Misanthropy and Virtue

            I am a misanthrope, and I aspire to be as virtuous as possible. But misanthropy is, in brief, dislike of humanity. So can one be a misanthrope and virtuous? This is the question I would like to address.[1]

            Misanthropy has a few features.[2] Understanding them is philosophically interesting in itself and helps answer the question about virtue.

            (1) Misanthropy is dislike of humanity in general, not necessarily of every human being—one can be a misanthrope and still like, love, admire, respect, look up to, or idealize individual people, whether familiars or strangers. Of course, one can also be a misanthrope and dislike most people, even every person.

            (2) Misanthropy is dislike of humanity because humanity is a failure.[3]

            Why is humanity a failure? I won’t say much here because some philosophers have written on this.[4] But here is a general list. Psychological: human beings are often caught up in mental turmoil, such as anxiety, fear, envy, hatred, anger, self-deception, sentimentality, misplaced sympathy or pity, self-absorption, servility, and arrogance. Intellectual: human beings often display ignorance, stupidity, irrationality, lack of wisdom, immaturity, closed-mindedness, bias, self-deception, superstition, and shallowness. Moral: human beings often act in terrible ways; they lie, cheat, steal, kill, rape, torture, humiliate, blackmail, and fail to exhibit proper attitudes and emotions (or exhibit the wrong ones). Human beings also have many vices: they are cruel, selfish, narcissistic, envious, arrogant, superficial, apathetic, vain, self-indulgent, and indifferent. Moreover, they often know this about themselves and go to great lengths to hide this from others.[5] Aesthetic: human beings can be “obscene,” “putrescent,” and “packages of rotten tripe,”[6] but the aesthetics that concern me are those that emerge from the psychological, intellectual, and moral failings combined together to form a general picture of human beings, in which we do not appear to be aesthetically delectable objects, things to admire, let alone to feel awe at.

            Note two things. First, the above failures are pervasive: they occur across a wide swath of humanity, cutting across cultures, classes, races, sexes, and ages.[7] They also cut across time: human failure has been with us since we have existed, though there are specific periods when it peaks: slavery, the Holocaust, the Soviet gulags, and the genocide of animals, to give four examples.

            Second, although it is tempting to cite human goodness such as charity, generosity, kindness, compassion, and heroism to counter the claim that human badness is pervasive, remember that much of this human goodness is a response to human failure. That is, we would not need most of it were it not for human failure to begin with.

            (3) Given the above failures and their pervasiveness, misanthropy is a justified outlook. Part of what this means is that even if misanthropy is not ultimately true, we have very good reasons for believing it. Here, let’s distinguish between the reason for or the basis of the misanthropic attitude, which is human vices and other failures, and the object or target of the attitude, which is humanity itself, collectively and, in many cases, individually.

            (4) Misanthropy, then, stems from an evaluation of humanity as having failed. It is thus not a mere feeling, but a judgment of, an attitude towards, or an outlook on humanity, though one that is often accompanied by feelings such as pain, disgust, anger, frustration, and desperation.

            Even though misanthropy is not mere feeling and involves judgment, an interesting question is whether it is not mere judgement either. Does it have to be accompanied by a feeling or an emotional reaction, even if the reaction is not felt all the time?[8] One might claim that it must, because, otherwise, the concept of misanthropy would be emptied of its crucial meaning of dislike, and dislike is a feeling of sorts. But what reactions are these?

            The reactions can be distinguished in terms of their content and their kind. In terms of content, the reactions can range from the strong to the weak, such as contempt, disgust, hatred, anger, bitterness, frustration, disappointment, sadness, resignation, and desperation. Each of these can be a reaction to humanity’s failure. In terms of kind, the reactions can be background and situational. By “background” I mean the general emotion that colors a particular misanthropist’s reaction to humanity’ failure. By “situational” I mean the reaction to a specific situation. For example, X, Y, and Z are misanthropes with different background reactions: X regards humanity with bitterness, Y with anger, and Z with contempt. Nonetheless, each of them can situationally react in the same way—with sadness, for example—to a specific incident, such as witnessing a person hunt an animal for sport. They can, of course, react situationally differently, but the point is to highlight the difference between background and situational reactions.

            What matters here are the background reactions, because they are reactions to humanity in general, not specific human beings. Background reactions are not mysterious. Think of them as the emotional reaction that a misanthrope is disposed to feel upon thinking of humanity and its failures or upon witnessing a bad human action or personality. Much like thinking about one’s favorite music can make one feel joy, thinking about humanity can make the misanthrope feel anger, sadness, or any one of the reactions listed above. They are the emotional coloring of a misanthrope’s character in regards to humanity.

            Can someone be a misanthrope and not have a background reaction? I think yes, but to keep the discussion as forceful as possible, let’s say that a misanthrope does have such a background reaction. Does then the background reaction have to be negative, or can it be positive, such as compassion, sympathy, and pity? After all, we often have compassion or pity for specific people whom we think have failed, even culpably so.

            The answer depends on how we understand “dislike”: if dislike can be purely a matter of judgment, then some people’s misanthropy can be located merely in the judgment of failure, and they can have positive background reactions. Call this “soft (or “weak”) misanthropy.” If dislike is a matter of feeling, then misanthropy cannot just be a matter of judgment, but must involve a background reaction, and that reaction will have to be negative to count as dislike. Call this “hard (or “strong”) misanthropy.”[9]

            (5) Misanthropy takes humanity to be culpable for its failure; it is blameworthy for it. Humanity’s failure is not one that occurs despite us and our best efforts; that kind of failure should elicit pity, not dislike. Humanity has failed at something that it need not have failed at. If the failure is not culpable, the range of responses to this failure would not be justified or rational: bitterness, frustration, disappointment, anger, and hatred would be either unjustified or irrational.[10] It would be like getting frustrated (angry, disappointed) at your computer or cat—understandable in that it happens, but ultimately irrational or unjustified.

            (6) Misanthropy is dislike of humanity by human beings, not by other creatures who can also evaluate us (e.g., angels, extra-terrestrials, or God, though whether God can be a misanthrope is a fascinating question in itself).[11] Even if we think that non-human beings can be misanthropes, misanthropy is a much more meaningful and interesting outlook when adopted by human beings themselves, much like one’s disappointment in members of one’s own family differs from one’s disappointment in strangers.

            (7) Misanthropy can be optimistic or it can be pessimistic. Optimistic misanthropy implies that humanity can learn and improve, while the pessimistic variation denies this implication. It denies the implication not because human beings cannot improve—both variations of misanthropy must assume that we have some ability to improve in order to hold humanity culpable—but because our history gives us no reason to expect improvement.

            Given the above features, can the misanthrope be a virtuous person? Which virtues is she supposed to have towards fellow human beings if she dislikes them? The question is pressing for two reasons. First, virtues are dispositional states that often require not only acting in the right ways, but also feeling the right emotions, and many of these emotions are positive. Virtues such as caring, love, generosity, and friendliness are accompanied by such emotions as sympathy, compassion, liking, joy, and tenderness. Second, the virtues, and virtue ethics, seem to require the adoption of a positive outlook on humanity: justice, courage, temperance, care, generosity, friendliness, patience, and love all assume a particular stance towards fellow human beings: that they are deserving of all the outcomes and attitudes that, respectively, flow from and underlie the virtues. To see this better, contrast it with the famous passage in Kant’s Groundwork where Kant discusses people whom nature made “cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others” and who are nonetheless able to help others merely from duty. Now change the case to someone who dislikes humanity, but who thinks it is her duty to help others. Misanthropes on Kant’s ethics can still act from a sense of duty, with no need for the requisite emotions.[12] This is not an option for an ethics of virtue, so what a virtuous misanthrope looks like needs to be unpacked.

            Virtue ethics, however, is not an ethics of only positive emotions. Depending on the situation, a virtuous person could feel negative emotions towards others. For example, witnessing acts such as abuse, cruelty, theft, and exploitation should give rise to reactions like anger, frustration, disgust, even contempt for the person doing the action. In short, there is nothing in virtue ethics that rules out experiencing such emotions. Indeed, the virtuous person would experience negative emotions on many occasions given the large number of bad actions that occur.

            On the side of misanthropy, and given that it is dislike of humanity in general, in situational reactions a misanthrope can feel love, tenderness, admiration, sympathy, liking, and so on for particular individuals, either for who they are or for what they do. For example, witnessing someone rescuing an animal, giving money to a homeless person, being honest, and so on, a misanthrope can react with positive emotions towards what he witnesses.

            Note also that in cases when a misanthrope does feel negative emotions, he can feel them for the same reasons that the virtuous person does: because the people act badly, not because they are people. The point is that situationally speaking, the misanthrope’s reactions to individual people and their actions can be on a spectrum from the negative to the positive, much like a virtuous person’s reactions would be. So as far as particular situations are concerned, there is no obstacle for a misanthrope to be virtuous and for a virtuous person to be a misanthrope.

            If there is an obstacle, it could be either because the virtuous person would not believe that humanity is a failure, or because the virtuous person would believe but would not have a negative background emotion to humanity (she would not be a hard misanthropist).

            Is there a reason why a virtuous person cannot judge humanity to be a failure? That is, can this judgment or belief be part of the virtuous person’s (theoretical) wisdom? Given that wisdom pervades every virtue, helping to orient the virtue to what’s valuable and important and to how to act in specific situations, are there any virtues whose existence is incompatible with misanthropy’s core idea? I cannot think of a single virtue that poses a serious obstacle (except for one). All virtues tend to manifest in interpersonal interactions, and, as we have seen, the misanthrope can feel the right emotions and treat others perfectly well in such situations. The only exception is the virtue of hope because it might clash with the idea that humanity is a failure, if we assume that hope requires the belief that humanity is redeemable or is basically good.

            Here, note three things. First, a virtuous person can be an optimistic misanthrope. Second, even with pessimistic misanthropy, the virtue of hope can be retained in regards to various things other than humanity’s future successes. It can latch onto specific situations and people. So we can retain hope as a virtue but possibly narrow its domain. Third, and connected to the second point, this narrowing down of hope’s domain has no negative implications to someone’s virtue if he or she were to lack that specific hope about humanity future, because this hope is more intellectual than ethical, referring to ideas about the likelihood of humanity’s future failure or success. So its loss is not ethical but intellectual. Thus, it seems that no virtue need go against the judgment that humanity is a failure.

            This leaves us with the question of whether a virtuous person can be a hard misanthropist. And my answer is a qualified yes. Because misanthropy targets humanity in general, not particular human beings, a virtuous person can have a negative background reaction while situationally feel the needed emotions, whether positive or negative. My answer is qualified, however, because some background negative emotions might not be possible for a virtuous person. Contempt, hatred, deep bitterness, and resignation might prohibit doing some actions or doing them with the requisite feelings. For example, a person who hates humanity might not be able to pull off genuinely sympathetic actions that are needed in some situations. Thus, perhaps only those background negative reactions that do not block positive situational feelings and actions are ones that a virtuous person can have.

            Are the differences, then, between a virtuous (hard) misanthrope and a virtuous non-misanthrope to be located in the misanthrope’s judgment that humanity is a failure and his background reaction, both of which are situationally inert? No. There is another important difference, which is that the actions of the virtuous hard misanthrope would on occasion be laced with or accompanied by an additional thought or an emotion that reflect that misanthropy. Consider two virtuous people who rescue an abused dog from its owner. Each would feel compassion for the animal and perhaps anger towards the owner, but the misanthrope’s feelings might also be accompanied by her belief that this is yet another example of humanity’s failure, and it might also be colored with her background reaction of, for example, sadness or bitterness. Consider two virtuous people who feel gratitude at a stranger’s kindness towards them. The misanthrope’s feeling might be accompanied by the reminder that there are good people in the world. In short, a virtuous misanthrope’s actions, feelings, and judgments in particular situations might have added components—further beliefs, judgments, and feelings—derived from the misanthropic outlook.[13] They need not be present, of course, but if they are, they would be a further distinguishing factor between the virtuous misanthrope and the virtuous non-misanthrope.

            Human beings are rational beings. Our rationality is what sets us apart from other creatures and living things, and it has been used by philosophers and others to elevate us above them. Our rationality, however, is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it endows us with the capacity to reason well, to acquire knowledge, to make good judgments, to temper our emotions when they threaten to go awry, and to calm our psychology when it is in danger of spinning out of control. But our rationality is a curse because it endows us with the capacity to do the exact opposite of the things in the previous sentence. The misanthrope accepts that we are rational beings with a capacity for good, but he also accepts that our rational capacity for bad has proved to be the stronger of the two. We have used our rationality mostly for ill and we are likely to continue on this path.

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[1] Another question regarding virtue is whether misanthropy and virtue ethics, as theories, can both be true. I do not address this issue.

[2] The first chapter of David E. Cooper’s wonderful book, Animals and Misanthropy (Routledge 2018) has influenced the discussion of misanthropy’s features, though I disagree with him on a few points. I recommend his book to anyone interested in misanthropy, animals, or both.

[3] I borrow this apt term from Cooper, p. 8.

[4] Including Immanuel Kant (who was not a misanthrope)—whose discussion of the topic is invaluable—and Arthur Schopenhauer (who was).

[5] See Ian James Kidd’s “Misanthropy and the Hatred of Humanity” (forthcoming in The Moral Psychology of Hatred, edited by Noell Birondo) on the fact that Schopenhauer noticed this about us. They also hide these traits from themselves. But hiding them from others adds a moral dimension that lacks in hiding them from themselves.

[6] Céline, Journey to the End of Night. Quoted in Cooper, p. 7.

[7] Some groups display some vices more than others. Men tend to be more physically violent and sexually abusive than women. Old people tend to be more bitter than young people, whereas young people tend to be more ignorant.

[8] For additional discussion, see Kidd, according to whom, “[Misanthropy] is not some set of propositions, coldly accepted, but a charged way of apprehending and responding to the particular ways that human existence has come to be.” Kidd’s discussion is of the topic is rich, but I worry that some of his points the types of ways misanthropes express themselves situationally and in action with background reactions.

[9] The discussion here is simplified to discuss some basic emotional structures of misanthropy. Kidd is surely correct to write that it “has many sources – a whole dynamic assemblage of moods, feelings, emotions, experiences, reflections, structures of expectations and worries, background cultural and contextual sensibilities, and so on.”

[10] If it turns out that humanity could not have but failed, then misanthropy would not be justified.

[11] One can be a misanthrope as one partakes in this human failure—indeed, even as one recognizes that one is partaking in this failure.

[12] The difficult questions for Kantians is the compatibility between the truth of misanthropy and that of human beings as having inner worth.

[13] Whether these components are added or somehow part of the other beliefs, judgments, and feelings is a complicated question.

Wearing Hand-Me-Down Fur

Wearing Hand-Me-Down Fur

I am pleased to post this from Beirut, the city of my birth and one of my two homes (Chicago being the other, of course).

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a dinner party in Chicago. I met a very interesting woman, with whom I chatted quite a bit about politics and psychology. At the end of the evening, when everyone was getting their coats to leave, I noticed that hers was genuine fur (I didn’t ask from which kind of animal the fur came). Given my occasional obnoxious nature, having taken an oath to speak up against animal cruelty, and having taken myself to have some “cred” with her by that point in the evening, I asked her, in the most morally outraged tone I could muster while also sounding amicable, “Is that real fur?” She immediately assured me that even though it was real fur, it was also a hand-me-down, and that she would never actually buy real fur.

That was somewhat reassuring. But I also decided to think more about the question, “Is it okay to wear hand-me-down fur?” I had always thought that the answer was yes, but this answer sat very uneasily with me. It nagged at me. And after my encounter with Ms. Fur at the party I decided to try to think through it more (it really did not need a lot more thinking through, as you’ll see).

Let’s first ask: What reasons might people offer for thinking that it is okay to wear hand-me-down fur even though they would never buy new fur? One reason is that they are proud or happy to wear something that is a family heirloom, that was given to them by a grandmother or a great-aunt.

Another reason, which I suspect is more prominent, is that by not buying the fur, they are not perpetuating or supporting a bad industry. This is true. But is not supporting a bad industry the only morally relevant aspect?

One other aspect is not sending the wrong message: (some) people who see the fur, not knowing that it is a hand-me-down, might think, “Oh, it’s not so bad buying fur. Maybe I’ll buy one next time I have a few extra dollars around.” Since, however, many people don’t really care about fur or animals, such thoughts probably do not occur to them. And even those people to whom such thoughts do occur, they might not act on them (that is, such thoughts might be fleeting or non-motivating). This is why I wish to focus on a third aspect: What it means to be a person who wears fur, hand-me-down, bought, found in a dark alleyway, or whatever.

How to explore this? One good way is through conducting a thought experiment. Suppose that in the recent past we used to breed a group of human beings (let’s call them the “brilliantly-skinned people”) whose skin had an extra shine or glimmer to it. After killing them, we harvested their skin and made bags, jackets, shoes, etc. out of it.

Now we know better. We no longer breed such brilliantly-skinned people, let alone harvest and use their skin. But their skin-products are still around, and many people have such products because their grandfather or grandmother handed them a jacket or a bag made from such human skin.

Would you wear it? Of course not. Why not? Not because it “perpetuates” the industry, especially since by hypothesis this industry no longer exists. You would not wear it because to do so would be to demonstrate a kind of disregard and callousness to a past practice that we would do best to not show off (which is not the same as not discussing it, writing about it, etc.). To wear or carry such products is to exhibit yourself as an inconsiderate, thoughtless, and morally immature person. You would be, in short, vicious, and no one wants to be that.

Moreover, even if it has some sentimental value (“It was my grandfather’s!”), you would recognize that your grandfather, kind man as he was, bought it during a time when people had a moral blind spot about the treatment and dignity of the brilliantly-skinned people. Perhaps you can keep it tucked somewhere, or maybe donate it to a museum. But wear it? Absolutely not.

Well, don’t the same reasons apply to fur? Harvesting fur is done under the most atrocious circumstances and by ending the lives of some of the most majestic and beautiful animals in the world. Your attitude to wearing it should be, if not the same as your attitude to wearing or carrying the products of the brilliantly-skinned people, pretty close.

Someone will object with ire: “You dare to compare our treatment to human beings and to non-human animals? They are vastly different, so the comparison does not support your point.” I reply: “There is no reason to not compare our treatment of human beings to that of non-human animals. But in this case I happen to be making no such comparison. The point is really about the moral justification of wearing or displaying something that was made through unnecessary cruelty. And to make this point, I need not believe that human beings and non-human animals are comparable with each other, let alone have equal moral status. After all, even if people have a higher moral status than non-human animals, the latter can still be treated terribly and with indignity.

So to wear and use their products as if none of the above were true is to show disregard and callousness towards their treatment. It is to be vicious. And no one wants to be that.

(P.S. 1: The same reasoning applies to showing or exhibiting objects that are not worn, such as statuettes made of ivory.)

(P.S. 2: The same reasoning applies to wearing or displaying products made out of more “humdrum” animals, such as shoes and belts made out of calfskin and cowhide rugs. Does the reasoning take us all the way to veganism? Not necessarily, because there is a principled difference between using animal products that do not necessitate the death of the animal or its cruel treatment and those that do.)

Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part II

Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part II

In the last post, I gave a brief explanation of Aristotle’s virtue ethics and of the virtues. In this post, I discuss the virtue of temperance and the vice of intemperance, and connect both to eating meat.

The virtue of temperance, according to Aristotle, moderates our desires for the sensual pleasures of eating, drinking, and having sex. But although it is about sense pleasures, Aristotle thinks (for reasons that I won’t go into) that it concerns mostly the senses of taste and touch, especially touch—he gives an example of a glutton who wished to have a long throat so that he can feel more (or for longer) the food as it goes go down it. I think that Aristotle was right about touch when it comes to sexual desire, but I am not sure that he was right about the centrality of touch when it comes to food and drink, where taste seems to play a much more prominent role than Aristotle allows. In any case, let’s agree that temperance and intemperance are the virtue and vice that moderate our desires for the pleasures of eating, drinking, and having sex, let’s set aside the issue of which sense is most prominent, and let’s focus on eating (I will address in future posts temperance and sexual desire, a topic on which I have published a bit already.)

Who is the temperate person, and who is the intemperate one? There seem to be two crucial, relevant ideas here: the idea of right and wrong object, and the idea of too much and too little. To explain: Aristotle wishes to say that there are wrong things to eat (examples can be the flesh—or the blood—of another human being, feces, earth, wood, and so on). Right things to eat include things such as bread, vegetables, and fruits. But note that even if, say, fruits are right things to eat, this does not mean that any quantity is acceptable. Indeed, here enters the second notion, of “too much” (or “too little”). Even if fruits are the right things to eat, one can be intemperate in eating too much of them. (Keep in mind that we are discussing virtues and vices, which are traits of character. Thus, binging on mangos once or twice in your life does not make you intemperate; instead, it is the intemperate person who has the disposition or tendency to eat too much or to eat the wrong things.)

Things, however, are slightly more complicated. Let’s go back to the idea of wrong things to eat. In general, and sticking with our example of fruits, fruits are a perfectly good example of right things to eat. But this does not mean that there are no circumstances in which they are the wrong things to eat. Which circumstances? Well, imagine that you are sitting idly on the beach on a hot summer day, and your eye lustfully catches the Tupperware full of mango slices sitting atop the beach bag of the person next to you. She goes to swim and you realize that you can steal the mangos and eat them (it will have to be quick, while she is swimming). Clearly, the stolen mango is the wrong thing to eat, because it is stolen (duh!). Sometimes, Aristotle expresses this idea by saying that the temperate person would not eat the right things in the wrong way: so perhaps in this case we can say that those mango slices are the right things to eat, but to eat them through theft is to eat them in the wrong way.

Now imagine that we live in a world in which mangos are produced by the labor of enslaved human beings (this scenario is not that far from the reality of many agricultural workers). Mangoes are still right things to eat, but surely we can now claim that enjoying or eating them is wrong because they are farmed by slave laborers. Mangos are thus the wrong things to eat in such circumstances (or, alternatively, eating them given their origin is eating the right things but in the wrong way).

(A side note: eating the above mangos is wrong not only because it is intemperate, but also because it is vicious in other ways, such as because it is unjust or greedy.)

At this point, a quick aside is important, because I can easily imagine someone raising an eyebrow and objecting, “But who is to decide what are the right and wrong things to eat, or the right and wrong ways to eat things, or how much is too much?” This is a question that my students never fail to raise in moral discussions, and it is (sometimes) a good one. Aristotle defines “virtue” as a state lying in a mean “defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent [wise] person would define it.” (By “mean” Aristotle means a state between excess and deficiency, between basically two forms of vice, which, in our case, would be the intemperance of desiring the wrong things or “too much,” and the intemperance of not desiring enough, of insensibility.) Now, as I understand Aristotle, he is not advancing a relativist thesis that says that it is the wise person who creates or makes up what is the “middle state between excess and deficiency.” The wise person, instead, tracks what is right and wrong—her wisdom tells her that the “mean state” is, say, to face this danger. Wisdom is a virtue to Aristotle, and it is one found in all the other virtues; it enables the virtuous person to know what is valuable in life in general and to perceive a situation correctly, thereby enabling her to also judge, feel, and act correctly.

So the right and wrong things to eat are decided by moral facts—considerations “in the world” that are independent of us—and it is the virtuous person who knows what they are (though non-virtuous people can know them, too). Thus, Aristotle insists that the temperate person enjoys the pleasures of food and drink as long as they are “conducive to health and fitness” and do not go against “the fine.” (I don’t think that Aristotle means to include things that are only conducive to health—a constant diet of broccoli, carrots, and kale—he is okay with enjoying the occasional few slices of pizza, as long as such enjoyments do not undermine one’s health.) And what is conducive to health and fitness and what is compatible with the fine are not matters up to our subjective opinions, but are objective states of the world. One cannot simply decide that stealing that piece of chocolate from that child and eating it is “fine”; it most certainly is not, because it is (1) taking something (2) that is not one’s to take, and that (3) is of no value to one, but that (4) has a lot of value to the child, and (5) that would cause a child a bit of misery, and that (6) is all done in a manner not befitting one’s status as an adult.

So then what are the wrong things to eat? Aside from the examples that I gave above (which, by the way, one can quibble with as far as their moral wrongness is concerned—I mean, what is morally wrong with eating poop?), we can confidently claim that products obtained in the wrong ways would be good examples. We have already encountered the example of the slave-harvested mangos. Animal products—most obviously meat—obtained in the wrong ways would be another obvious example. Veal and pâté de foie gras are prime examples. Given the vast industry of factory farming, however, and given the conditions under which farm animals live and are treated, from cows, to pigs, to chickens, it seems to be a no-brainer that eating such meat is vicious or intemperate. (Some people think that eating chicken is morally better than eating beef or pork, and I suppose this is correct if we assume that chickens, somehow, suffer less than pigs and cows do, or that they are dumber than cows and pigs. But, really, even if true, none of this negates the fact that chickens suffer horrible lives in order for chicken-eaters to enjoy the taste of their flesh.) That is, if we concede that eating veal and pâté de foie gras is wrong because of the way the animals are treated, we ought to concede the same about the vast majority of farm animals. (I will get to hunted animals in a bit.)

So, imagine four people are at a dinner party where fancy chicken burgers are served by roving waiters (the “fancy” part is not necessary for the example). The temperate person declines to eat them because, in addition to judging that it would be wrong to eat chicken, she does not desire to eat them. Her desires follow the lead of her reason. This is, after all, what it is to be virtuous. The continent person (remember her from the previous post?) would desire to eat them, because she really likes chicken, but judges this to be wrong and acts on her decision. The incontinent person desires the chicken, judges that eating it would be wrong, but, alas, the weak fool that she is, succumbs to her desire. The incontinent person desires the chicken, eats it, and thinks nothing of it (she might, but need not, go to the length of saying to herself something like, “Stupid chickens! What purpose do they serve other than to please to our palates?”).

But eating meat that is harvested in factory farms might not be the only wrong meat to eat. It could also be that eating any meat obtained by killing an animal is wrong. How so? Well, if killing an animal causes its death (which, by the way, it does), and if the death of the animal is a harm to the animal because, say, it cuts its life short, then to kill the animal (by us, human beings, who know about right and wrong) is to wrong it. Thus, eating the meat of a killed animal would be wrong. Thus, a virtuous person would not eat this meat. This would apply also to eating the meat of animals killed in hunting or, more generally, for sport.

Note two things before I wrap up this post. First, the argument in the above paragraph is a general one, and its conclusion does not preclude exceptions. For example, there might be instances in which killing and eating an animal is acceptable (for survival, e.g.). Moreover, the conclusion excludes meat obtained through means other than killing the animal, such as meat from roadkill or cultured meat. It might be that there is something off or dishonorable about eating meat, period, but if so the above considerations do not support it. Different considerations need to be marshalled in order to show that meat-eating in itself is wrong, regardless of the way in which it was obtained.

The second thing to note is related to the last point just made (and repeats a point made further above), namely, that we arrive at what is right and wrong not through being virtuous (and I’m not even sure what this means), but through philosophical argument about right and wrong. And then we declare that virtuous people are not disposed to engage in the kind of actions that involve moral wrongdoing. So we reason our way to the point that eating meat is wrong, and claim that, therefore a virtuous person would not be disposed to eat meat—neither to desire to do so nor to actually do it. We can ask the question, “What would a virtuous person do in such-and-such circumstances?” as a heuristic device to help us arrive at our answers, but the answer itself would need to be supported by reasons (“Why would the virtuous person not do so-and-so?” “Because he is not selfish, and such an action is selfish given that it ...”)

“Well,” a sassy (and perhaps cocky) person might ask, “if virtue ethics does not tell us what is right and what is wrong, what the hell does it tell us?” One answer: It tells us what a virtuous person would and would not do, what she would and would not feel, and what she would judge to be right. It tells us, in brief, what it is to be a good person, even a noble, honorable one at that, despite these words sounding archaic.

So the next time someone says to you, “C’mon! Eat this juicy chicken breast. The chicken is dead anyway. Besides, you are only one person, and you not eating it won’t make a difference,” you can reply, “True and (maybe) true, but I am not the kind of person who partakes in this heinous practice.”

Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part I

Virtue and Meat-Eating

“Virtue” is a concept that sounds dated. And the virtue of temperance, which is the subject of this blog, sounds even more dated—there was a Simpsons episode (if I remember correctly) in which a newly married colonial settler to America had “Temperance” as her name (it was Marge’s character, shot back a few centuries). Indeed, “virtue ethics” refers to a way (or theory, if you want) of thinking about ethics that goes back to the ancient Greeks, ancient Chinese, and medieval Christian and Islamic philosophy, to give a few examples.

Contemporary philosophy has revived these traditions, and today there’s a large number of philosophers who subscribe to virtue ethics as a theory that stands its own ground and defends its own philosophical territory, much like other moral theories do. Some virtue ethicists find their inspiration in Aristotle, others in Confucius, others in Thomas Aquinas, others in Hume, and others in Kant, to name a few. They also research how other historical philosophers have relied on virtues in their work, such as Nietzsche.

I approach virtue ethics using Aristotle’s views. And one of the main virtues that Aristotle discussed—indeed, it is one of the classical virtues—is temperance. Before we go into it, let me give an idea of Aristotle’s virtue ethics.

Aristotle thought that human beings’ activities, desires, and goals have a final destination, which is happiness or flourishing (“flourishing” is a better translation than “happiness” of the Greek concept “Eudaimonia”). Although one life goal of mine is to do a duet with Justin Bieber, while one life goal of yours is to become the Minister of Education in the Lebanese government, we both want these goals because we ultimately want to flourish, because we think it would be part of a good life. Aristotle added that although everyone agrees that flourishing is our goal, not everyone agrees on what it consists of—What is a flourishing, good, or happy life for human beings? He proposed that in order to answer this question, we should look to the unique function of human beings. What is our purpose in life that sets us apart from other creatures? It can’t be merely a life of growth, because this is shared with plants and animals; it can’t be merely a life of pleasure or sense-perception, because this is shared with animals. So, he reasoned, it must have something to do with our reason, because it is our reason or rationality that sets us apart from other creatures. (Aristotle forgot that reason does not set us apart from the gods, but let’s let this one slide.)

So our function is to live life in accordance with reason. But just because that’s our function, it doesn’t mean that everyone does it well, or it doesn’t in itself tell us what it is to do it well. A knife’s function is to cut, but not every knife cuts well, and we need to know what a good knife is. Why bother with goodness at this point? Because Aristotle is not concerned with the function of human beings as such; he is after what a good, flourishing life is. And he arrives at that answer by looking at our function. So the answer is that a flourishing human life is a life lived in accordance with reason well or excellently.

Although it sounds uninformative to say that human life is life in accordance with reason, and that a good human life is a life lived well in accordance with reason, to Aristotle this is not trivial at all. This is because living life well is an idea packed with “goodies,” specifically, living well is having and exercising the virtues, which are human excellences, such as courage, justice, honesty, wisdom, and temperance. So although all human beings (with a few exceptions) live life in accordance with reason, not all do so well. Some live life irrationally, stupidly, immorally, etc. Their reason tells them, “It’s okay to take that candy from that baby,” but this is bad advice. So their reasoning has gone awry. And if reasoning goes awry, it is not well. Hence, to live life well as a human being, one needs the virtues.

(Many philosophers have dumped on this argument by Aristotle, accusing it of all sorts of things, such as relying on the idea of a function as such for human beings, which seems crazy and to go against what evolution tells us, and such as begging the question against those who think that people can lead good lives without the virtues. I and other philosophers, however, happen to think that Aristotle was on the right track, but my aim here is not to defend Aristotle’s argument.)

The above does not mean that one’s vocation in life is to be virtuous; this makes little sense, and we do need, after all, to put food on the table. But it does mean that any type of work, hobby, activity, or personality can be part of a virtuous life or part of a non-virtuous life. So if your job is teaching, you can perform it virtuously or non-virtuously, and you do that not side by side with being virtuous, as if the two just luckily go together, but because you are virtuous (or non-virtuous). And if you have, say, an open personality, you express it virtuously (or non-virtuously). Being virtuous means that that’s how you are, so it permeates how you act and do things, including your job, hobby, relationships with others, and so on. Basically, being virtuous (or non-virtuous) penetrates every nook and cranny of your life because it is your character.

Of course, human beings are not merely receptacles for reason—we are not cold, calculating machines. We have emotions and we have values, so how do they fit in a life lived well in accordance with reason? Both emotion and values are subsumed under the concept of “virtue,” according to Aristotle, in that a virtue (or a vice) affects how one feels, thinks, judges, and assigns value to things. So someone who has the virtues is someone who not only reasons well, but who also feels well and his values are oriented in the right ways.

For example, consider the virtue of courage. It involves, according to Aristotle, the emotions of fear and confidence, but in the right ways. To keep things simple, let’s focus on fear. The courageous person feels fear but in the right “amount,” toward the right things, for the right reasons, at the right times, etc. Generally speaking, someone who feels no fear in the face of impending death is not courageous, but foolhardy, and someone who feels fear at having to talk to their teacher is also not courageous, but a coward (alas, many students today claim that they feel “unsafe” talking to their teachers). So a brave person is not someone who does not feel fear, but who feels it, and overcomes it, but she feels it only in certain circumstances (those that call for fear), in the right measure, and for the right reasons. Note one interesting detail: although death is one of the main things that are rightly feared, not every circumstance involving fear of death and overcoming it is courageous. Overcoming the fear of death as the civilian plane you commandeered is about to crash into a building to kill civilians is not courage, because it is not overcoming the fear of death for the right reasons. It is not, as Aristotle would say, for the sake of the “noble.”

Before ending the first part of this post, it is worth noting why above I have written “non-virtuous” instead of “vicious,” which seems to be the obvious opposite of “virtuous.” The reason is that Aristotle distinguished between four character states, not only two (he identified two more, but they need not concern us): in addition to virtue, we have continence, incontinence, and vice. Thus, the state of virtue has three other contrasting states, not just one (though the state of vice is its polar opposite).

Briefly, a continent person is someone who knows what the right thing to do is, does it, but has to struggle with base desires to do it. He is tempted but overcomes the temptation. The incontinent person knows what the right thing to do is, is tempted not to do it, and succumbs to the temptation. So all three—the virtuous, the continent, and the incontinent—have proper judgment about a particular situation, but the second two do not have their emotions, feelings, and (possibly) values aligned with their judgment, and only the first two act on the proper judgment.

The state of vice is quite interesting, and it can have various manifestations, but one crucial thing about it is that the vicious person does something because he thinks it is the right thing to do, whereas in fact he is wrong to think so. He also, unlike the incontinent person, does not regret what he did (probably because he thinks it is the right thing to do). It is important then to not think of the vicious person as someone who is necessarily evil, rubbing his hands together with malicious, joyful laughter (though he could be); a vicious person might very well do something out of moral ignorance.

All the above will be made concrete with the discussion of temperance and intemperance, in “Virtue and Meat-Eating—Part II.” Stay tuned!