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Variations in Virtue Phenomenology

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Abstract

The virtue development literature often draws on the language of goal-directed automaticity and flow states in discussions of virtue. This article examines the attentional features of various virtues and argues that only some virtuous actions can be adequately described in these terms. It proposes a distinction between three kinds of virtuous actions—flow state actions, deliberative actions, and presence actions—which have varying attentional features, bodily reliance, and conscious reasoning in virtue performance. Then the article motivates these distinctions as important, describing how one might take on-board these classifications in character education, providing a more tailored development of virtues.

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Notes

  1. . Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 2.10.1126B20-21 as found in Charles Chamberlain, “The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle’s Ethics,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 114 (1984): 147–157, p. 153.

  2. . Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.2.1139A25-26 as found in Charles Chamberlain, “The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle’s Ethics,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 114 (1984): 147–157, p. 153.

  3. . Julia Annas, “The Phenomenology of Virtue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008): 21–34.

  4. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 545–561.

  5. . Christian B. Miller, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 12.

  6. . Christian B. Miller, Character and Moral Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 20.

  7. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 545–561, p. 545.

  8. . Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Transl. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, edited by K. Knight. (2017). Web < https://www.newadvent.org/> II.2.123.

  9. . Of course, all virtues require that one acts habitually or reliably well in the given respect. The point is that, for example, answering a question honestly does not generally require sustained attention over time in the way that persevering does. This point bears on the relevance of flow descriptions, which I describe later in the article.

  10. . Kristján Kristjánsson, Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Neo-Aristotelian View. (London: Routledge, 2020), p. 7.

  11. . Charles Chamberlain, “The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle’s Ethics,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 114 (1984): 147–157, p. 153.

  12. . Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 159.

  13. . A.J.P. Kenny, Aristotle’s Theory of the Will. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 69.

  14. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 545–561, p. 552.

  15. . Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 19–20.

  16. . In the virtue theory literature, there is a distinction made between global and local virtues. Global virtues are cross-situational. The agent acts well in nearly all instances in which the virtue is relevant. Aristotle describes virtues in this way. Recently, philosophers have asked whether we should define virtues locally, or in situation-specific ways. (Jonathan Webber (2007) offers an overview of this trend here: Character, Global and Local. Utilitas 19(4): 430–434.) Few people meet the standards for global virtue. For example, a friend may have the local trait of being honest to her friends, while lacking honest dispositions on tests and quizzes or while paying taxes. Defining traits locally allows us to achieve greater predictive precision about how a person will act. The downside of defining traits in this way is that, as I state above, our intuitions about virtue and vice seem to track global assumptions about traits. In common discourse, we are disinclined to attribute a virtue to someone for whom there are available counterexamples to that virtue in any available domain.

  17. . Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. transl. R. Bartlett & S. Collins, (Chicago: Chicago.

    University Press, 2011), 1103a15-16, pp. 25 − 6.

  18. . This is not to claim that virtues are skills, or even necessarily skill-like. Both habits and skills arise by habituation, or thoughtful repetition, and both are types of habitus. They have developmental similarities as members of the same genus (Douskos 2019, p. 4037). One developmental difference for virtues—a kind of habitus—is that they require alignment with suitable motivations. Skills and other habits generally do not require this.

  19. . C.F. Rees & J. Webber. “Automaticity in Virtuous Action,” in The Philosophy and.

    Psychology of Character and Happiness, ed. Nancy Snow and Franco Trivigno, 75–90. (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 2.

  20. . Julia Annas, “The Phenomenology of Virtue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008): 21–34, pp. 27–28.

  21. . M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990).

  22. . Julia Annas, “The Phenomenology of Virtue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008): 21–34, p. 29.

  23. . M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), p. 40, as found in Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 71.

  24. . Julia Annas, “The Phenomenology of Virtue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008): 21–34, p. 29.

  25. . Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. transl. R. Bartlett & S. Collins, (Chicago: Chicago.

    University Press, 2011), 1122a23, pp. 72 − 3.

  26. . See M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) and M. Csikszentmihalyi & I.S. Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Hoboken: Wiley, 1975).

  27. . S.H. Im & S. Varma, “Distorted Time Perception during Flow as Revealed by an Attention-Demanding Cognitive Task,” Creativity Research Journal, 30, 3 (2018): 295–304.

  28. . Ibid.

  29. . Ibid, p. 295.

  30. . Christian B. Miller, “Honesty, WTF. Are People Who Curse a Lot Actually More Honest?” Forbes. 18 February 2021.

  31. . Bill Pollard, “Can Virtuous Actions be Both Habitual and Rational?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2003): 411–425.

  32. . Ibid, pp. 416–417.

  33. . Clea F. Rees & Jonathan Webber, “Automaticity in Virtuous Action,” in Nancy E. Snow & Franco V. Trivigno (eds.) The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happiness, pp. 75–90. (London: Routledge, 2014).

  34. . Ibid, p. 75.

  35. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral.

    Practice 9 (2006): 545–561, p. 551.

  36. . Ibid.

  37. . R.K. DeYoung, “Resistance to the Demands of Love: Aquinas on the Vice of Acedia,” The Thomist 68 (2004): 173–204, p. 174.

  38. . Ibid, p. 175.

  39. . David McPherson, The Virtues of Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 60 − 1.

  40. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral.

    Practice 9 (2006): 545–561, p. 547.

  41. . Ibid, p. 551.

  42. . Ibid, p. 551.

  43. . Ibid, p. 545.

  44. . Ibid, p. 552.

  45. . Ibid, p. 552.

  46. . Ibid, p. 552.

  47. . Ibid, p. 545.

  48. . Ibid, p. 553, 547–549.

  49. . Julia Annas, “The Phenomenology of Virtue,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (2008): 21–34, p. 33.

  50. . Nancy Snow, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity,” Ethical Theory and Moral.

    Practice 9 (2006): 545–561, p. 545.

  51. . Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. transl. R. Bartlett & S. Collins, (Chicago: Chicago.

    University Press, 2011), 1127a20-3, p. 84.

  52. . Howard Curzer, Aristotle and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 197.

  53. . Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the inclusion of truthfulness.

  54. . Ibid, pp. 195-8.

  55. . Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for challenging integrity’s inclusion here.

  56. . See Cora Diamond, “Integrity,” in L.C. Becker & C.B. Becker (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Ethics, pp. 2-863 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), p. 618; see also Damian Cox, Marguerite La Caze, & Michael P. Levine, Integrity and the Fragile Self (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 41–68.

  57. . Robert Audi & Patrick Murphy, “The Many Faces of Integrity,” Business Ethics Quarterly 16, 1 (2006): 3–21, p. 9.

  58. . Ibid.

  59. . Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Transl. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, edited by K. Knight. (2017). Web < https://www.newadvent.org/> II.ii.161.1.

  60. . For Aristotle, emulation is an “an age-relative virtue for young people” (Kristjánsson 2017: 23), much like shame. This is because the virtuous person is both self-sufficient, rather than other-indexed in his actions; he is motivated by kalon, rather than a feeling of lack, and he already has the admired qualities in place. Several contemporary virtue theorists, including Roberts and Spezio (2019) and Kristjánsson (2017: 32), include it as a virtue. There is no real conflict between possessing virtues and experiencing admiration. Even for someone who is already virtuous in every respect (which, safe to say, most of us are not) there is still a well-ordered way to appreciably perceive an epistemic peer, without needing to assume that one lacks anything at all.

  61. . Linda Zagzebski, “Admiration and the Admirable,” Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 89, 1 (2015): 205–221, pp. 214–215. See also Robert Roberts & Michael Spezio, “Admiring Moral Exemplars,” in Self, Motivation, and Virtue: Innovative Interdisciplinary Research, pp. 85–108, edited by Nancy E. Snow & Darcia Narvaez (London: Routledge, 2019).

  62. . S.H. Im & S. Varma, “Distorted Time Perception during Flow as Revealed by an Attention-Demanding Cognitive Task,” Creativity Research Journal, 30, 3 (2018): 295–304.

  63. . S. Little, “The Trivium: Revisiting Ancient Strategies for Character Formation” (2021) Journal of Character Education, 17, 1 (2021): 113–124.

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    Sabrina Little

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Little, S. Variations in Virtue Phenomenology. J Value Inquiry (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09920-7

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