Virtue

This blog post assumes that you have read my blog post on free will.

0. Contents

1. Virtue is knowledge
1.1. Videtur
1.2. Habit
1.2.1. Rational habit
1.2.2. Sensitive habit
1.3. Virtue
1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge
1.3.2. Vice is ignorance
1.3.3. New description
2. Cardinal virtues
3. Punishment

1. Virtue is knowledge

1.1. Videtur

I used to argue against the proposition that “virtue is knowledge” using this argument:

1. All virtue is habit
2. No habit is knowledge
3. Therefore, no virtue is knowledge

This is clearly valid; the first premise is common doctrine and never disputed. But thinking about the nature of habit, in light of my opinion on free will, has led me to deny the second, in a certain sense.

1.2. Habit

A habit is a permanent quality which disposes a man to perform definite types of human acts with ease, accuracy and consistency.

Now, the only thing which ever causes a man to act is his desire; specifically, it is a desire’s reaching the top of his ordinal value scale. So a habit may be defined generically as a tendency for a desire to reoccur, become foremost, and be acted upon. As such, habits may be divided according to my previous division of desires.

1.2.1. Rational habit

A rational habit, then, is a tendency for a rational desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a rational desire to reoccur, the actor must have knowledge of its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his knowledge of circumstances, the actor will once again rationally desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no disordered sensitive desires intervening.

Since the tendency to rationally desire the action in those circumstances remains regardless of whether the circumstances do in fact periodically reoccur without sensitive interference, it follows that it is sufficient for a rational habit that the actor have knowledge of the desire’s object; everything else merely pertains to the actual reoccurrence of the action. It is clear, then, that all rational habit is knowledge.

1.2.2. Sensitive habit

A sensitive habit, on the other hand, is a tendency for a sensitive desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a sensitive desire to reoccur, the actor’s body must have a propensity to desire its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his body’s sensitive awareness of circumstances, the actor will once again sensitively desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no intervention from the soul to prevent the desire’s becoming foremost.

For there to be no intervention from the soul, one of these things must be true. The desire may (a) remain unexamined in every case; the desire may (b) be examined and found to be in accordance with reason; or the desire may (c) be examined, be found not to be in accordance with reason, and not be brought into accordance with it.

The case (a) may be termed an unexamined sensitive habit. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the sensitive desire under rational examination; as such, unexamined sensitive habits are always vicious at least to the extent that they are unexamined.

The case (c) may be termed a known vice. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the examined desire into accordance with reason.

The case (b) was skipped because it may be excluded from consideration under this head. If a sensitive desire is brought into examination and found to be in accordance with reason, this means nothing other than that there is already a rational desire which is the true motive of the action. The concomitant sensitive desire may facilitate the knowledge of circumstances which is required for the rational desire, but it does not cause the action. At any rate, if a sensitive habit is concomitant with a rational one in this way, it may be termed a rational sensitive habit.

1.3. Virtue

A virtue is a good habit.

Having divided the kinds of habits metaphysically, we may rehearse some general considerations about their goodness and badness.

• All rational habits are virtues. This is because they are caused by rational knowledge of the good, as has been said.
• All known vices are vices. By definition, they operate strictly against the actor’s rational knowledge of the good.
• All unexamined sensitive habits are vicious to the extent that they are unexamined. They may exclusively inspire the performance of objectively good acts – meaning that, if they were successfully examined, they would become rational sensitive habits – but those acts are always subjectively bad. (Not because the acting subject considers them bad, but because the necessary reason they are bad is wholly intrinsic to the subject.)

1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge

Since all true virtues are rational habits, and all rational habits are virtues, and rational habits are knowledge (cf. §1.2.1), it follows that all virtue is knowledge; but given what was said so far, it does not follow that all vice is ignorance.

It may seem, after all, that known vices are clearly against knowledge – they may be said to always exist in opposition to (and prevalence over) an existing virtue regarding the same object in the same actor, but it may seem absurd to call them a kind of ignorance. At least unexamined sensitive habits are always done in the absence of relevant intellectual knowledge, which is much easier to call ignorance; a known vice seems rather like a disregard for the known truth than like ignorance.

1.3.2. Vice is ignorance

This is true if “knowledge” and “ignorance” are taken in their strict, intellectual sense. But we may use these words of bodily processes, in analogy to the soul; as before we had said that pleasure and pain are the bodily analogues of good and evil.

It may be thought, then, that a body’s having a propensity to desire an object is something analogous to having belief in the object’s goodness; that this propensity, if known to be in accordance with reason, is something analogous to knowledge of the object’s goodness.

If these things are said, then to bring a sensitive desire into accordance with reason may be said, in this analogical sense, to be teaching the body what is good and what is bad. When the willpower brings a sensitive desire into accordance with reason, it changes the strength of the sensitive desire so that it is brought into proper order; if this is done habitually, it can correct an erroneous bodily propensity to desire, either weakening or extinguishing a sensitive habit. The body, having its new inclinations in proper order, may be said analogously to have been brought to knowledge of the habit’s object’s goodness or badness.

Virtue, then, is knowledge – either purely intellectual, or both intellectual and bodily – and all vice is a kind of bodily error – which is to say, both ignorance and wrong belief. To reiterate, these words are said analogously of the body; for the body to be in error is for it to fail to have a correctly ordered propensity (analogous to ignorance), and instead to have a wrongly ordered propensity (analogous to wrong belief).

1.3.3. New description

With all these opinions laid down and kept in view, it is not too poetical to describe virtue, in analogy to human relationships, as the soul’s disposition to command, allied with the body’s disposition to obey. If a habit is rationally determined and the body does not interfere, it is a virtue; if a habit is sensitively determined and the soul does not approve, it is a vice.

The relation of a virtuous soul with the body is unequal; the body is in submission to it, and made to obey the dictates of reason. If the soul could bring all of the body’s desires into habitual accordance with reason, then they could have a virtuous friendship; but given the imperfection inherent to matter, this cannot be done except by the grace of God.

Barring this, friendship between body and soul is friendship between greater and lesser – it occurs only through corruption of the greater. The soul must consent, against its better judgment, to the body’s irrational designs. This is done in many who are carnal in this world.

2. Cardinal virtues

In view of the aspects of right and wrong action, the role of the cardinal virtues in human action may be divided as follows.

The virtue which causes the willpower’s ‘attention’ and ‘diligence’ in examining sensitive desires and bringing them into accordance with reason is called justice, as was said.

The virtue which causes the examination to be done correctly is prudence, which is nothing other than the unimpeded application of the natural operation of reason to the desire. This is the same operation which causes rational desires, and ensures perfect fitness of means to ends.

The virtue which causes sensitive desires to be correctly brought into accordance with reason is called temperance in the case of concupiscible desires and courage (or fortitude) in the case of irascible desires.

3. Punishment

Knowing what was said makes it clearer how punishment may be viewed as reforming a criminal. Since all vice consists in a disordered sensitive habit, which is a bodily evil, it may possibly be corrected by the application of a bodily remedy; a punishment may help weaken a propensity to disordered sensitive desire. In the illustrative terms, it may be possible to hurt or alter a man’s body in such a way as to make it more obedient to his soul.

While I have not changed my opinion about the justice of punishments, this helps make clearer my opinion about the conditions of exercising mercy. Plainly, the “knowledge condition” refers to intellectual knowledge of the disorderedness of the vice, which is a necessary condition of virtue; the “will condition” refers to the likelihood that the sensitive habit has been, or will be, corrected. If both of these conditions are met, we have (what seems to be) a virtuous man; no punishment could be required for his reformation, and any punishment is for the sake of something else.

Punishment cannot truly bend the will; it cannot make a man’s soul more willing to rule his body. It can only make it easier for her to do so, by weakening the body, as was said. So while it is plainly true that coercion can make a man more virtuous, against what liberals tend to think, it is nevertheless only from an animal consideration. It cannot create virtue; it can only weaken vice.