>>From time to time in this course I have mentioned virtues or vices that do not have
a name, at least not a name in English. And I also mention virtues and vices that Aristotle
said had no name in Greek. I want to talk about why we would think that these no name
virtues or vices exist and that relates to the question of how we identify of virtues
and vices in the first place. Let’s start with three different ways to make a list of
virtues. The simplest way is to list commonly used words for virtues in our own language
at the time we live. If we made that list today in the US I assume that honesty, courage,
justice, generosity, compassion, perseverance and others would be on the list. The advantage
of this approach is that we trust the development of our language and the thoughts it expresses
at least up to a point so the fact that there’s a name for a virtue is some reason to think
it exists. But we know that sometimes words are lost or change their meaning and new ones
are added. For instance I think that the word temperance has lost its original meaning.
Does that mean that temperance in the original sense is not a virtue? We have also added
words. Open mindedness was not on any standard list of virtues until the modern era. And
nobody had heard of the vice of racism. I doubt that we would think that racism wasn’t
a vice until it acquired a name. What about virtues that have names in other languages
and in other cultures? Alastair MacIntyre mentions a virtue that the Lakota tribe call
wancantognaka, a virtue that cuts across justice and generosity. It is like generosity because
it involves uncalculated giving expressed in ceremonial acts. But it is like justice
because someone who fails in it has failed to give what is owed to others. Maybe we have
something like that in our expectations of gift giving at birthdays or Christmas or to
a newly married couple. Giving a gift is an act of generosity and it is appropriate for
the recipient to be grateful. But if you don’t give a gift when it is expected it is a slight.
If you don’t give you can expect not to receive gifts from that person in the future.
The relationship changes for the worst. This might be an example of why we sometimes have
to invent words because it is very hard to express a thought without a term for it. If
somebody was a guest at your wedding but after a year they still have not given you a gift
what do you call that? Suppose you think that someone has not become angry when she should,
you’ll have a hard time identifying the vice and communicating it to others because
there isn’t a commonly used word for it. Even if you notice the vice other people may
not because the lack of the word can make the vice invisible. I think then that even
though our common vocabulary is a good place to start in making a list of virtues and vices
we can’t rely upon it completely. A second way to identify virtues and vices is to connect
virtue to a theoretical idea that supports the judgment that virtue is a human excellence.
The virtues are the traits that are theoretically supported in that way. That leaves open the
possibility that some of our commonly recognized virtues are mistaken and that there are other
virtues that we have not recognized. I said at the beginning of the course that the connection
between virtue and human nature has a long history. Aristotle identifies virtues partly
by the first approach of listing commonly used Greek words for excellences and partly
by the connection between individual traits and what is fulfilling of human nature. Aristotle
thought that a virtue is a mean between two extremes. An extreme of excess and an extreme
of deficiency so it didn’t bother him that there are lots of virtues and vices without
names. We conveniently have words for the mean in facing danger, courage, and a word
for an excess of facing danger, full heartiness or rashness, and a word for deficiency in
facing danger, cowardice. But think about all the other virtues we discussed. We often
do not have two vice words for every virtue. Disloyalty is a deficiency of loyalty but
is there such a thing as an excess of loyalty? We wouldn’t call it an excess of loyalty
but an excess of whatever it is that loyalty is the right amount of. What about excessive
humility or excessive perseverance? Or excessive compassion? What about the deficiencies? Is
there such a thing as the deficiency in the desire for pleasure? I said in an earlier
lecture that I think there is. And I also said that I think there can be a deficiency
in the disposition to anger but I don’t know a word for it. I think then that paying
attention to the way a virtue connects with general view of a good human life or human
nature is one way to critique our list of virtues. And that is an advantage of the second
approach to making a list of virtues. But there is a third way to make a virtues list
that I favor in which I describe in the lecture on the components of virtue. If a virtue is
a human excellence then it is an admirable trait of character. And how do we find out
what is admirable? I think that the best way to do that is to look at the people we admire
the most and examine them carefully to reveal what is admirable about them? We can often
recognize someone as admirable before we can say what it is in them that makes them admirable.
We may have no word or concept to attach to their admirability until we look at them more
closely. Admiration comes first. The concept for what we admire comes second. So a good
person is a person like that and we point to Jesus, or Socrates, or Gandhi, or mother
Theresa, or your own grandmother. And the virtues are the traits we discover in these
persons. This is the basic approach of the theory I call exemploris virtue theory. My
colleague Amy Olberding has argued that the Confucian analects exhibits this style of
virtue theory. Confucius says virtue is what he sees in the exemplars of ages past. Like
the Duke of Zhou. Confucius’ students see it in him. The analects does not analyze the
concept of any virtue but displays it in the demeanor, words, and behavior of Confucius.
I think that examining exemplars of admirability is the best way to identify virtues and it
is also the first step in moral education, a topic for a later lecture. Moral change,
like the revolution on attitudes towards persons of other races does not arise from analyzing
the concept of justice but from admiration for people like Martin Luther King who stood
for basic human respect no matter what a person’s race. People change their attitudes because
they begin to admire people who had an expansive attitude towards the dignity of all human
beings and they began to feel scorned for those who did not. Can the exemploris approach
allow us to identify virtues that are completely unlike the virtues that can identify by the
other approaches? My student Ben Polansky is writing a dissertation on a new virtue
he calls moderation, or the virtue of restraining one’s powers. Here is a story that shows
why he thinks we need to invent a word for this virtue. A Japanese Go master of the last
century used to ride the public trains incognito from match to match playing games with amateurs
to past the time. It did not matter to him whom he was playing. Whether they were strong
or weak beginners or experts, he always won. That is every single game by exactly one half
point. This is the slimmest margin it is possible to win by in a game where the discrepancy
in points can be 350 points. His opponents never knew who it was they were playing although
master Go players were something like celebrities at this time in Japan. Polansky says there
is something about this man, something almost god-like about such mastery, superiority,
dominance and control so quietly, so obscurely expressed. The Go master had to know his opponent
better than the opponent knew himself. Having never played against the opponent before the
master needed to be able to anticipate which of all the points available to his opponent
on the board the opponent would take of his own accord. He would need to be able to give
the opponent points without his knowing he was being given them. The go master did this
even though what he is accustom to doing with peers was making the strongest move available
to him at every turn. I agree with Polansky that the Japanese Go master displayed the
virtue and I do not know the name of it. Perhaps moderation is a good word for it. What is
particularly interesting about it to me is that it is not just a modification of some
other virtue or vice concept like the virtue of proper ambition, or the vice of excessive
generosity. It is a very different virtue. We would not think of it by studying a list
of ordinary words for virtue and I don’t think we would think of it by studying Aristotle’s
account of virtue. We think of it because we see it displayed in an especially admirable
way. I would like to find out what you think the Go master’s virtue is and whether you
see it in other people. What vices are opposed to it? I hope that we will also talk about
other virtues that you think have no name.