Moral Education For Aristotle example essay topic

EDUCATING ETHICAL BEHAVIOR: ARISTOTLE'S VIEWS ON AKRASIADeborah KerdemanUniversity of Washington " Can the teaching of ethics really help cleanse the business world of shady dealings?" Asked by Newsweek magazine during the height of the recent Wall-Street scandals, 1 this query resonates with perennial concerns about whether or not virtue can be taught and how such instruction might best be effected. The problem, Newsweek declares, is not that students lack ethical standards or are incapable of distinguishing wrong from right. The challenge for educators rather lies in helping students act on the virtues they espouse. "Even in today's complex world, knowing what's right is comparatively easy", Newsweek concludes. "It's doing what's right that's hard". Why do people act wrongly, when they know full well what right conduct demands?

This phenomenon, known to philosophers as incontinence or akr asia, receives extensive treatment in Book Seven of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. 2 Like Newsweek, Aristotle holds that akr asia presents a special challenge for moral education. How does Aristotle conceive this challenge, and what might contemporary educators learn from Aristotle's analysis? To appreciate Aristotle's insights into akr asia and moral instruction, it is helpful to begin by looking at popular views of the akra tic's dilemma.

Popular beliefs about incontinence are varied and often contradictory, Aristotle contends. 3 Two, however, bear scrutiny. Aristotle summarizes them as follows: (1) The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation; and the incontinent person seems to be the same as one who abandons it. (2) The incontinent person knows that his actions are base, but does them because of his feelings, while the continent person knows that his appetites are base, but because of reason does not follow them. 4 In short, popular opinion concludes that with respect to akr asia, feeling overpowers reason; the individual, as a consequence, is seduced into acting irrationally.

This conclusion, in turn, is marked by two deeper suppositions: a) feeling (or appetite) is distinct from reason; b) reason can be disciplined, but feelings cannot. Although voiced in ancient Greece, these common beliefs about akr asia are held no less widely today. Like Aristotle's compatriots, we tend to divorce reason from desires and appetites. The latter we regard as urges we cannot help but feel; reason, by contrast, bespeaks a capacity for considered control. When we act against our better judgment, it is because we cannot hold our feelings at bay. We lose control and behave irrationally.

This entire set of assumptions is wrong, Aristotle insists. Akr asia cannot be explained as the seduction of reason by appetite. Nor can we say that akra tics have lost control. On Aristotle's view, akr asia is a form of practical judgment. More precisely, it is a form of practical judgment that has gone astray. In what respect is akr asia a kind of reasoned evaluation?

How does this judgment represent a conflict between knowledge and action? To answer these questions, Aristotle takes a closer look at the two popular beliefs about akr asia. According to Aristotle, the first belief, that akra tics "abandon logical calculation", derives from Socrates. For Socrates, knowledge of (or correct reasoning about) the good naturally leads to correct action. "No one, (Socrates) thought, supposes while he acts that his action conflicts with what is best; our action conflicts with what is best only because we are ignorant of the conflict". 5 Insofar as akra tics act wrongly, then, they either a) are ignorant of the good; or b) know the good, but choose to discount this knowledge.

In so doing, they act irrationally. While Aristotle acknowledges the appeal of Socrates' position, he feels that it does not really capture the akra tic's situation. "It is evident", Aristotle writes, "that before he is affected the person who acts incontinently does not think he should do the action he eventually does". 6 The empirical world, in other words, attests to the fact that incontinent's do possess knowledge of the good. Inasmuch as akra tics manage to achieve correct knowledge, they must be exercising reason. The first belief is thus mistaken: akr asia connotes neither ignorance nor irrationality.

The second popular belief, that feeling overtakes the akra tic's knowledge of the good, is mired in contradiction. According to advocates of this position, "When the incontinent person is overcome by pleasure he has only belief, not knowledge". 7 This view, in other words, assumes that pleasurable feelings overwhelm or dissolve knowledge of the good, converting it into opinion or supposition. It is impossible, therefore, to simultaneously possess both knowledge of the good and strong feelings of pleasure. Contrary to its manifest wording, then, this position assumes that incontinent's cannot know that their actions are base. 8 For Aristotle, in sum, popular opinion is wrong (1) to define akr asia as an abandonment of reason, and (2) to assume that it occurs in the face of appetite or pleasurable feelings.

Nonetheless, Aristotle declares, these common beliefs should not be discounted: while neither is entirely correct, each does contain a key insight regarding akr asia. The second premise is right to maintain that appetite is central to incontinence. What it fails to consider is the possibility that appetite is central to continence as well. In an of itself, in other words, appetite is not the villain in the drama of akr asia. Its role must be explained in some other way.

For its part, the first premise is right to assume that correct reasoning leads to correct behavior. 9 However, it fails to entertain the possibility that reasoned judgment can conflict with a person's actual conduct. Indeed, it is precisely the conflict between reason and behavior which makes akr asia so puzzling. "Though persuaded to act otherwise, (the incontinent) still acts wrongly", Aristotle declares.

"The incontinent person thinks it is wrong to pursue (the pleasant thing at hand), yet still pursues it". 10 Exploring common beliefs about incontinence thus leads Aristotle to ask a series of questions which brings the dilemma of akr asia into sharper focus. How (pace Socrates) is it possible for the akra tic to arrive at correct conclusions, yet still act wrongly? What role do feelings and appetites play in the puzzle of akr asia? Aristotle considers two reasons to explain why knowledge and action conflict. The first reason, Aristotle says, derives from the fact that correct reasoning requires premises that are both universal and particular.

Individuals, however, sometimes attend to one premise at the expense of the other. Concentrating exclusively on the universal premise leads to incorrect conduct, because it is the particular premise which controls action. Focusing solely on the particular premise also can be misleading. Correct reasoning requires that the particular premise be properly classified. Correct classification, Aristotle says, cannot take place without a universal premise, for it is the universal premise which articulates general concepts and categories. Insofar as the universal premise is ignored, then, mis-classification is likely.

Incorrect classification of the particular, in turn, results in incorrect action. 11 The second reason why knowledge and behavior sometimes conflict does not concern the knowing process but rather the conditions under which knowledge is achieved. Individuals may possess knowledge. But they also may be "asleep or mad or drunk".

These states are characterized by the presence of strong feelings, feelings not unlike "emotions" and "sexual appetites". Such feelings, Aristotle tells us, "clearly both disturb knowledge and the body as well". 12 It is this second state of affairs which for Aristotle best describes akr asia. Like those who are asleep or mad or drunk, the incontinent is affected by strong feelings.

Such persons, Aristotle asserts, "both have knowledge in a way and do not have it". That is, people affected by strong feelings may say knowledgeable things. They may "even recite demonstrations and verses of Empedocles". This does not mean, however, that these persons actually understand the words they espouse. In this respect, the incontinent is like an actor who can convincingly recite verses even though he does not comprehend them, or a young learner who is able to string together words without fully grasping their meaning. 13 The central question thus comes into view: how, precisely, do appetites and strong feelings affect the reasoning process when persons knowingly act against their better judgment?

Aristotle offers the following explanation: Suppose, then, that someone has (a) the universal belief, and it hinders him from tasting; he has (b) the second belief, that everything sweet is pleasant and this is sweet, and this belief (b) is active; and he also has appetite. Hence the belief (c) tells him to avoid this, but appetite leads him on, since it is capable of moving each of the (bodily) parts. The result, then, is that in a way reason and belief make him act incontinently. The belief (b) is contrary to correct reason (a), but only coincidentally, not in itself. For it is the appetite, not the belief, that is contrary (in itself to correct reason.) Hence beasts are not incontinent, because they have no universal supposition, but (only) appearance and memory of particulars. 14 Aristotle's account here is obscure, largely because it has been preserved in the form of scanty lecture notes.

In an extended footnote to his translation of the Ethics, Terence Irwin offers one interpretation of Aristotle's ideas. 15 Irwin's interpretation may be summarized as follows. The incontinent is working with three premises or beliefs. One belief (a) is universal ("Sweet things shouldn't be tasted"). A second belief (b) entails perception and contains both a universal and a particular component ("Everything sweet is pleasant; this particular thing is sweet"). A third belief (c) represents the inference that is drawn from the other two premises ("This sweet and pleasant thing shouldn't be tasted").

Besides these three beliefs, the incontinent also has appetite. Now, belief (b), "Everything sweet is pleasant; this is sweet", acts to excite appetite. Consequently, belief (b) detaches itself from the universal belief (a) and joins instead to appetite. This does not necessarily deter inference (c) from being reached. But because (a) and (b) have become disconnected (the latter having joined with appetite), (c) is not genuinely derived from premises (a) and (b). Thus, while the incontinent may be able to correctly recite inference (c), he does not really know (c), because he has not derived it from an integrated set of premises.

In a similar vein, the incontinent both has and doesn't have belief (b). Insofar as (b) is the focus of the incontinent's attention, we can say he has this belief. But since (b) is attached to appetite, it is detached from (a). It thus does not genuinely follow in the reasoning process. Consequently, while the incontinent may "know" premise (b), he does not "really" know it. On Irwin's account, then, the key move in the phenomenon of akr asia is the dissociation of particular premise (b) from universal premise (a) and its subsequent attachment to appetite.

As a consequence, appetite ("Taste this sweet thing!" ) overcomes the better syllogism ("Don't taste it!" ). The incontinent knows better, but his behavior conflicts with his knowledge. While this interpretation of Aristotle seems promising, it ultimately fails to explain how, exactly, the better syllogism is overcome. Is it because the incontinent's feelings simply are stronger than those of the continent person? This explanation is unlikely: Aristotle insists that the continent person, no less than the akra tic, possesses strong feelings.

16 What role, then, do feelings play in cases of akr asia? In an essay entitled, "Aristotle On Learning To Be Good", M.F. Burnyeat offers an illuminating angle from which to consider this question. 17 Unlike Irwin, Burnyeat does not believe that incontinence represents the triumph of feeling over reason. This would suggest that reason alone leads to virtuous conduct and that feelings hinder this outcome. Such a conclusion, Burnyeat maintains, is precisely the opposite of what Aristotle intends.

Feeling for Aristotle is not an obstacle to correct behavior: on the contrary, feeling is essential if virtuous conduct is to be realized. Framing the issue this way, incontinence becomes a striking example of what happens when feelings are ignored, repressed, or misdirected. To appreciate this line of argument, Burnyeat directs us to look beyond the immediate circumstances of the incontinent's conflicted decision and view akr asia instead as a phenomenon evolves over time. As Burnyeat puts it, we must "account for (the akra tic's) present conflict in terms of stages in the development of his character which he has not yet completely left behind.

For on Aristotle's picture of moral development, as I have drawn it, an important fact about the better syllogism is that it represents a later and less established stage of development". 18 Given this perspective, the crucial questions become: In what condition is the person prior to akr asia? Can this original condition be nurtured or educated in such a way as to prevent akr asia from developing? What kind of education fosters the disposition for continence? When and how can moral education go wrong and open the door to conflict? Burnyeat offers the following analysis.

19 Long before reflective judgments about behavior are achieved, a wide range of desires and feelings works to shape patterns of motivation and response. Pleasure and pain constitute the poles of this "feeling range". Physiologically-based appetites and instinctive reactions propel us between these two poles. Appetite moves us to pursue pleasure; instincts such as fear impel us to avoid pain. It is important to note, Burnyeat contends, that the powerful feelings of appetite and fear are not divorced from the realm of thought.

Insofar as the ability to recognize pleasure and pain is a function of perception, appetite and instinct do represent cognitive processes. Specifically, they are evaluative responses. Burnyeat puts the matter like this: It is not that evaluative responses have no thought component (no intentionality): on the contrary, something is desired as noble or just, something inspires shame, because it is thought of as disgraceful. The responses are grounded in an evaluation of their object, parallel to the way appetite is oriented to a conception of its object as something pleasant; in this sense both have their "reasons".

20 These "reasons", of course, are very low-level. They are primitive, Burnyeat tells us, because they do not invariably or immediately lose efficacy in the face of contrary considerations. They are, in short, "pockets" of thought that remain relatively unaffected by our overall view of things. Thus, while appetite and instinct may be evaluations, they do not signify logical or analytical reasoning. To denote this idea, Burnyeat calls appetites and instincts, "unreasoned evaluative responses". Insofar as basic evaluations are non-analytical, they do not distinguish "good" objects from "bad" ones.

Instead, they pursue whatever happens to be pleasant at the time. Because of this, unreasoned evaluative responses must be directed towards good objects by means of guided practice and habituation. "The underlying idea", Burnyeat observes, "is that the child's sense of pleasure, which to begin with and for a long while is his only motive, should be hooked up with just and noble things so that his unreasoned evaluative responses may be developed in connection with right objects". 21 An Aristotelian approach to moral education thus begins by matching the child's natural desire for pleasant experiences with behaviors that are deemed virtuous.

Behavioral shaping alone, however, will not develop continence. As Burnyeat points out, learning to act correctly is one thing; it is quite a different matter to accept that a particular act is virtuous. In the former sense, learning is simply the acquisition of neutral information. This kind of learning is "weak", Burnyeat explains: its objects do not affect the child in any lasting way. To "really" learn, by contrast, one must come to endorse the behavior one performs.

As Aristotle puts it, the behavior must "grow into" the child, become accepted by the child as something people do. 22 In this regard, learning is "strong". The child is internally motivated to continue acting virtuously. 23 How is the transition from practice to acceptance achieved?

How can children be educated not simply to perform virtuous acts but to accept certain acts as virtuous? On Burnyeat's reading of Aristotle, opportunities to behave ethically must continue to be offered and associated with pleasurable feelings. Eventually, children will come to see that with respect to certain acts, pleasure is not merely a contingent consequence: these acts always produce pleasure. They are, in effect, intrinsically pleasurable.

Children therefore continue to perform them, simply because they enjoy doing so. We might expect that once children reach the stage of acceptance, they will act virtuously for the rest of their lives. Insofar as they encounter familiar situations, this expectation holds. What happens, however, when a new situation is confronted?

The correct course of action is not always clear; children cannot depend on their tutors to guide them forever. Children instead must develop the capacity to discriminate virtue from vice, to judge for themselves what a given set of circumstances requires. How, exactly, does reflective reason take hold of a person's motivational patterns, transforming them from pre-dispositions into considered principles for ethical conduct? The whole of the Nicomachean Ethics, Burnyeat explains, is a response to this question. In Burnyeat's view, Aristotle intends the Ethics to be "a course in practical thinking (that can) enable someone who already wants to be virtuous to understand better what he should do and why". 24 The Ethics, in short, is a guide which can assist those persons who already act virtuously to become more reflective about the judgments which drive their behavior.

What, in sum, can we say about Aristotle's model of moral education as articulated by Burnyeat? Of the three instructional stages, the third - the stage of reasoned reflection - is at once the most complex and also the least critical. Reflection alone, Aristotle insists, cannot promote ethical conduct. Long before the capacity for analysis develops, the propensity to embrace virtue must already have taken hold.

The ground from which this proclivity springs is seeded very early, during the first two stages of the child's education. During the first stage, two principles are crucial to the development of continence. First, right action is not self-evident to the untutored child. The good instead must be pointed out by those who know better.

Second, no attempt is made during the process of habituation to eliminate the child's feelings. Feelings instead are elicited and then modified. During the second stage of instruction, a key transformation takes place. No longer is virtuous conduct viewed simply as an external principle which children identify and exhibit. Through continued association of pleasurable feelings and good behavior, virtuous acts come to be identified as intrinsically pleasurable.

Children repeat them because they want to; acting virtuously becomes "second nature". Thus unlike an actor who recites Empedocles without endorsing the words, the child educated on Aristotle's model does more than simply assert the good and assent to do it. The good, rather, is assimilated into the child's very being; the child comes to see virtuous conduct as an integral part of who he or she is. In the end, moral education for Aristotle is profoundly integrative. Pleasurable feelings are articulated to correct conduct; ethical conduct thereby is internalized and becomes constitutive of one's character. In effect, personal desires and social norms form a seamless tapestry.

One wants to do what ought to be done; conduct accords with knowledge. The situation of akr asia displays most vividly what happens when the integration of moral education is not achieved. In the incontinent individual, the match between appetite and correct behavior has not been completely articulated or habituated. Aristotle does not stipulate how, exactly, a person "gets stuck" in incontinence. Presumably, early associations between pleasurable feelings and virtuous behaviors either were insufficient or inconsistent. At any rate, enough repetition seems to have occurred for the incontinent to be able to recognize ethical behavior, but not enough for this behavior to have become internalized.

As a consequence, the incontinent possesses knowledge of the good, but this knowledge is not personally compelling. Pleasure continues to pursue its own ends, and the potential for conflict is born. The conflict of akr asia, Aristotle observes, is maddeningly intractable. He writes: It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument the traits that have long been incorporated into the character...

For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if it does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? And in general passion seems to yield not to argument but to force. The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and hating what is base. 25 Not even his own lectures, Aristotle concludes, can redeem the akra tic from conflict. Unless an individual sees him or herself as a person who acts virtuously, no amount of argument or analysis can compel ethical conduct. The road to continence begins with the very first inklings of pleasure.

Only by consolidating desire with the good can conflict be averted. What can educators today learn from Aristotle's analysis of akr asia? Can the teaching of ethics really help students act on the virtues they espouse and thereby cleanse the business world of its shady dealings? How might such an education proceed? What might be its limits? Clearly, Aristotle would say, ethics classes for conflicted business-people offer too little too late.

These classes can echo the good which students already acknowledge. But they cannot insure ethical conduct, much less assuage the conflict of akr asia. Our students may know the good; they may even agree that the good should be followed. Insofar as they are conflicted, however, the good remains extrinsic to how students see themselves.

They thus are neither invested in the good nor motivated internally to pursue it. Unless students already are disposed to behave as virtuous persons, no amount of reflective analysis can persuade them to act on their knowledge. Aristotle would have us begin moral instruction when children are very young. Three features distinguish education on Aristotle's model. First, instruction would not engage students in analyses of ethical dilemmas.

It rather would focus on children's natural desire for pleasure, striving to harmonize the pursuit of pleasure with the pursuit of virtuous ends. The presumption is that desires can indeed be disciplined; they are no less subject to considered control than the faculty of reason. The focus on pleasure, Aristotle continues, serves a specific purpose. Objects that are a source of pleasure are taken into oneself. By identifying the good with desire, children come to internalize it; to act virtuously thereby becomes part of the child's self-image. Moral education on Aristotle's model thus does not stop with conduct: it strives instead to cultivate character, to develop children who see themselves as persons who pursue the good out of passionate commitment.

Finally, Aristotle would remind us that moral education does not occur in a vacuum. It takes place, rather, within the parameters of social values and norms. Without these norms, educators have no guide for shaping behavior, no "target", as it were, at which to direct untutored desires and appetites. In this respect, the kind of education one receives very much depends on the kind of society in which one lives. An educational system may explicate society's values. It may even call them into question.

In and of itself, however, a system of instruction on Aristotle's model cannot reform society or "cleanse" it of "shady dealings". The process of self-evaluation, rather, is everybody's business. Aristotle's vision gives educators much to consider. Nonetheless, two features of Aristotle's model give me pause.

First, Aristotle assumes that the effects of environment are cumulative and irreversible. Consequently, if individuals are not consistently exposed to good behavior as children, they will lack the pre-disposition to endorse virtuous conduct as adults. In many cases, this claim seems true. But is it always the case?

Some individuals who witness a great deal of unethical behavior as children manage to overcome the past and grow into adults who act virtuously. Are these people simply exceptional? Or do they reveal something about human nature and the good which Aristotle overlooks? Second, Aristotle's model rests on the premise that "the good" is an intrinsic feature of certain ends. Some pursuits are undeniably good; with proper upbringing, anyone can recognize goodness.

In many ways, this premise is appealing. It presumes, however, a society that is relatively homogeneous. In a pluralistic society, by contrast, the good (pace Newsweek) is not "comparatively easy" to know. The good is less a discovery than a negotiated agreement, resulting from on-going and often painful conversations.

Moral education for a pluralistic world thus is a far more complex enterprise than Aristotle might have imagined. Education today must do more than shape virtuous behavior: it also must engage everyone to define just what "the good" means. For a response to this essay, see Pendle bury. 1 "The Business Ethics Debate", Newsweek (May 29, 1987): 36.2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Tr... Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 172-198.3 See, for example, how Aristotle treats popular beliefs concerning the association between incontinence and lack of intelligence, and incontinence and intemperance, Ibid., 175.4 Ibid., 174.5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 175.7 Ibid.

8 This logic seems manifestly faulty, Aristotle observes. Were incontinence simply the consequence of mere belief, it would not be condemned as roundly as it is. People condemn akr asia, because they assume that the akra tic does indeed "know better". Ibid., 175.9 Aristotle emphasizes this point in his description of how universal and particular beliefs combine in correct reasoning. "And in the cases where these two beliefs result in (c) one belief", Aristotle tells us, "it is necessary in purely theoretical beliefs for the soul to affirm what has been concluded, and in beliefs about production (d) to act at once on what has been concluded". Ibid., 180.

Also see 181.10 Ibid., 177 and 178 (emphasis added). In this regard, Aristotle says, incontinence differs from intemperance. 11 See the discussion in Ibid., 179.12 Ibid, 180.13 See Ibid., 180, and Irwin's footnote, 351.14 Ibid., 181.15 See Irwin's footnote, Ibid., 352.16 See Ibid., 174-176.17 M.F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to Be Good", in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 69-92.18 Ibid., 80.19 It is Burnyeat's framing of akr asia in terms of education which I find so intriguing and which leads me to dwell on it.

Another commentator, Jonathan Lear, also views incontinence as a problem of education. "The logos of ethical virtue can be instilled only through repeated actions", Lear writes, "through a sustained and thorough ethical upbringing" (184). Unlike Burnyeat, however, Lear does not delineate the features which distinguish moral upbringing. For Lear's complete discussion, see J. Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 174-186.

For another important treatment of incontinence, see Donald Davidson, "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 21-41.20 Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to Be Good", 80.21 Ibid., 80. Aristotle puts the matter like this: "Goodness of character has to do with pleasures and pains. It is pleasure that makes us do what is bad, and pain that makes us abstain from what is right. That is why we require to be trained from our earliest youth, as Plato has it, to feel pleasure and pain at the right things. True education is just that". Quoted by John Burnett in Aristotle on Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 49.22 Ethics, 180.23 See Burnyeat's discussion, "Aristotle on Learning", 76.24 Ibid., 81 25 Quoted in Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning", 75, of Ethics, 10.9 1179 b 4-31.