal. 26:10.160 --> 26:13.840 All right, so that starts you with a hierarchical structure 26:13.840 --> 26:16.520 and the action aims at some end. 26:18.520 --> 26:20.880 And it answers the why question, right? 26:20.880 --> 26:23.920 For any action, you ask why you tell me 26:23.920 --> 26:27.600 what your purpose or goal or end was in doing that action. 26:29.680 --> 26:33.180 Now, Aristotle reasons that, well, 26:33.180 --> 26:37.840 if there is some end 26:37.840 --> 26:41.800 that organizes all of my other ends, 26:41.800 --> 26:45.200 then that seems like a good candidate 26:45.200 --> 26:47.060 for the good for a human being. 26:48.340 --> 26:53.080 Right, so back to I went to the store 26:53.080 --> 26:55.080 in order to get bread. 26:55.080 --> 26:57.880 Now I can ask of you, you might've already had this, 26:57.880 --> 27:00.000 so why did you want bread? 27:01.360 --> 27:04.320 And then you're gonna tell me that you need bread 27:04.320 --> 27:07.080 in order to make a sandwich, 27:07.080 --> 27:08.800 something along those lines. 27:08.800 --> 27:11.920 All right, so then you have now an embedded hierarchy. 27:11.920 --> 27:15.680 You have your action in not just one goal, 27:15.680 --> 27:19.820 but a goal that subserves yet another goal. 27:19.820 --> 27:23.360 And he thinks that all of our actions are like this. 27:23.360 --> 27:28.260 They find themselves within these hierarchies. 27:29.880 --> 27:33.840 So someone will ask you, well, maybe not, 27:33.840 --> 27:35.640 but let's say someone does, 27:35.640 --> 27:38.560 why did you attend the Exfil lecture today? 27:38.560 --> 27:40.240 Later someone can ask you that. 27:40.240 --> 27:44.760 And then you can give an answer to that question. 27:44.760 --> 27:48.040 And then someone can ask you why to whatever you are. 27:48.040 --> 27:50.480 So I attended the Exfil lecture 27:50.480 --> 27:54.960 because I need to learn about Aristotle. 27:54.960 --> 27:57.160 Okay, well, why do you need to learn about Aristotle? 27:57.160 --> 27:59.760 Well, because I'm writing one of my obligatory essays 27:59.760 --> 28:01.080 on Aristotle. 28:01.080 --> 28:02.580 Well, why are you doing that? 28:02.580 --> 28:05.620 Well, because I'm taking the seminar version of Exfil 28:05.620 --> 28:06.600 Well, why are you doing that? 28:06.600 --> 28:07.720 Because I want to pass Exfil. 28:07.720 --> 28:09.360 Well, why do you care about that? 28:10.220 --> 28:11.720 Well, I want a university degree. 28:11.720 --> 28:12.800 Yes, but why? 28:12.800 --> 28:16.120 Right, so you can always ask about all of these, 28:16.120 --> 28:18.000 that's like an annoying two year old, right? 28:18.000 --> 28:20.180 You can always ask why. 28:20.180 --> 28:25.180 And then you get these structured hierarchies, right? 28:26.120 --> 28:29.920 You're doing the thing, you're attending the lecture 28:29.920 --> 28:31.520 in order to do something, 28:31.520 --> 28:35.780 which is itself a means for something else. 28:38.700 --> 28:43.680 Now, you have all these actions that you do, right? 28:43.680 --> 28:45.680 During the day, during the week. 28:45.680 --> 28:47.320 And the question Aristotle is, 28:47.320 --> 28:52.320 is there something that's at the top of all those chains, 28:53.260 --> 28:57.720 of all those why answers, that's the same? 28:57.720 --> 29:02.720 Is there one common answer where if you keep asking 29:03.580 --> 29:08.580 the why question, you come to the same answer. 29:09.540 --> 29:11.100 And Aristotle thinks that the answer 29:11.100 --> 29:13.540 to that question is yes. 29:13.540 --> 29:15.180 Not everyone agrees with him, right? 29:15.180 --> 29:17.180 This is one, you know, the very beginning 29:17.180 --> 29:18.740 of Nicomachean ethics, some philosophers say, 29:18.740 --> 29:21.100 no, that's just not true. 29:21.100 --> 29:24.580 And you can think about whether you think it's true as well. 29:24.580 --> 29:27.180 He's gonna tell you, as we come to in a second, 29:27.180 --> 29:30.260 that the answer to that question at the top, 29:30.260 --> 29:34.100 the end of all of your chains is happiness. 29:34.100 --> 29:36.400 The end of all of your why questions is, 29:36.400 --> 29:38.740 well, because I wanna live a good life, 29:38.740 --> 29:40.740 and that's part of living a good life. 29:40.740 --> 29:42.100 Or why do you want that degree? 29:42.100 --> 29:44.340 Because you want a certain kind of job. 29:44.340 --> 29:46.580 Why do you want a certain kind of job? 29:46.580 --> 29:48.380 Because I wanna contribute to making the world 29:48.380 --> 29:49.200 a better place. 29:49.200 --> 29:51.020 Or because I wanna earn a lot of money. 29:51.020 --> 29:52.700 Or because whatever. 29:52.700 --> 29:56.300 And then eventually you think that whatever that thing is, 29:56.300 --> 29:59.340 is part of what it means to live a good life. 29:59.340 --> 30:00.940 And that's just another way of saying 30:00.940 --> 30:02.940 what you want is happiness. 30:02.940 --> 30:05.560 Because happiness just is living a good life. 30:07.800 --> 30:12.800 So Aristotle tells us, well, you know, 30:14.180 --> 30:17.680 happiness is the thing that most people say 30:17.680 --> 30:21.220 when you press them, and what's the answer? 30:21.220 --> 30:22.880 But we have to make sure. 30:22.880 --> 30:25.820 So he comes up with these two tests. 30:25.820 --> 30:29.220 He thinks, well, test whether happiness 30:29.220 --> 30:32.940 is the right sort of thing to be at the top 30:32.940 --> 30:37.200 of all of our hierarchies. 30:37.200 --> 30:39.340 So the first, and this is in, by the way, 30:39.340 --> 30:43.380 that sort of I or one seven, that just tells you what book. 30:43.380 --> 30:46.100 That's book one of Aristotle's Linguine Ethics, 30:46.100 --> 30:49.860 chapter seven, which is marked in your text. 30:51.420 --> 30:54.780 So the first is the completeness test. 30:54.780 --> 30:59.060 And so that's asking, is it true 30:59.060 --> 31:02.460 that all things are done for its sake? 31:02.460 --> 31:05.980 Is it chosen for itself? 31:05.980 --> 31:09.460 And that's another way if you can visualize it. 31:09.460 --> 31:14.260 That's one way of asking, is there some thing 31:14.260 --> 31:18.240 that happiness is instrumental to? 31:19.940 --> 31:23.620 So is my living a good life instrumental 31:23.620 --> 31:25.480 to some other thing? 31:26.340 --> 31:28.260 And Aristotle thinks, no, the answer to that quote, 31:28.260 --> 31:29.500 that couldn't be the case. 31:29.500 --> 31:30.580 It wouldn't make sense. 31:30.580 --> 31:34.140 Whatever it was you said, you know, 31:34.140 --> 31:35.660 that you'd lived happiness for, 31:35.660 --> 31:39.640 would eventually can itself come under happiness. 31:39.640 --> 31:43.460 So all things are underneath happiness, 31:43.460 --> 31:46.900 and there is no thing above happiness 31:46.900 --> 31:51.180 on or in rather the hierarchy of ends. 31:51.180 --> 31:55.580 So Aristotle thinks happiness passes the completeness test 31:55.580 --> 31:58.220 because everything you desire and want 31:58.220 --> 32:00.160 and all your actions lead up to it, 32:00.160 --> 32:03.540 and it itself doesn't lead up to anything else. 32:05.640 --> 32:08.540 The self-sufficiency test is slightly different, 32:08.540 --> 32:10.640 similar but slightly different. 32:10.640 --> 32:14.140 Is it choice worthy by itself, 32:15.260 --> 32:19.020 or does it require anything else in addition? 32:19.020 --> 32:22.420 And this you can visualize in a slightly different way. 32:23.620 --> 32:26.740 So if you had happiness, 32:26.740 --> 32:28.820 I'd say if you were living a good life, 32:32.540 --> 32:35.540 is there something else you could want in addition? 32:37.940 --> 32:42.700 Now, someone might say, well, what about pleasure? 32:42.700 --> 32:44.980 You say, well, but pleasure is already part 32:44.980 --> 32:46.320 of the good life. 32:46.320 --> 32:49.760 And there's a specific philosophical reason 32:49.760 --> 32:52.920 why that's the case, which we'll get to in a little bit. 32:54.120 --> 32:56.240 But so that's not in addition to happiness. 32:56.240 --> 32:57.760 Even though happiness is not identical 32:57.760 --> 32:59.460 with pleasure I mentioned already, 32:59.460 --> 33:02.580 it's still part of the happy life. 33:04.720 --> 33:08.040 So happiness means, what about friends and family? 33:08.040 --> 33:11.800 Well, it's gonna turn out that humans are social animals. 33:11.800 --> 33:13.920 Friendship is one of the primary virtues. 33:13.920 --> 33:15.840 So if you have all the virtues, 33:15.840 --> 33:17.080 which are required for happiness, 33:17.080 --> 33:20.120 you have friends as well, so that's also in there. 33:20.120 --> 33:23.620 So he thinks, no, actually, there is nothing else. 33:23.620 --> 33:28.060 Once you have a complete, happy, fulfilling life, 33:28.060 --> 33:29.400 you don't need anything else. 33:29.400 --> 33:32.380 There is no other thing you could possibly want or need. 33:34.120 --> 33:37.120 So it passes the self-sufficiency test. 33:39.000 --> 33:42.160 Now, okay, great, we've made progress now. 33:42.160 --> 33:45.420 We know that we all want happiness. 33:45.420 --> 33:46.800 But Aristotle started there. 33:46.800 --> 33:49.400 He told us we all want happiness. 33:49.400 --> 33:53.500 What we don't know yet is what happiness is. 33:55.080 --> 33:58.400 All right, so all we've done so far, notice, 33:58.400 --> 34:02.400 is verify this common intuition we have 34:02.400 --> 34:04.840 that everyone wants happiness. 34:04.840 --> 34:06.760 And we've said that happiness is living a good life, 34:06.760 --> 34:08.840 but we haven't said anything more specific 34:08.840 --> 34:11.280 about what kind of life that is. 34:11.280 --> 34:13.120 We don't say anything more specific 34:13.120 --> 34:15.140 about what kind of life that is. 34:15.140 --> 34:17.880 We don't give any content to happiness. 34:17.880 --> 34:19.200 Then we don't know what to aim for. 34:19.200 --> 34:20.540 We don't know how to be. 34:21.520 --> 34:23.220 So remember I said the question is, 34:23.220 --> 34:25.380 what is the good for human beings? 34:25.380 --> 34:29.840 So we've identified the good so far as happiness. 34:29.840 --> 34:32.200 And now what we need to do is figure out, 34:32.200 --> 34:36.760 well, what's happiness then for human beings? 34:36.760 --> 34:39.280 Right, so this is now we're getting to this question 34:39.280 --> 34:43.680 of like, how do we give content to the virtues 34:43.680 --> 34:44.960 and to the notion of happiness? 34:44.960 --> 34:48.620 We do that on our cells by looking at human nature. 34:50.320 --> 34:52.960 So we're gonna ground our notion of happiness 34:52.960 --> 34:57.960 in human nature, and that is gonna lead us to this idea 34:58.880 --> 35:03.880 that what we need are the virtues in order to be happy. 35:04.200 --> 35:07.440 And this is the so-called function argument 35:09.320 --> 35:13.360 that you find in book one, chapter seven. 35:13.360 --> 35:16.760 The function argument is a typical thing 35:16.760 --> 35:21.600 that one gets in an obligatory essay or an exam. 35:21.600 --> 35:25.200 So it's on here, page 295. 35:25.200 --> 35:27.160 If you're looking for it and you need to know it 35:27.160 --> 35:29.640 for one of those things. 35:29.640 --> 35:33.640 It's a strange argument in some ways, 35:33.640 --> 35:36.480 and it only makes sense if you understand the question 35:36.480 --> 35:38.180 that Aristotle is asking. 35:38.180 --> 35:40.320 So I'm gonna try and explain it to you 35:40.320 --> 35:43.480 in the clearest way possible. 35:43.480 --> 35:48.480 Okay, so everyone agrees that happiness is the highest good, 35:49.120 --> 35:52.760 but lots of people disagree about what happiness consists 35:52.760 --> 35:54.400 in for human beings. 35:55.640 --> 35:58.120 Some people it's, you know, in the life of money making, 35:58.120 --> 35:59.680 it's the political life, it's the life of honor, 35:59.680 --> 36:03.760 it's all these different competing ways of figuring out 36:03.760 --> 36:08.180 what, again, more concretely, happiness consists in. 36:08.180 --> 36:10.280 Even though we can all agree that happiness, 36:10.280 --> 36:12.480 we all want happiness, but your conception of happiness 36:12.480 --> 36:15.080 is one thing, mine is one, hers is another. 36:15.080 --> 36:18.440 So maybe we need to sort of come up with a common, 36:18.440 --> 36:23.000 grounded, from Aristotle's perspective, objective notion 36:23.000 --> 36:27.500 that's connected to what kind of beings we are. 36:30.820 --> 36:35.820 So the strategy then to do this is to try and figure out, 36:35.820 --> 36:40.820 is there anything that's distinctive in the kinds 36:42.140 --> 36:47.140 of things we do that make us the kinds of beings we are? 36:47.700 --> 36:52.700 So he asks then, is there a distinctive function 36:52.860 --> 36:57.260 or activity that human beings engage in? 36:57.260 --> 37:02.260 The Greek here is argon, which also can be translated 37:04.180 --> 37:05.700 as work. 37:05.700 --> 37:08.820 What work do human beings do? 37:08.820 --> 37:10.020 You can see how this works better 37:10.020 --> 37:12.420 in the flute player example. 37:12.420 --> 37:16.120 What is the kind of thing that it is the work 37:16.120 --> 37:18.020 of human beings to do? 37:18.020 --> 37:19.560 What kind of activity? 37:22.040 --> 37:24.940 So the question, do humans have a distinctive function 37:24.940 --> 37:26.540 or activity, right? 37:26.540 --> 37:31.020 So in order to understand why we have the function 37:31.020 --> 37:34.260 argument, you need to understand that the function argument 37:34.260 --> 37:38.300 answers a specific question that's gonna help him give 37:38.300 --> 37:40.600 content to the notion of happiness. 37:41.940 --> 37:43.820 All right, so if you're gonna write about the function 37:43.820 --> 37:46.660 argument, you should make sure you embed it in this larger 37:46.660 --> 37:48.620 question of what the good is for human beings, 37:48.620 --> 37:52.180 because that's what it's doing in the larger argument 37:52.180 --> 37:53.260 of book one. 37:54.920 --> 37:59.920 The argument itself starts via analogy, right? 37:59.920 --> 38:04.920 So he asks, well, what is the good for a carpenter? 38:05.760 --> 38:09.240 You can ask, what is the good for a knife? 38:09.240 --> 38:11.440 So you have this sort of common structure. 38:11.440 --> 38:13.040 What is the good for a carpenter? 38:13.040 --> 38:14.400 What is the good for a knife? 38:14.400 --> 38:16.560 What is the good for a human being? 38:16.560 --> 38:20.000 And he wants, based on the first two examples, 38:20.000 --> 38:23.120 to tell us something about the last example, right? 38:23.120 --> 38:25.600 So what is the good for a carpenter? 38:25.600 --> 38:28.160 Well, a carpenter, a good carpenter, 38:28.160 --> 38:31.400 what's a good carpenter? 38:31.400 --> 38:34.000 A good carpenter is someone who builds well, 38:34.000 --> 38:35.480 let us put it that way. 38:35.480 --> 38:38.560 Right, someone who's able to construct things 38:40.160 --> 38:42.500 well out of wood. 38:42.500 --> 38:44.920 What is a knife? 38:45.760 --> 38:47.640 What is the function of a knife? 38:47.640 --> 38:50.720 Well, a good knife cuts well, 38:50.720 --> 38:54.800 because cutting is the function, the work of a knife. 38:54.800 --> 38:59.800 So now we ask, well, what about a human being? 39:00.800 --> 39:05.640 Now his strategy here is to just look at all the things, 39:05.640 --> 39:08.560 the activities that human beings engage in, 39:08.560 --> 39:12.920 and see if any of them are distinctive 39:12.920 --> 39:14.720 or unique for human beings. 39:14.720 --> 39:17.920 So really it's an argument by elimination, 39:17.920 --> 39:22.120 which starts with all of the things that we do. 39:22.120 --> 39:25.520 So one thing we do is nutrition and growth. 39:25.520 --> 39:30.520 So we eat, we digest, we grow. 39:30.520 --> 39:32.480 So that's a kind of activity 39:32.480 --> 39:34.960 that human beings typically engage in, 39:34.960 --> 39:37.400 it's a part of function of our biological nature. 39:38.480 --> 39:40.600 That can't be our distinctive activity, 39:40.600 --> 39:43.580 because plants do this, and animals, 39:43.580 --> 39:45.480 lots of other beings in the world. 39:45.480 --> 39:50.480 So that's not gonna be our distinctive function or activity. 39:50.480 --> 39:55.100 What about perception and movement? 39:55.100 --> 39:57.660 We have eyes, we can see, we move around, 39:57.660 --> 39:59.580 we go after things. 39:59.580 --> 40:00.460 Can that be? 40:00.460 --> 40:03.340 That's a sort of activity that humans engage in. 40:05.320 --> 40:06.160 No. 40:07.180 --> 40:11.620 Pleasure, those things are shared with animals. 40:11.620 --> 40:15.660 So that can't be our distinctive function or activity, 40:15.660 --> 40:18.380 because other species also engage in it. 40:18.380 --> 40:21.860 Not plants, but still animals. 40:21.860 --> 40:25.860 And then what about rational activity? 40:25.860 --> 40:28.160 All right, aha, says ourself. 40:28.160 --> 40:32.060 Now we have something that distinguishes us 40:32.060 --> 40:34.120 from all other beings. 40:34.120 --> 40:37.300 This then is the distinctive activity 40:37.300 --> 40:39.140 or work of a human being. 40:41.020 --> 40:44.460 So if we're gonna look for the kind of life 40:44.460 --> 40:48.580 that's going to deliver a good life for us, 40:48.580 --> 40:51.820 it's going to be then the kind of life 40:51.820 --> 40:56.240 that consists in rational activity. 40:57.700 --> 41:01.020 So the good for a human being is rational activity, 41:01.020 --> 41:02.580 and you may have heard this, right? 41:02.580 --> 41:04.500 So a human being is a rational animal, 41:04.500 --> 41:06.260 that's from Aristotle. 41:06.260 --> 41:10.500 You are now reading the origin of this claim. 41:10.500 --> 41:15.340 And so because we have this capability 41:15.340 --> 41:17.660 and engage in this activity 41:19.180 --> 41:22.300 that is distinctive for us as a species, 41:22.300 --> 41:24.620 that is going to be the thing 41:24.620 --> 41:27.500 that's gonna constitute a happy life for us. 41:30.540 --> 41:33.940 Okay, so now we're moving closer, right? 41:33.940 --> 41:35.960 Remember we had happiness as the goal. 41:35.960 --> 41:37.260 We wanna know what it is. 41:37.260 --> 41:40.120 Okay, we filled it out partly with this idea 41:40.120 --> 41:42.180 that it's gonna be rational activity. 41:44.740 --> 41:48.560 So now remember when we talked about the knife 41:48.560 --> 41:51.180 and the carpenter, 41:52.020 --> 41:56.140 we didn't just talk about performing the function 41:58.280 --> 42:02.500 full stop, we talked about performing the function well. 42:02.500 --> 42:04.940 Right, so we want to know what a good carpenter was 42:04.940 --> 42:06.160 and a good knife. 42:06.160 --> 42:11.160 And that's actually really very important here 42:13.740 --> 42:18.140 for understanding how virtue and excellence 42:18.140 --> 42:20.280 come into the picture, right? 42:20.280 --> 42:25.280 Because for Aristotle, a lousy knife, a bad knife, 42:25.420 --> 42:29.900 a dull knife is not really performing its function. 42:29.900 --> 42:34.900 A knife that performs its function is cutting well. 42:37.520 --> 42:41.720 So by analogy, a human being who performs its function 42:41.720 --> 42:44.400 is not just engaging in rational activity, 42:44.400 --> 42:49.400 but engaging in excellent or virtuous rational activity. 42:52.440 --> 42:54.720 So successful rational activity. 42:54.720 --> 42:58.280 So you know people presumably who engage 42:58.280 --> 43:01.400 in rational activity poorly, right? 43:01.400 --> 43:02.900 Who are bad at reasoning, 43:04.240 --> 43:06.600 who are bad at thinking through what they should do. 43:06.600 --> 43:09.400 They're engaging in rational activity poorly. 43:09.400 --> 43:11.160 That's not what Aristotle's talking about. 43:11.160 --> 43:14.920 You have to be engaging in rational activity successfully, 43:14.920 --> 43:18.560 well, with excellence or virtuously. 43:20.280 --> 43:25.280 So happiness then is not just rational activity, 43:25.280 --> 43:29.120 but excellent or virtuous rational activity. 43:30.040 --> 43:33.860 And then he says not just engaging in it once or sometimes 43:33.860 --> 43:37.120 or occasionally or on weekends or every other Tuesday, 43:37.120 --> 43:38.920 but throughout a whole life. 43:38.920 --> 43:41.580 Remember, because happiness is not just about 43:41.580 --> 43:43.440 how you're having it right now, 43:43.440 --> 43:45.620 but how your whole life is going. 43:47.000 --> 43:50.360 So what happiness then is for Aristotle's rational activity 43:50.360 --> 43:52.660 in accord with virtue, again, or excellence 43:52.660 --> 43:55.800 as the translation, your translation has it, 43:55.800 --> 43:57.320 in a complete life. 44:00.000 --> 44:05.000 So, and this kind of rational activity encompasses both, 44:05.400 --> 44:08.680 and this is the beginning move in book two, 44:08.680 --> 44:13.460 a rational activity in the social sphere, 44:13.460 --> 44:16.360 which is called moral virtue or ethical virtue, 44:16.360 --> 44:21.120 and rational activity in the intellectual sphere. 44:21.120 --> 44:23.080 So inquiry. 44:23.080 --> 44:25.780 So there are two ways it turns out 44:25.780 --> 44:29.360 to live a good, happy life for Aristotle. 44:29.360 --> 44:32.960 One has to do with engaging in the life of the mind, 44:32.960 --> 44:33.800 rational inquiry. 44:33.800 --> 44:36.020 This is a highest use, you might say, 44:36.020 --> 44:37.740 for Aristotle of our rational nature, 44:37.740 --> 44:42.380 but then there's the social use of our rational nature. 44:42.380 --> 44:46.600 And these virtues that we're gonna talk about 44:46.600 --> 44:51.600 are then individuated not by, 44:51.600 --> 44:53.280 because we want them to be a certain way 44:53.280 --> 44:57.380 or by in virtue of what our society thinks, 44:57.380 --> 45:01.120 but because human beings need to succeed 45:01.120 --> 45:05.200 in different kinds of spheres and arenas 45:05.200 --> 45:08.600 in the social life, in the social world. 45:08.600 --> 45:13.600 And so we need then virtues, excellences, dispositions, 45:13.600 --> 45:18.600 informed by reason that tell us how to think correctly 45:20.480 --> 45:25.480 and properly, excellently about what to do 45:26.160 --> 45:28.580 in these particular kinds of situations. 45:31.300 --> 45:34.760 Okay, so let's take our break now, 45:34.760 --> 45:37.520 and we'll come back in 15 minutes, 45:37.520 --> 45:40.440 and we'll talk a little bit more about the nature of virtue 45:40.440 --> 45:43.760 and how we are to become virtuous. 45:43.760 --> 45:45.800 Okay, can I just ask you this one? 45:45.800 --> 45:48.800 So, I don't know if you can hear me, 45:48.800 --> 45:50.240 but I think that one is okay. 45:50.240 --> 45:53.820 Okay, so let's start up again. 45:56.240 --> 46:01.240 So now we've seen so far that on Aristotle's view, 46:01.720 --> 46:04.320 we're asking about the good for human beings. 46:04.320 --> 46:06.000 We all agree that it's happiness. 46:06.000 --> 46:07.880 We look at human nature. 46:07.880 --> 46:10.480 We see that it's rational activity that we need, 46:10.480 --> 46:12.200 and not just rational activity, 46:12.200 --> 46:15.400 but virtuous or excellent rational activity. 46:15.400 --> 46:20.320 So we need to develop these dispositions, 46:20.320 --> 46:24.340 these rational, emotional dispositions called the virtues 46:24.340 --> 46:25.760 in order to be happy. 46:27.520 --> 46:31.240 But there's still a bunch of questions left unanswered 46:31.240 --> 46:34.520 about what virtues are like, 46:34.520 --> 46:36.520 what virtuous action is like, 46:36.520 --> 46:38.940 and how to become virtuous. 46:38.940 --> 46:42.660 So in book two, we turn to some of these questions, 46:42.660 --> 46:45.080 and the first question he asks is, 46:45.080 --> 46:47.620 how do we become virtuous? 46:47.620 --> 46:50.660 All right, so if it's such a pressing matter for us 46:51.620 --> 46:53.020 in order to live good lives, 46:53.020 --> 46:55.300 we wanna know, well, what do we have to do 46:55.300 --> 46:57.600 in order to become virtuous? 47:00.240 --> 47:03.820 The first thing he mentions is habituation, 47:03.820 --> 47:07.140 and it's a classic line from Aristotle. 47:07.140 --> 47:11.060 We become just by doing just acts. 47:11.060 --> 47:14.900 We become temperate by doing temperate acts, et cetera. 47:17.260 --> 47:19.300 Think of tennis, all right? 47:19.300 --> 47:22.420 If you wanna have a good forehand in tennis, 47:22.420 --> 47:26.820 you have to hit the forehand over and over and over again. 47:26.820 --> 47:30.740 All right, you become good at something by practicing it. 47:30.740 --> 47:35.740 And so part of what that means for young children 47:36.900 --> 47:41.900 is that they're raised in ways that praise, reward, 47:43.020 --> 47:48.020 and encourage just acts, temperate acts, et cetera, 47:48.920 --> 47:53.920 and punish, criticize, and discourage 47:54.280 --> 47:56.140 the opposite sorts of actions. 47:56.140 --> 47:59.140 So upbringing is gonna be crucial to it. 47:59.140 --> 48:02.380 He thinks the laws are created in such a way 48:02.380 --> 48:05.220 that it's supposed to encourage us to develop good habits 48:05.220 --> 48:08.100 and to not develop bad habits, 48:08.100 --> 48:11.140 but we also have to practice ourselves. 48:11.140 --> 48:13.940 It's not just about being raised and then, 48:13.940 --> 48:17.980 I'm raised by good parents, I'm lucky, I'm virtuous, no. 48:17.980 --> 48:19.740 When you're done being raised, 48:19.740 --> 48:23.300 that's when the real work begins of habituating yourself. 48:23.300 --> 48:26.220 Practicing to become a better person. 48:28.660 --> 48:32.220 We also need moral exemplars, people we look up to. 48:33.420 --> 48:37.860 People in our community, our parents, teachers, whatever. 48:37.860 --> 48:42.620 People we look to and see, aha, that person is good. 48:42.620 --> 48:46.820 That person dealt with that situation in an excellent way. 48:46.820 --> 48:48.820 Aristotle thinks that we're actually pretty good, 48:48.820 --> 48:51.020 even when we're not very good. 48:51.020 --> 48:55.260 Even when we're not very good at ourselves, 48:55.260 --> 48:58.700 behaving in good ways and acting in ways that virtue demands, 48:58.700 --> 49:01.240 we're actually pretty good at seeing it in others. 49:01.240 --> 49:04.500 We can recognize virtuous action in others, 49:04.500 --> 49:05.940 and that helps us. 49:05.940 --> 49:07.740 Ah, that's how I wanna be. 49:07.740 --> 49:11.140 That's the way to deal with that kind of situation. 49:11.140 --> 49:14.940 Aristotle also talks about the man 49:14.940 --> 49:17.560 or the person of practical wisdom. 49:17.560 --> 49:22.160 Practical wisdom is the virtue of deliberation. 49:22.160 --> 49:25.060 This is, in essence, for Aristotle, 49:26.160 --> 49:29.840 the good or paradigmatic moral agent. 49:29.840 --> 49:32.240 This is someone who has basically 49:32.240 --> 49:34.720 all of the right dispositions 49:34.720 --> 49:38.840 and knows how to reason about all of the situations 49:38.840 --> 49:40.320 in the correct way. 49:40.320 --> 49:43.300 So that's our goal, our model, that's the ideal. 49:44.480 --> 49:45.680 And if you're lucky enough to have 49:45.680 --> 49:46.960 one of these people around, right, 49:46.960 --> 49:49.240 that's someone you can take as your role model. 49:49.240 --> 49:51.520 But that can also be someone we think about 49:51.520 --> 49:52.640 more abstractly, right? 49:52.640 --> 49:56.720 So what would, or how would the man of practical wisdom 49:56.720 --> 49:58.040 think about this sort of thing? 49:58.040 --> 50:01.700 We wanna reason in the way that such a person reasons. 50:03.520 --> 50:04.840 And the other thing we're supposed to do 50:04.840 --> 50:06.360 is aim for the mean. 50:06.360 --> 50:10.880 And you have probably heard this idea of Aristotle's 50:10.880 --> 50:13.000 about the golden mean. 50:13.000 --> 50:16.000 This is one way that Aristotle helps us 50:16.000 --> 50:18.280 think about how to become virtuous. 50:18.280 --> 50:22.500 It's both conceptually built into the nature of virtue, 50:22.500 --> 50:24.840 that it is an intermediate condition, 50:24.840 --> 50:27.860 but it is also a tool for helping us 50:27.860 --> 50:31.680 think about how to hit the mark. 50:31.680 --> 50:34.920 And I'll come back to in a little bit more detail 50:34.920 --> 50:37.460 about how exactly that works for Aristotle. 50:42.600 --> 50:45.960 Okay, so Aristotle here addresses this question of pleasure 50:45.960 --> 50:50.960 which I've been, which I've mentioned a few times now. 50:50.980 --> 50:54.140 What is the role of pleasure in all of this? 50:54.140 --> 50:58.560 Well, it turns out pleasure has a kind of dual role 50:59.560 --> 51:01.360 in this picture. 51:02.760 --> 51:06.480 So Aristotle says that virtue is concerned 51:06.480 --> 51:10.640 with pleasures and pains, very broadly speaking. 51:10.640 --> 51:15.160 And what he means by that is that getting, 51:18.040 --> 51:23.040 acquiring virtue entails or involves 51:23.160 --> 51:28.160 having control over what you are pleased by 51:28.740 --> 51:30.480 and what you are pained by. 51:33.280 --> 51:35.760 And if you can do that, right, 51:35.760 --> 51:40.760 then you won't be a slave to your pleasures and pain. 51:41.000 --> 51:45.200 So pleasure and pain functions here as a danger, 51:45.200 --> 51:49.520 as it were, to our goodness. 51:49.520 --> 51:50.360 Why? 51:50.360 --> 51:52.480 Well, because he thinks that pleasure 51:52.480 --> 51:55.920 causes us to do bad things, right? 51:55.920 --> 52:00.920 We enjoy certain things that are connected 52:01.040 --> 52:02.860 with immoral action. 52:02.860 --> 52:06.600 Sometimes immoral action will allow us to acquire things 52:06.600 --> 52:08.120 that we enjoy. 52:08.120 --> 52:10.840 So pleasure tempts us, right? 52:10.840 --> 52:13.920 It tempts us to do bad things. 52:13.920 --> 52:18.920 And at the same time, pain scares us sometimes 52:18.960 --> 52:20.360 from doing the right thing. 52:22.200 --> 52:24.000 So pleasure and pain, right, 52:24.000 --> 52:25.740 we need to get control over them 52:25.740 --> 52:28.240 because if they control us, 52:28.240 --> 52:30.640 then we'll be tempted to do the wrong things 52:30.640 --> 52:32.720 and scared of doing the right things. 52:32.720 --> 52:35.000 And what we want is exactly the opposite. 52:35.000 --> 52:38.320 We only want to be tempted to do the right things 52:38.320 --> 52:40.880 and pained at doing the wrong things. 52:40.880 --> 52:45.120 So we have to make sure we control what we're pleased by, 52:45.120 --> 52:47.880 what we feel pleasure in relation to, 52:47.880 --> 52:49.520 what we feel pain in relation to. 52:51.640 --> 52:54.680 So good or bad enjoyment or pain 52:54.680 --> 52:57.700 is crucial to our character. 52:58.960 --> 53:00.800 So that's one thing, right? 53:00.800 --> 53:05.560 So pleasure and pain as this sort of dangerous parts 53:05.560 --> 53:06.660 of our nature. 53:07.600 --> 53:12.600 But, right, it's also essential 53:12.760 --> 53:17.760 for being a good person that you do feel pleasure 53:18.960 --> 53:23.280 when you do the good, virtuous thing. 53:24.560 --> 53:26.840 Right, so remember, if you're training your emotions, 53:26.840 --> 53:31.840 if you're training your feelings of pleasure and pain, 53:32.560 --> 53:35.600 and the problem is that you're pained 53:35.600 --> 53:37.360 by the right things to do, 53:37.360 --> 53:39.080 and you feel pleasure at or tempted 53:39.080 --> 53:40.240 by the wrong things to do, 53:40.240 --> 53:43.080 what you want is to switch those things, right? 53:43.080 --> 53:47.280 So what you want then is to feel pleasure, right? 53:47.280 --> 53:50.040 When you do the just act, the temperate act, 53:50.040 --> 53:51.940 the kind act, the charitable act, 53:51.940 --> 53:56.940 you should feel good about acting virtuously. 53:57.000 --> 53:59.240 And only then, according to Aristotle, 53:59.240 --> 54:01.240 are you genuinely virtuous. 54:03.200 --> 54:05.160 Right, the genuinely virtuous person 54:05.160 --> 54:09.400 really enjoys being virtuous 54:09.400 --> 54:12.000 and acting in a virtuous manner. 54:12.000 --> 54:15.440 And that's why pleasure is part 54:15.440 --> 54:17.600 of the happy life on this view. 54:17.600 --> 54:19.960 Because if you're really virtuous 54:19.960 --> 54:22.840 and you enjoy being virtuous, 54:22.840 --> 54:24.800 and virtue leads to happiness, 54:24.800 --> 54:27.560 or virtue is part of what it means to be happy, 54:27.560 --> 54:29.200 then you will have pleasure. 54:29.200 --> 54:30.820 The pleasure of, 54:32.760 --> 54:35.280 the pleasure that accompanies virtuous activity. 54:37.440 --> 54:38.960 And if you do the right thing 54:38.960 --> 54:42.620 or act in the way that the virtuous person acts, 54:42.620 --> 54:45.120 but are pained by it, 54:45.120 --> 54:47.360 then you're not really virtuous 54:47.360 --> 54:49.520 because you haven't fully inhabited, 54:49.520 --> 54:53.060 you haven't fully embraced with your whole soul as it were. 54:54.240 --> 54:55.080 Virtue. 54:56.000 --> 54:58.880 There's still conflict, residual conflict, 54:58.880 --> 55:03.880 you still want to cling to doing the wrong thing, 55:03.920 --> 55:06.120 even if you do the right thing. 55:06.120 --> 55:07.880 And virtue is hard. 55:07.880 --> 55:09.360 This is one thing you should definitely take away. 55:09.360 --> 55:12.320 Virtue, right, one reason why excellence is a good, 55:12.320 --> 55:15.760 is an okay translation is because it shows 55:15.760 --> 55:19.960 that being virtuous is extremely difficult. 55:19.960 --> 55:22.760 It's not something that you can just do, 55:22.760 --> 55:25.740 that anyone can achieve or anyone can acquire. 55:25.740 --> 55:26.920 It's really hard, 55:26.920 --> 55:30.860 it takes a concerted whole person effort. 55:33.680 --> 55:34.520 Okay. 55:35.680 --> 55:40.680 So the virtuous person will enjoy virtuous activity 55:40.720 --> 55:43.800 and that pleasure will accompany their virtuous activity 55:43.800 --> 55:45.920 throughout their whole life. 55:45.920 --> 55:48.240 Now, what about virtuous action? 55:48.240 --> 55:51.240 For what is a virtuous action like? 55:51.240 --> 55:56.180 What is required in order to make an action virtuous? 55:56.180 --> 55:58.840 Well, Aristotle outlines three conditions 55:58.840 --> 56:01.620 and this is book two, chapter four. 56:02.960 --> 56:07.960 This is on page 300 of the book. 56:07.960 --> 56:12.960 First, the agent must know that the action is virtuous. 56:17.420 --> 56:19.180 So for an action to be virtuous, 56:19.180 --> 56:23.060 you can't act virtuously by accident, 56:23.060 --> 56:25.820 you can't act virtuously without understanding 56:25.820 --> 56:27.100 what you're doing. 56:27.100 --> 56:27.980 When you do something, 56:27.980 --> 56:30.220 but you think you're doing something else 56:30.220 --> 56:32.200 and it turns out that was the right thing to do. 56:32.200 --> 56:35.820 No, the virtuous person understands 56:35.820 --> 56:38.100 not only what they're doing, 56:38.100 --> 56:41.880 but why what they're doing is the virtuous thing. 56:43.200 --> 56:45.340 So this is a form of knowledge, 56:45.340 --> 56:47.420 you have understanding about what you're doing. 56:47.420 --> 56:51.140 So a virtuous agent understands that the action is virtuous 56:51.140 --> 56:53.300 and that's part of the nature of the action. 56:54.780 --> 56:57.940 The action must be chosen for its own sake, 56:57.940 --> 57:00.140 must be chosen first of all, right? 57:00.140 --> 57:02.820 It has to be the result of a decision, 57:02.820 --> 57:06.380 a decision which is preceded by deliberation, 57:06.380 --> 57:08.420 thinking about what the right thing, 57:08.420 --> 57:10.820 the reason you understand that it's the right thing to do 57:10.820 --> 57:13.780 is because you've deliberated previously about it 57:13.780 --> 57:15.820 and then chosen it. 57:15.820 --> 57:19.220 And you have to choose it for its own sake. 57:19.220 --> 57:21.120 What does that mean? 57:21.120 --> 57:25.860 Well, it means that you have to choose the action 57:25.860 --> 57:28.300 because it's virtuous. 57:28.300 --> 57:32.860 So just to take an easy example, right? 57:32.860 --> 57:36.740 So imagine you realize that the virtuous thing to do 57:36.740 --> 57:41.220 in a particular situation is to help 57:41.220 --> 57:46.220 a struggling older man cross the street. 57:46.420 --> 57:48.900 That's the right thing to do in the situation. 57:48.900 --> 57:52.660 You know that it's the right thing to do in the situation. 57:52.660 --> 57:55.860 And you choose to do it 57:55.860 --> 57:59.180 not because it's the right thing in the situation, 57:59.180 --> 58:04.180 but because the girl that you're with will be impressed 58:04.520 --> 58:06.280 by how kind and generous you are. 58:07.180 --> 58:10.020 That is an example of not choosing the action 58:10.020 --> 58:11.360 for its own sake. 58:11.360 --> 58:13.540 If you do it for its own sake, 58:13.540 --> 58:16.400 you do it whether someone is there or not there, 58:16.400 --> 58:17.900 whether you're seen or not seen, 58:17.900 --> 58:19.900 whether you're rewarded or not rewarded. 58:19.900 --> 58:21.640 None of that stuff matters 58:21.640 --> 58:24.620 if you're choosing the action for its own sake 58:24.620 --> 58:27.620 because it is the virtuous thing to do. 58:27.620 --> 58:29.720 As you can see by contrast, 58:29.720 --> 58:31.780 what it would mean to not choose the action 58:31.780 --> 58:32.700 for its own sake. 58:34.500 --> 58:38.860 And here last, this is the most rigorous criteria. 58:38.860 --> 58:41.400 It has to proceed from a firm 58:41.400 --> 58:43.940 and unchanging state of character. 58:44.860 --> 58:49.860 What that means is that you need to be the sort of person 58:49.860 --> 58:54.860 who acts in this way for the action to be genuinely virtuous. 58:57.620 --> 58:59.360 Again, I can sort of help you see this 58:59.360 --> 59:02.460 by way of the opposite condition. 59:02.460 --> 59:06.300 So imagine someone, a habitual liar, 59:07.380 --> 59:10.600 who on a certain occasion understands 59:10.600 --> 59:15.500 that being honest is the right thing to do, 59:15.500 --> 59:18.920 understand what it is that they should do, 59:18.920 --> 59:22.020 and then chooses honesty for its own sake. 59:22.020 --> 59:25.820 In that one situation, even in that case, 59:25.820 --> 59:28.700 the action doesn't qualify as virtuous 59:28.700 --> 59:33.060 because it proceeds from someone who is not in possession 59:33.060 --> 59:36.140 of a firm and unchanging state of honesty. 59:39.160 --> 59:43.540 So for an action to be truly virtuous, 59:43.540 --> 59:46.660 the agent must also be virtuous. 59:46.660 --> 59:48.180 That's what it means to have a firm 59:48.180 --> 59:49.980 and unchanging state of character. 59:49.980 --> 59:53.820 From Aristotle's perspective, developing virtue, 59:53.820 --> 59:56.620 training yourself to think in a certain way 59:56.620 --> 01:00:00.020 and feel in a certain way has a certain kind of stability 01:00:00.020 --> 01:00:04.420 once it's established in you, which makes it hard to budge. 01:00:05.460 --> 01:00:08.100 Also true, unfortunately, of vice. 01:00:08.100 --> 01:00:10.220 You establish vices in your character, 01:00:10.220 --> 01:00:11.880 they're also hard to budge. 01:00:11.880 --> 01:00:16.880 Okay, so there's high standards here 01:00:18.600 --> 01:00:20.960 for what really counts as a virtuous action. 01:00:22.600 --> 01:00:24.600 Now we get a definition of virtue. 01:00:24.600 --> 01:00:27.720 This definition is a mouthful, 01:00:28.760 --> 01:00:30.320 so I've broken it up into parts. 01:00:30.320 --> 01:00:32.460 This is on page 302. 01:00:37.200 --> 01:00:41.040 Okay, virtue is, it's actually sort of, 01:00:41.040 --> 01:00:43.480 it's a long sentence that I've now broken up into parts 01:00:43.480 --> 01:00:45.720 in order to make it comprehensible to you 01:00:45.720 --> 01:00:48.980 because if you read this sentence in the text, 01:00:48.980 --> 01:00:50.960 all by itself, you'll just be confused. 01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:55.960 So first of all, it's a state concerned with choice. 01:00:56.200 --> 01:00:57.360 What does that mean? 01:00:57.360 --> 01:00:59.460 Well, it's a state of your character. 01:00:59.460 --> 01:01:03.160 It's a disposition, it's a way of being for you 01:01:03.160 --> 01:01:08.020 that has to do with what you choose to do or decide to do. 01:01:08.020 --> 01:01:11.020 So that's what virtue is, right? 01:01:11.020 --> 01:01:13.580 So it's a state or a disposition of character 01:01:13.580 --> 01:01:17.260 concerned with action, making choices to do stuff. 01:01:18.460 --> 01:01:19.860 That should be easy enough. 01:01:21.580 --> 01:01:24.740 Lying in a mean, this is gonna be, 01:01:24.740 --> 01:01:26.840 but what does it mean to lie in a mean? 01:01:28.320 --> 01:01:31.500 Well, the choice that you're making 01:01:31.500 --> 01:01:36.500 is going to be aiming for the intermediate position 01:01:36.500 --> 01:01:38.920 which is virtue. 01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:43.200 Now I'm gonna ask you to wait a little while 01:01:43.200 --> 01:01:47.480 because I'm gonna come back to what exactly that means 01:01:47.480 --> 01:01:52.120 in not the next slide but in a few slides. 01:01:52.120 --> 01:01:57.120 Okay, it's a mean relative to us 01:01:57.360 --> 01:01:58.920 and what that means, 01:01:58.920 --> 01:02:00.740 I'm also gonna come back to a bit later 01:02:00.740 --> 01:02:04.220 but I'll just say briefly that it's a mean relative to us 01:02:04.220 --> 01:02:09.220 because it's relative to the particular circumstances 01:02:09.320 --> 01:02:12.520 of the situation that you find yourself in. 01:02:12.520 --> 01:02:14.880 So to put it in plainer terms, 01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:19.120 the perfect action in a given situation 01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:23.600 is a function of the particulars of that situation. 01:02:23.600 --> 01:02:27.760 It's not moral relativism, it's not cultural relativism, 01:02:27.760 --> 01:02:30.240 it's not relative to what I think personally, 01:02:30.240 --> 01:02:33.880 it's relative to the situation that you find yourself in. 01:02:33.880 --> 01:02:36.800 And again, I'll come back to this in a second. 01:02:39.240 --> 01:02:42.320 This being determined by reason, 01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:47.080 crucial that figuring out what the precise thing to do, 01:02:47.080 --> 01:02:49.680 the state of character that decides 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:55.240 on the mean state that is virtue, does it via reason? 01:02:56.440 --> 01:02:58.440 You deliberate rationally. 01:02:58.440 --> 01:02:59.960 Remember, we need reason here 01:02:59.960 --> 01:03:04.120 because we started with rational activity 01:03:04.120 --> 01:03:07.640 in accord with virtue, which is what happiness is. 01:03:07.640 --> 01:03:11.280 Virtue is a kind of rational emotional disposition 01:03:11.280 --> 01:03:15.000 so we need it to be rational. 01:03:15.000 --> 01:03:20.000 So the choice has to be determined by reason 01:03:20.740 --> 01:03:23.680 and not just any old reason 01:03:24.660 --> 01:03:28.200 but reason as, to put it again slightly differently 01:03:28.200 --> 01:03:30.280 than I have it up here, in the way 01:03:30.280 --> 01:03:34.180 that a perfect deliberator would use it. 01:03:34.180 --> 01:03:36.640 So it's not good enough to just think about it. 01:03:36.640 --> 01:03:38.980 People think about all sorts of things all the time. 01:03:38.980 --> 01:03:41.680 People think about it and do really stupid things. 01:03:43.560 --> 01:03:45.560 The point isn't that you have to deliberate about it, 01:03:45.560 --> 01:03:48.960 you have to deliberate about it well. 01:03:48.960 --> 01:03:52.040 You have to deliberate about it in a good way 01:03:52.040 --> 01:04:00.200 in the way that someone who possesses virtue would do it. 01:04:00.200 --> 01:04:03.360 It is a mean between two vices, 01:04:03.360 --> 01:04:05.000 one of excess and one of deficiency. 01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:10.000 This I'm gonna also explain when I get to the next slide, 01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:11.480 this stuff about the mean. 01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:16.240 The Aristotle thinks, this is a peculiarity of his theory, 01:04:16.240 --> 01:04:22.760 that each virtue is flanked by two different vices. 01:04:22.760 --> 01:04:27.080 One vice that takes too far, whatever the thing is, 01:04:27.080 --> 01:04:30.720 and one vice that is, as it were, not enough. 01:04:30.720 --> 01:04:32.460 We'll see exactly what that means. 01:04:32.460 --> 01:04:35.680 But this is the definition of virtue. 01:04:35.680 --> 01:04:40.680 It's a state or disposition that helps you make choices 01:04:42.240 --> 01:04:45.080 that are determined by reason, 01:04:45.080 --> 01:04:48.680 that aim at getting it exactly right 01:04:48.680 --> 01:04:52.040 in the situation you find yourself in, 01:04:52.040 --> 01:04:55.000 where you can go wrong in two directions. 01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:01.680 I have also drawn another schema for you 01:05:01.680 --> 01:05:05.720 to help you see what it means, 01:05:05.720 --> 01:05:09.720 or what it could mean to think that virtue 01:05:09.720 --> 01:05:13.340 is a mean or intermediate condition, 01:05:13.340 --> 01:05:17.200 and why it's a relative versus an absolute mean. 01:05:19.100 --> 01:05:21.740 Here we can start with, 01:05:23.720 --> 01:05:28.720 you have a line that is bisected in the middle there, 01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:30.760 I have the absolute mean. 01:05:30.760 --> 01:05:33.680 What that means, that's right in the middle. 01:05:33.680 --> 01:05:37.700 And if virtue were an absolute mean, 01:05:37.700 --> 01:05:40.960 that would mean that the virtue would always be 01:05:40.960 --> 01:05:45.960 right in the middle between the two different vices. 01:05:45.960 --> 01:05:49.440 But it's gonna turn out that it's always the case 01:05:49.440 --> 01:05:54.440 that the virtue is closer to one of the vices 01:05:56.580 --> 01:05:59.040 and further away from the other. 01:05:59.040 --> 01:06:03.300 So the virtue is never, it turns out, right in the middle. 01:06:03.300 --> 01:06:06.080 So that's one way that the mean is relative. 01:06:06.080 --> 01:06:11.080 We'll see this in a second with courage, 01:06:13.720 --> 01:06:17.160 but I can give you a different example. 01:06:17.160 --> 01:06:22.160 So temperance is the virtue concerned 01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:26.440 with bodily pleasures. 01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:30.360 And you can be intemperate, 01:06:30.360 --> 01:06:34.640 which is someone who indulges in pleasures way too much, 01:06:34.640 --> 01:06:36.880 or you can be insensitive, 01:06:36.880 --> 01:06:39.880 someone who doesn't indulge in pleasures at all. 01:06:39.880 --> 01:06:41.720 Now, if I asked you, 01:06:41.720 --> 01:06:45.880 who does the temperate person look more like? 01:06:45.880 --> 01:06:48.640 Do they look more like the insensitive person 01:06:48.640 --> 01:06:50.720 who doesn't indulge in pleasure at all, 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:52.480 or the intemperate person 01:06:52.480 --> 01:06:54.920 who indulges in pleasures too much? 01:06:54.920 --> 01:06:57.800 I hope you'll see that the intemperate person 01:06:57.800 --> 01:07:00.040 looks much more like the insensitive one, 01:07:00.040 --> 01:07:02.280 the one who is the ascetic. 01:07:02.280 --> 01:07:06.320 You would never confuse the intemperate one 01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:07.980 with the temperate one, 01:07:07.980 --> 01:07:12.360 but you would confuse the ascetic with the temperate one 01:07:12.360 --> 01:07:16.600 because the ascetic abstains from all pleasures, 01:07:16.600 --> 01:07:18.640 whereas the intemperate person 01:07:18.640 --> 01:07:21.680 enjoys pleasures to a moderate degree. 01:07:21.680 --> 01:07:25.620 The intemperate person enjoys pleasures, 01:07:25.620 --> 01:07:29.380 is drunken at orgies, that's the intemperate person. 01:07:29.380 --> 01:07:34.020 So vice there is not right in the middle, 01:07:34.020 --> 01:07:36.060 it's closer to one side. 01:07:36.060 --> 01:07:38.100 So that's one way it's relative. 01:07:38.100 --> 01:07:40.500 The other way that it's relative, 01:07:40.500 --> 01:07:45.220 and that I have visualized by the two arrows 01:07:45.220 --> 01:07:47.060 going back and forth, 01:07:47.060 --> 01:07:50.060 is that depending on the situation, 01:07:50.060 --> 01:07:55.060 the right action might move in one direction. 01:07:55.060 --> 01:07:59.100 It's not always one spot on the scale 01:07:59.100 --> 01:08:00.540 that you're aiming for. 01:08:00.540 --> 01:08:02.100 It depends on the situation. 01:08:02.100 --> 01:08:05.460 You can take another different example. 01:08:05.460 --> 01:08:10.460 Sometimes in war, the courageous thing to do is retreat. 01:08:13.300 --> 01:08:16.300 And if that's true, then sometimes it'll turn out 01:08:16.300 --> 01:08:18.900 that the courageous thing starts to move 01:08:18.900 --> 01:08:21.500 in the direction of cowardice. 01:08:21.500 --> 01:08:22.340 Yes? 01:08:22.340 --> 01:08:27.340 Yes? 01:08:35.660 --> 01:08:40.660 Virtue signaling is a rhetorical strategy 01:08:44.700 --> 01:08:48.000 that seems little to do with real virtue. 01:08:49.260 --> 01:08:51.280 Because if you're genuinely virtuous, 01:08:51.280 --> 01:08:52.840 you're generally not going around 01:08:52.840 --> 01:08:54.660 signaling it all the time. 01:08:54.660 --> 01:08:57.520 So the whole idea of virtue signaling 01:08:57.520 --> 01:09:01.260 indicates already that you're doing something vicious. 01:09:03.980 --> 01:09:07.800 However, of course, if you are doing something virtuous, 01:09:07.800 --> 01:09:10.700 there's nothing wrong with indicating, 01:09:10.700 --> 01:09:13.900 it's not, you should embrace and love what you're doing. 01:09:13.900 --> 01:09:15.280 That's the whole idea, you should enjoy it. 01:09:15.280 --> 01:09:18.260 So you shouldn't be ashamed by any stretch. 01:09:18.260 --> 01:09:20.340 But you shouldn't go around sort of boasting about it, 01:09:20.340 --> 01:09:22.940 that seems like it violates other kinds of vices. 01:09:25.060 --> 01:09:26.580 Okay, but let's sort of just, 01:09:26.580 --> 01:09:29.260 I want to finish explaining my schema. 01:09:29.260 --> 01:09:33.100 So then there's going to be the relative mean, 01:09:33.100 --> 01:09:35.960 which is the perfect virtuous action that you do 01:09:35.960 --> 01:09:38.700 with all the right dispositions and so forth. 01:09:38.700 --> 01:09:42.000 And then there's the two vices. 01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:46.740 And there's a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess. 01:09:46.740 --> 01:09:51.740 So Aristotle says that both feelings and actions 01:09:53.020 --> 01:09:54.500 evade of a mean. 01:09:55.700 --> 01:09:58.100 So again, just to take a brief example, right? 01:09:58.100 --> 01:10:01.880 So let's say you wanted to tell the truth 01:10:01.880 --> 01:10:03.560 in a certain situation. 01:10:03.560 --> 01:10:05.700 There are lots of ways to tell the truth. 01:10:07.060 --> 01:10:09.060 You can tell the truth in a private moment. 01:10:09.060 --> 01:10:10.500 You can tell the truth on Facebook. 01:10:10.500 --> 01:10:12.300 You can tell the truth on Twitter, right? 01:10:12.300 --> 01:10:13.800 There are different ways in which you say 01:10:13.800 --> 01:10:15.200 the thing that's true. 01:10:15.200 --> 01:10:17.900 Figuring out what the right thing to do, 01:10:17.900 --> 01:10:19.780 right, is going to be a matter of taking into account 01:10:19.780 --> 01:10:23.780 the different kinds of particulars of the situation. 01:10:23.780 --> 01:10:25.700 If the truth is about, you know, 01:10:25.700 --> 01:10:27.900 your friend's girlfriend's inviolability, 01:10:27.900 --> 01:10:30.380 then Twitter is probably not the right venue for it. 01:10:30.380 --> 01:10:33.820 If it's about some grave injustice that's happening, 01:10:33.820 --> 01:10:36.060 then maybe Twitter is the right venue for it. 01:10:38.420 --> 01:10:40.280 Okay, feelings and actions evade of a mean, 01:10:40.280 --> 01:10:41.700 though not all of them. 01:10:41.700 --> 01:10:44.140 The closest Aristotle comes to making a joke 01:10:44.140 --> 01:10:46.860 in the entirety of his corpus possibly 01:10:46.860 --> 01:10:51.860 is where he says that adultery does not admit of a mean. 01:10:52.200 --> 01:10:55.400 There's no way to commit adultery with the right woman 01:10:55.400 --> 01:10:57.020 at the right time in the right way, right? 01:10:57.020 --> 01:11:00.000 So that's the closest Aristotle comes to a joke. 01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:02.340 So not all actions admit of a mean 01:11:02.340 --> 01:11:04.020 and not all feelings admit of a mean. 01:11:04.020 --> 01:11:06.140 So spite, for example, you can't feel spite 01:11:06.140 --> 01:11:08.780 in the right way towards the right people, et cetera. 01:11:08.780 --> 01:11:13.780 But, and here's where we get sort of a clear articulation, 01:11:16.900 --> 01:11:19.140 right, you have to have whatever the feeling is, 01:11:19.140 --> 01:11:21.540 and we'll get to one example of this in a second, 01:11:21.540 --> 01:11:25.300 you have to have the feelings at the right time 01:11:26.620 --> 01:11:30.420 about the right objects, towards the right people, 01:11:30.420 --> 01:11:33.600 with the right aim, and in the right way. 01:11:33.600 --> 01:11:38.600 All right, so you can go wrong here 01:11:39.120 --> 01:11:42.000 in a lot of different ways, right? 01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:44.160 You could have the feeling, whatever it is, 01:11:44.160 --> 01:11:46.520 in the, you know, for too long, 01:11:46.520 --> 01:11:49.800 you could direct it at the wrong people. 01:11:50.920 --> 01:11:54.840 You could have it with the wrong aim or end. 01:11:54.840 --> 01:11:56.280 You could have it in the wrong way. 01:11:56.280 --> 01:11:59.060 You could express it in the wrong way. 01:11:59.060 --> 01:12:01.500 All right, so again, this is very demanding, 01:12:01.500 --> 01:12:03.860 and the idea of a mean or intermediate 01:12:03.860 --> 01:12:07.540 that's characteristic of virtue is supposed to show you 01:12:07.540 --> 01:12:11.600 how all of these things need to be taken into consideration 01:12:11.600 --> 01:12:15.420 in order to hit the target of a virtuous action. 01:12:19.000 --> 01:12:23.080 So let's look at courage, right? 01:12:23.080 --> 01:12:24.720 So I said these virtues all have 01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:26.480 their different domains or scopes, 01:12:26.480 --> 01:12:31.480 so fear and confidence are the relevant emotions here, 01:12:32.680 --> 01:12:34.440 and in life and death situations. 01:12:34.440 --> 01:12:36.520 I mean, we get courage, also political courage 01:12:36.520 --> 01:12:39.200 and other kinds of courage, but the primary case 01:12:39.200 --> 01:12:42.080 for our soul is on the battlefield, 01:12:42.080 --> 01:12:47.080 and we can see here now, all right, 01:12:47.660 --> 01:12:50.760 there's my schema, 01:12:50.760 --> 01:12:55.760 how you fill it in in the case of courage, right? 01:12:56.680 --> 01:13:01.680 So someone who's fearless, who fears nothing, 01:13:01.800 --> 01:13:06.240 or has no fear, is not courageous, right? 01:13:06.240 --> 01:13:10.620 They are deficient in their feelings of fear. 01:13:10.620 --> 01:13:13.720 Someone who's a coward is excessive 01:13:13.720 --> 01:13:16.660 in their feelings of fear, right? 01:13:16.660 --> 01:13:18.600 They fear what they shouldn't. 01:13:18.600 --> 01:13:21.680 They fear the wrong people at the wrong time 01:13:21.680 --> 01:13:23.860 in the wrong way, et cetera, 01:13:25.080 --> 01:13:27.680 whereas courage, the virtue or the means state, 01:13:27.680 --> 01:13:30.000 fears correctly, right? 01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:32.560 See, it's not the point is you should never be afraid 01:13:32.560 --> 01:13:34.320 if you're gonna be courageous. 01:13:34.320 --> 01:13:36.680 To be courageous, you are afraid. 01:13:36.680 --> 01:13:38.760 You just have control over your fear, 01:13:38.760 --> 01:13:42.480 and your fear is towards the right things 01:13:42.480 --> 01:13:44.500 at the right time in the right way. 01:13:44.500 --> 01:13:49.500 So interestingly, right, so here, remember, 01:13:50.020 --> 01:13:52.940 the fearless person, you could confuse 01:13:52.940 --> 01:13:56.520 the fearless person with the courageous person, 01:13:56.520 --> 01:13:58.740 because fearlessness and courage 01:13:58.740 --> 01:14:00.620 look more like one another. 01:14:01.700 --> 01:14:04.380 Interestingly, although I don't wanna confuse you, right, 01:14:04.380 --> 01:14:08.220 if we plugged in confidence here instead of fear, 01:14:08.220 --> 01:14:11.540 notice that it would be the excess of confidence, 01:14:11.540 --> 01:14:15.220 which would be closer to courage 01:14:15.220 --> 01:14:17.100 rather than the deficiency of confidence. 01:14:17.100 --> 01:14:20.820 So it depends on which emotion you plug in, 01:14:20.820 --> 01:14:22.740 what way the chart goes. 01:14:22.740 --> 01:14:25.780 But in that case too, right, 01:14:25.780 --> 01:14:30.400 the courageous person is confident, but not overconfident. 01:14:30.400 --> 01:14:35.400 Okay, so now I'm afraid we have to leave 01:14:49.000 --> 01:14:52.280 our friend Aristotle and begin to talk 01:14:52.280 --> 01:14:54.600 for the last 15 minutes or so 01:14:54.600 --> 01:14:57.880 about a different kind of life and death situation, 01:14:57.880 --> 01:15:01.320 the one that Philippa Foote discusses in her article 01:15:01.320 --> 01:15:02.940 on euthanasia. 01:15:02.940 --> 01:15:05.880 Now remember, so why are we reading 01:15:05.880 --> 01:15:08.680 and talking about Foote on euthanasia? 01:15:08.680 --> 01:15:11.840 Well, remember one of the criticisms of virtue ethics 01:15:11.840 --> 01:15:15.980 we saw in the first section had to do with 01:15:15.980 --> 01:15:18.200 whether it gives us any action guidance, 01:15:18.200 --> 01:15:23.020 whether it can help us think through moral dilemmas 01:15:23.020 --> 01:15:26.860 or problems or issues, it can help us figure out what to do. 01:15:26.860 --> 01:15:29.320 Well, one of the things that this article on euthanasia 01:15:29.320 --> 01:15:32.360 is supposed to do is to show us how 01:15:32.360 --> 01:15:36.520 using virtue ethical tools, 01:15:36.520 --> 01:15:40.000 we can think about the issue of euthanasia. 01:15:41.400 --> 01:15:42.240 So, 01:15:48.480 --> 01:15:52.240 so what is euthanasia? 01:15:52.240 --> 01:15:55.360 Again, I'm gonna give you some ancient Greek, right? 01:15:55.360 --> 01:15:59.680 It's a word that combines the word for good 01:15:59.680 --> 01:16:02.120 and the word for death, right? 01:16:02.120 --> 01:16:06.600 So euthanasia is a good death, right? 01:16:06.600 --> 01:16:09.400 Or dying in a good way. 01:16:12.320 --> 01:16:15.160 So when we're talking about euthanasia, 01:16:15.160 --> 01:16:19.920 the death has to be understood as a good or happy event 01:16:19.920 --> 01:16:22.080 for the one who dies. 01:16:22.080 --> 01:16:24.680 Now, some people, right? 01:16:24.680 --> 01:16:29.440 So there are, have been historically euthanasia programs 01:16:29.440 --> 01:16:33.400 in scare quotes, where the people being killed 01:16:33.400 --> 01:16:35.360 very much did not want to die 01:16:35.360 --> 01:16:39.080 and were killed for the benefit of some fascist regime, 01:16:39.080 --> 01:16:43.040 for example, that doesn't count as euthanasia, right? 01:16:43.040 --> 01:16:46.120 So we're defining euthanasia here 01:16:46.120 --> 01:16:49.060 as a death that's good for the one who dies. 01:16:49.060 --> 01:16:51.280 So you can't just sort of declare, 01:16:51.280 --> 01:16:52.440 oh, this death is good for you, 01:16:52.440 --> 01:16:53.800 therefore it's euthanasia, right? 01:16:53.800 --> 01:16:55.120 That's not how it works. 01:16:55.120 --> 01:16:59.220 It has to really be good or a benefit for the one who dies. 01:17:00.540 --> 01:17:05.080 So an act of euthanasia is one of inducing 01:17:05.080 --> 01:17:08.000 or otherwise opting for death 01:17:08.000 --> 01:17:11.160 for the sake of one who's going to die. 01:17:11.160 --> 01:17:14.760 So the death has to be something good 01:17:14.760 --> 01:17:17.620 for the one who's going to die. 01:17:18.680 --> 01:17:20.480 Otherwise it's not euthanasia. 01:17:20.480 --> 01:17:24.680 It's actually really important to see 01:17:24.680 --> 01:17:28.420 that it doesn't count as euthanasia 01:17:28.420 --> 01:17:33.420 if you just kill someone against their wishes, right? 01:17:33.520 --> 01:17:35.020 Because you think it's good. 01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:38.920 What if we, 01:17:40.080 --> 01:17:42.440 what if you're gonna have to define it as 01:17:42.440 --> 01:17:45.800 a death that is desirable for the person 01:17:45.800 --> 01:17:48.440 who made this rather wishful and not good, 01:17:48.440 --> 01:17:51.240 because then who decides what good is? 01:17:53.160 --> 01:17:55.620 Well, so here, so the question is, 01:17:55.620 --> 01:17:59.860 why not define it as something desirable by the person 01:17:59.860 --> 01:18:01.100 rather than good? 01:18:01.100 --> 01:18:03.280 And I think that the answer is that 01:18:04.880 --> 01:18:07.760 not everyone who desires death 01:18:09.000 --> 01:18:11.540 is in a position to assess whether it's good for them. 01:18:11.540 --> 01:18:13.680 So think about someone who's suffering from depression 01:18:13.680 --> 01:18:15.480 and wants to commit suicide 01:18:15.480 --> 01:18:17.640 or in general, suicidal people. 01:18:17.640 --> 01:18:19.480 They want that, but we don't think, 01:18:19.480 --> 01:18:22.440 oh, well, let me help you. 01:18:22.440 --> 01:18:24.760 So I think desire here is tricky. 01:18:24.760 --> 01:18:26.320 I mean, and here I think the idea is 01:18:26.320 --> 01:18:28.400 it has to actually be good for the person 01:18:28.400 --> 01:18:30.760 and not just thought good by some person. 01:18:32.580 --> 01:18:36.160 So the question that Philippa Foote asked is, 01:18:36.160 --> 01:18:39.000 well, are such actions morally permissible 01:18:39.000 --> 01:18:44.000 and how do we figure out which ones are morally permissible? 01:18:44.000 --> 01:18:49.000 And the first thing she does is distinguish between 01:18:49.120 --> 01:18:52.240 different kinds of euthanasia. 01:18:52.240 --> 01:18:55.520 And that there are a bunch of different kinds of euthanasia 01:18:55.520 --> 01:18:57.880 or different ways of classifying them. 01:18:57.880 --> 01:19:01.240 So first is called active euthanasia. 01:19:01.240 --> 01:19:03.920 So this first distinction has to do with 01:19:05.440 --> 01:19:10.440 what some third party does or does not do 01:19:10.720 --> 01:19:13.980 in order to induce the death. 01:19:13.980 --> 01:19:16.920 So in active euthanasia, 01:19:16.920 --> 01:19:20.520 someone does something to induce death. 01:19:20.520 --> 01:19:24.080 So a lethal injection is an example. 01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:26.120 So you give a lethal injection, the person dies, 01:19:26.120 --> 01:19:30.360 that's active euthanasia because something has been done. 01:19:32.040 --> 01:19:37.040 Passive euthanasia is when nothing is done. 01:19:37.440 --> 01:19:40.240 So you allow someone to die, for example, 01:19:40.240 --> 01:19:43.940 by not giving them liquids or nutrition. 01:19:43.940 --> 01:19:48.780 So you don't actually do something specific to kill them, 01:19:48.780 --> 01:19:50.640 but you allow them to die. 01:19:50.640 --> 01:19:52.620 So that's passive euthanasia. 01:19:54.380 --> 01:19:56.720 Then we have a different set of distinctions 01:19:56.720 --> 01:19:59.720 that has to do with the way, 01:19:59.720 --> 01:20:03.660 the attitude of the person dying. 01:20:03.660 --> 01:20:06.400 So first we have voluntary euthanasia. 01:20:06.400 --> 01:20:09.120 This is a case where the person consents to 01:20:09.120 --> 01:20:10.360 or wants to die. 01:20:10.360 --> 01:20:13.280 So this is a kind of version of what you were thinking about. 01:20:13.280 --> 01:20:15.680 So you have someone who wants to die, 01:20:15.680 --> 01:20:18.880 but you also have involuntary euthanasia, 01:20:18.880 --> 01:20:22.280 which would be a case where someone wants to continue living 01:20:22.280 --> 01:20:25.040 and the very interesting and difficult case 01:20:25.040 --> 01:20:27.600 of non-voluntary euthanasia, 01:20:27.600 --> 01:20:31.040 where you don't know and cannot know in principle 01:20:32.480 --> 01:20:35.160 what the person wishes because they're incapable 01:20:35.160 --> 01:20:36.920 of communicating their wishes. 01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:43.040 As a someone, for example, who's in a coma 01:20:43.040 --> 01:20:45.400 and does not have a living will, 01:20:45.400 --> 01:20:47.640 then we don't know what their wishes are. 01:20:47.640 --> 01:20:49.760 So that's a case of non-voluntary. 01:20:49.760 --> 01:20:53.400 So you can have that active voluntary euthanasia, 01:20:53.400 --> 01:20:56.360 passive involuntary, active involuntary. 01:20:56.360 --> 01:20:59.900 You can combine the terms over the red line 01:20:59.900 --> 01:21:02.840 with the terms under the red line. 01:21:05.240 --> 01:21:10.240 Okay, now what Foote does is uses the virtues 01:21:10.240 --> 01:21:15.240 of justice and charity to analyze the case of euthanasia. 01:21:18.320 --> 01:21:21.700 And you say, well, why are justice and charity 01:21:21.700 --> 01:21:26.700 the two virtues that she uses to analyze this case? 01:21:26.840 --> 01:21:28.720 You could have thought maybe some other virtues 01:21:28.720 --> 01:21:31.440 were relevant, but she chooses justice and charity, 01:21:31.440 --> 01:21:33.420 and the question is why? 01:21:33.420 --> 01:21:38.420 Well, first, how does she understand justice? 01:21:38.420 --> 01:21:41.540 Well, she claims that justice concerns 01:21:41.540 --> 01:21:44.900 what people quote, owe each other in the way 01:21:44.900 --> 01:21:48.700 of non-interference or positive service. 01:21:48.700 --> 01:21:52.420 So she talks about this in terms of one's rights. 01:21:52.420 --> 01:21:55.540 So justice has to do with your rights, 01:21:55.540 --> 01:22:00.460 and you have rights both to be left alone, 01:22:00.460 --> 01:22:02.180 to not to be harmed, not to be killed. 01:22:02.180 --> 01:22:04.740 You have all sorts of rights of non-interference, 01:22:04.740 --> 01:22:06.820 and you have all sorts of positive rights. 01:22:06.820 --> 01:22:10.580 If you go to the doctor, you have a right to be treated. 01:22:10.580 --> 01:22:12.500 If you are in an accident, you have a right 01:22:12.500 --> 01:22:15.300 to surgery or whatever it is. 01:22:15.300 --> 01:22:16.780 You have all sorts of positive rights. 01:22:16.780 --> 01:22:19.820 If you lose your job, you have a right to unemployment. 01:22:19.820 --> 01:22:22.220 So you have positive rights, rights to get stuff, 01:22:22.220 --> 01:22:23.820 and then rights of non-interference, 01:22:23.820 --> 01:22:26.420 that is rights to be left alone in certain ways. 01:22:28.160 --> 01:22:30.940 Now, so murder and promise making 01:22:30.940 --> 01:22:32.900 are cases of injustice, right? 01:22:34.140 --> 01:22:36.500 So murder, you have a right to be left alone, 01:22:36.500 --> 01:22:40.340 not to be killed, that violates your rights to life, 01:22:40.340 --> 01:22:41.940 and promise breaking, right? 01:22:41.940 --> 01:22:43.100 Someone has promised you something, 01:22:43.100 --> 01:22:44.700 you have a right to that thing, 01:22:44.700 --> 01:22:47.380 and the promise breaker has then taken away that right. 01:22:47.380 --> 01:22:49.740 So that's a right you have to something positive 01:22:49.740 --> 01:22:50.940 that you're not getting. 01:22:52.260 --> 01:22:54.660 So one reason that active, sorry, 01:22:54.660 --> 01:22:58.620 one reason that justice has to be relevant 01:22:58.620 --> 01:23:02.720 for the case of euthanasia is because it looks like 01:23:02.720 --> 01:23:04.860 active euthanasia, right? 01:23:04.860 --> 01:23:07.460 So actually acting in order to kill someone 01:23:07.460 --> 01:23:11.420 looks like it violates the right to life. 01:23:11.420 --> 01:23:13.620 And because it looks like it violates the right to life, 01:23:13.620 --> 01:23:16.700 it seems like it's contrary to justice. 01:23:16.700 --> 01:23:21.100 So one task then for Foote, if she's gonna show 01:23:21.100 --> 01:23:26.020 that some cases of euthanasia are morally permissible, 01:23:26.020 --> 01:23:31.020 she has to show that some cases of euthanasia 01:23:31.020 --> 01:23:33.060 are not contrary to justice, 01:23:33.060 --> 01:23:35.660 that they do not violate any rights. 01:23:35.660 --> 01:23:38.620 That's one task if it's gonna turn out 01:23:38.620 --> 01:23:42.700 that some cases of euthanasia are permissible. 01:23:42.700 --> 01:23:45.540 And you've read the article, I hope, or maybe you haven't, 01:23:45.540 --> 01:23:48.140 but spoiler alert, it does turn out 01:23:48.140 --> 01:23:50.280 that some cases are permissible. 01:23:50.280 --> 01:23:53.880 Charity, on the other hand, 01:23:53.880 --> 01:23:57.200 attaches us to the good of others. 01:23:57.200 --> 01:24:01.100 So charity is the virtue that promotes the good of others, 01:24:01.100 --> 01:24:04.180 justice is the virtue that protects the rights of others. 01:24:04.180 --> 01:24:05.320 These are different. 01:24:06.900 --> 01:24:09.740 So not helping a dying person, 01:24:09.740 --> 01:24:14.060 failing to insist those in need are violations of charity. 01:24:14.060 --> 01:24:16.820 So to go back to my old man struggling 01:24:16.820 --> 01:24:20.880 to cross the street example from before, 01:24:20.880 --> 01:24:24.620 if you just walk by and don't help, 01:24:24.620 --> 01:24:26.580 that's a violation of charity. 01:24:26.580 --> 01:24:28.780 It's not a violation of justice 01:24:28.780 --> 01:24:33.780 because you don't owe the old person help. 01:24:34.060 --> 01:24:36.660 That person doesn't have a right to your help. 01:24:36.660 --> 01:24:38.020 So it's not a violation of justice, 01:24:38.020 --> 01:24:39.700 but it's a violation of charity 01:24:40.760 --> 01:24:44.020 because you ought to promote the good of that person 01:24:44.020 --> 01:24:45.700 by helping them cross the street. 01:24:47.860 --> 01:24:51.140 So one reason charity is relevant 01:24:51.140 --> 01:24:53.540 is because passive euthanasia, 01:24:53.540 --> 01:24:58.540 letting someone die looks like it's a violation of charity 01:24:59.700 --> 01:25:02.020 because it looks like you have someone 01:25:02.020 --> 01:25:05.400 who's in need of life-saving support 01:25:05.400 --> 01:25:07.880 and you on purpose don't give it to them. 01:25:07.880 --> 01:25:10.080 So again, if it's gonna turn out 01:25:10.080 --> 01:25:13.100 that euthanasia is morally permissible, 01:25:13.100 --> 01:25:14.460 then we're gonna have to show 01:25:14.460 --> 01:25:19.460 that it's not in violation of or contrary to charity. 01:25:19.460 --> 01:25:24.460 Okay, so she starts with an analysis of the right to life. 01:25:28.220 --> 01:25:30.860 The right to life entails for most of us 01:25:30.860 --> 01:25:32.260 a duty of non-interference. 01:25:32.260 --> 01:25:35.020 That's to say you can't just go around killing people. 01:25:37.020 --> 01:25:41.740 It also entails for doctors and health practitioners 01:25:41.740 --> 01:25:43.980 a duty of interference. 01:25:43.980 --> 01:25:46.980 That is a duty to do something. 01:25:46.980 --> 01:25:50.700 So if you are in an accident, 01:25:50.700 --> 01:25:52.980 the doctors have a duty to help you 01:25:52.980 --> 01:25:54.380 because they are contract bound. 01:25:54.380 --> 01:25:57.580 That's what their jobs are 01:25:57.580 --> 01:25:59.540 as part of the Norwegian health system. 01:26:01.300 --> 01:26:04.300 Importantly, the right to life here 01:26:04.300 --> 01:26:07.520 is entirely separate from the question 01:26:07.520 --> 01:26:08.780 of whether the life is good. 01:26:08.780 --> 01:26:10.660 And this is important because it means 01:26:10.660 --> 01:26:14.180 that justice and charity sort of come apart. 01:26:14.180 --> 01:26:18.300 So imagine someone who's living a terrible life. 01:26:18.300 --> 01:26:21.620 We can't kill them for their own sake 01:26:21.620 --> 01:26:23.380 if they don't wanna die. 01:26:23.380 --> 01:26:25.060 That's murder. 01:26:25.060 --> 01:26:28.180 So the fact that someone who's living a bad life, 01:26:28.180 --> 01:26:30.220 even a painful, horrible life, 01:26:30.220 --> 01:26:32.180 wants to continue that life, 01:26:33.220 --> 01:26:36.520 we cannot kill them against their wishes 01:26:36.520 --> 01:26:40.540 even though we think they would be better off not living. 01:26:40.540 --> 01:26:44.020 And that means involuntary, 01:26:44.020 --> 01:26:46.300 involuntary, the person is against it, 01:26:46.300 --> 01:26:48.660 active, taking steps in order to do it. 01:26:48.660 --> 01:26:50.980 So giving a lethal injection 01:26:50.980 --> 01:26:54.500 to someone who doesn't want it is not allowed. 01:26:55.500 --> 01:26:57.340 Unsurprisingly, that's just murder. 01:27:03.060 --> 01:27:07.420 However, involuntary passive euthanasia, 01:27:07.420 --> 01:27:10.660 that is impermissible for doctors. 01:27:10.660 --> 01:27:14.540 So a doctor can't let you die if you don't want that 01:27:14.540 --> 01:27:16.820 and expressly state that you don't want that, 01:27:16.820 --> 01:27:21.220 but it is permissible for some others. 01:27:21.220 --> 01:27:25.820 And she has this case of an injured soldier 01:27:25.820 --> 01:27:30.820 on the battlefield asking for life-preserving medicine 01:27:31.260 --> 01:27:32.820 from his fellow soldiers. 01:27:32.820 --> 01:27:35.300 So in the case, again, if you haven't read it, 01:27:35.300 --> 01:27:38.660 so there's someone, there's been a slaughter, 01:27:38.660 --> 01:27:40.980 lots of soldiers are lying on the ground dying, 01:27:40.980 --> 01:27:42.780 the army is going to retreat, 01:27:42.780 --> 01:27:44.400 all the enemy is approaching, 01:27:44.400 --> 01:27:46.340 they're going to kill and or torture 01:27:46.340 --> 01:27:48.180 the soldiers that they come upon. 01:27:48.180 --> 01:27:50.120 So one of the soldiers there, 01:27:51.260 --> 01:27:56.100 if they, you say, oh, let me kill you now 01:27:56.100 --> 01:27:58.340 before they come and torture you. 01:27:58.340 --> 01:28:01.860 If you say, no, I don't wanna be killed, 01:28:01.860 --> 01:28:02.920 I'd rather be captured, 01:28:02.920 --> 01:28:05.580 you don't have a right to shoot them. 01:28:05.580 --> 01:28:08.980 That is the case of involuntary active euthanasia. 01:28:10.740 --> 01:28:15.740 But you can leave them behind 01:28:15.900 --> 01:28:18.100 and not, in the case that she manages, 01:28:18.100 --> 01:28:21.380 give them life-extending medicine. 01:28:21.380 --> 01:28:25.060 So you can let them die, even though they don't want to, 01:28:26.340 --> 01:28:28.140 in that sort of case. 01:28:28.140 --> 01:28:30.620 So in certain circumstances, 01:28:30.620 --> 01:28:32.900 involuntary passive euthanasia is allowed, 01:28:32.900 --> 01:28:36.180 but this is going to be in very extreme sorts of circumstances. 01:28:38.740 --> 01:28:43.740 The case of non-voluntary euthanasia is, of course, harder. 01:28:43.860 --> 01:28:48.660 What she says is that unless you know specifically 01:28:48.660 --> 01:28:50.900 that a person wishes to die, 01:28:50.900 --> 01:28:53.900 you can't assume that they wish to die. 01:28:53.900 --> 01:28:56.660 So you have to, you don't have to assume 01:28:56.660 --> 01:28:57.640 that they wish to live, 01:28:57.640 --> 01:29:00.660 but you can't assume that they wish to die. 01:29:00.660 --> 01:29:05.580 So that means that non-voluntary active euthanasia 01:29:05.580 --> 01:29:07.060 is impermissible for everyone. 01:29:07.060 --> 01:29:10.780 So this is the case of a coma patient, for example, 01:29:10.780 --> 01:29:11.900 you don't know what their wishes are, 01:29:11.900 --> 01:29:13.820 there's no living will, they can't communicate, 01:29:13.820 --> 01:29:15.820 you cannot give them a lethal injection. 01:29:17.260 --> 01:29:20.660 However, this is the trickiest case, 01:29:20.660 --> 01:29:25.440 passive non-voluntary euthanasia may be permissible 01:29:25.440 --> 01:29:30.440 except for those that are contract bound. 01:29:30.900 --> 01:29:35.100 So doctors can't do it, but others can decide to do it. 01:29:35.100 --> 01:29:37.140 And she imagined the case where this is someone 01:29:37.140 --> 01:29:39.860 who wishes you can reasonably assume 01:29:39.860 --> 01:29:41.940 that they wouldn't want to be kept alive. 01:29:41.940 --> 01:29:43.860 Not that they would want to be killed, 01:29:43.860 --> 01:29:45.480 but they wouldn't want to be kept alive. 01:29:45.480 --> 01:29:48.540 So for her, there's an important difference 01:29:48.540 --> 01:29:52.100 between active euthanasia and passive euthanasia, 01:29:52.100 --> 01:29:54.720 and that she thinks is brought out by some of these cases 01:29:54.720 --> 01:29:56.540 that she talks about. 01:29:57.700 --> 01:30:02.700 Now, voluntary euthanasia, and here she relies 01:30:03.140 --> 01:30:07.280 on an important analogy, she's in voluntary euthanasia, 01:30:07.280 --> 01:30:09.980 if there's no doubt about what the patient wishes, 01:30:09.980 --> 01:30:13.260 no right is infringed if she is either killed 01:30:13.260 --> 01:30:14.500 or allowed to die. 01:30:14.500 --> 01:30:18.980 So that means voluntary active or passive euthanasia 01:30:18.980 --> 01:30:20.620 is morally permissible. 01:30:22.580 --> 01:30:24.620 And she gives us analogy of the house, 01:30:24.620 --> 01:30:27.820 if you own a house and you allow someone to destroy it, 01:30:27.820 --> 01:30:29.620 they don't violate any of your rights 01:30:29.620 --> 01:30:31.020 by destroying the house. 01:30:32.540 --> 01:30:34.180 And we'll see when we come to Bellarmine 01:30:34.180 --> 01:30:37.020 that this is one important point in which she disagrees. 01:30:38.880 --> 01:30:42.620 Okay, just coming to the end here. 01:30:44.200 --> 01:30:47.020 So her analysis of charity is much shorter. 01:30:47.020 --> 01:30:51.860 Basically she says, since we've defined euthanasia 01:30:51.860 --> 01:30:55.420 as something that promotes the good of others, 01:30:55.420 --> 01:30:59.660 and charity is the virtue that promotes the good of others, 01:30:59.660 --> 01:31:04.660 it looks like in general, where justice allows euthanasia, 01:31:05.220 --> 01:31:08.200 charity will also permit it. 01:31:08.200 --> 01:31:10.800 However, this gets back to this issue 01:31:10.800 --> 01:31:15.420 that was raised before, because it will turn out 01:31:15.420 --> 01:31:18.980 that sometimes people will want things 01:31:18.980 --> 01:31:21.900 that's not for their own good. 01:31:21.900 --> 01:31:26.780 Charity may require, rather than helping someone 01:31:26.780 --> 01:31:29.380 kill themselves, trying to convince them 01:31:29.380 --> 01:31:32.140 that their life actually is worth living. 01:31:32.140 --> 01:31:35.460 So charity in promoting the good of others 01:31:35.460 --> 01:31:40.460 may give you reason to resist engaging in euthanasia, 01:31:41.760 --> 01:31:45.140 even in a case where it looks like you have someone 01:31:45.140 --> 01:31:45.980 who wants it. 01:31:45.980 --> 01:31:47.700 Okay, we're out of time. 01:31:47.700 --> 01:31:50.220 Thank you very much, and I'll see you all next time. 01:31:50.220 --> 01:32:17.220 Thank you.