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Thesis Abstract Shame and Moral Development in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle famously claims that we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. He also recognizes the potential puzzle this claim gives rise to: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? After all, virtuous actions require virtuous motives – in Aristotelian terms, they are performed “for the sake of the noble” – and virtuous motives characteristically belong to virtuous people. Most commentators presume that Aristotle’s solution rests upon a distinction between genuinely virtuous actions and actions that merely resemble virtuous actions: While the actions of those learning virtue are externally similar to virtuous actions, they are not genuinely virtuous because they lack virtuous motivation. But this leaves Aristotle with the problem of bridging what I call “the moral upbringing gap” – i.e. the gap between the superficially virtuous actions of learners and the genuinely virtuous dispositions that such actions are supposed to produce. This gap emerges because, as I explain in Chapter One, the weaker the link between the actions of learners and the actions performed by genuinely virtuous agents, the more difficult it is to understand how repeatedly performing superficially virtuous actions could give rise to a genuinely virtuous disposition. In Chapters Two and Three, I seek to shed light on what is required to bridge the moral upbringing gap by examining the relationship between several kinds of apparently virtuous actions and the corresponding virtuous dispositions. I use as a model the various forms of pseudo-courage discussed in Nicomachean Ethics 3.8. These include the forms of pseudo-courage produced by shame, fear of punishment, experience, spirit (thumos) and ignorance. By examining what is lacking in each case – especially in the citizen’s courage due to shame, which Aristotle says is most like genuine courage – I construct an account of what Aristotle thinks the actions of learners must be like if these actions are to lead to genuine courage. I conclude that such actions must be performed from a virtuous motive, whose presence however neither requires nor guarantees that the agent is already virtuous. Shame is thus revealed as crucial to solving our initial puzzle about moral development. In Chapter Four I offer a criticism of the most frequently adopted explanation of the role of shame in moral upbringing, the hedonistic approach, which understands shame in terms of enjoyment of the noble and makes pleasure the guiding mechanism for virtue acquisition: Virtuous actions become desirable for the learners because the learners come to take pleasure in such actions. Against this view, I argue that Aristotle regards taking pleasure in virtuous actions as a consequence, and not the source, of love for noble actions. The crucial role played by shame is further defended in Chapter Five, where I argue that Aristotle sees shame not as mere fear of external disapproval (as in the traditional view), nor as mere tendency to find pleasure in the noble (as in modern hedonistic interpretations), but as genuine love of noble things and hatred of shameful ones. Understood this way, shame provides learners with the sort of motivation that allows them to perform genuinely virtuous actions before they have acquired practical wisdom and the stable dispositions characteristic of virtuous agents. Shame thus bridges the “moral upbringing gap” by providing the kind of motivation that, when entrenched by understanding, constitutes moral virtue. |
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Marta Jimenez ————————————————————————————————————— |