ARISTOTLE AND KANT ON HAPPINESS & VIRTUE
It is certainly true that, at least on the surface, the moral theories of Aristotle and Kant appear to be quite dissimilar. This is particularly true with regard to their prescriptions for acquiring virtue, I think, since the methods they advocate seem at least inconsistent if not contradictory, in that Aristotle advises following "happiness" toward goodness, while Kant, admonishes this means as centered on self and likely to be corrupted, thus probably wrongly motivated, and therefore as likely to lead away from morality as toward it. Kant suggests that it is necessary instead to look beyond the self's interest in happiness, and to listen to the voice of uncorrupted practical reason which he feels harbors a sound and natural understanding of what "ought" to be, that is, an a priori Ideal of moral perfection which he refers to as "the law". These prescriptions -- one toward happiness and the other toward obligation to the law -- seem to hold these two in opposite corners, irreconcilably disagreeing with one another. Yet this only seems the case on the surface, I think, that is if we take these terms to denote for their authors what they at first connote to us. However, looking deeper into each's philosophy puts these terms back into context, and it becomes apparent that the differences between them are less a question of conceptual alignment than of definition. To see how this is true it seems necessary to sort out the similarities and differences in the theories which lead them to these conclusions.
To begin with, as the question states, both agree that action comes from one's thinking and that virtuous action results from a certain kind of thinking. Toward this end of virtue, both agree that man must accept the leadership of his reason and choose to act as it dictates. For both Aristotle and Kant, right reason and right will are a necessary part of right action. Aristotle thought that virtue is potential in man, and that life is the opportunity to actualize it. It is the proper function of man, he thought, to conform his action with the rational principle in accordance with the excellence of his soul. Thus virtue, for Aristotle, is a voluntary action, as is wickedness, which involves choice after deliberation. For Aristotle, moral qualities are acquired by choosing to balance action between the alternatives of excess and deficiency, that is by finding the mean, which is the point of excellence, and then by habituating the virtuous action. Thus Aristotle's method is somewhat less direct that Kant's, whose method is more like direct apprehension than deliberation and habituation.
For Kant, what is necessary for action to be virtuous is for it to be based on an <CJ:lri.ClTh
Ideal of moral perfection (probably the same ideal that Plato could see which Aristotle could not),'
which is apprehended by practical reason and manifest in the "good will". Itis a supreme principle
!
of humanity which affirms that each person has intrinsic value, i.e. dignity, and because of it, each has a just right to his dignity, and with this, an obligation to the rights of others. It is an iti l_of a
, syst matic union of rational beings whose purpose is to harmonize ..under what, for Kant, is a
comni.on_ob}ective "law", based on no particular interest, and with each member acting also as a maker of the law. For Kant, the will is free, but we are nonetheless morally obligated to this law, by duty, as it is objectively necessary for goodness. This law therefore is not subject to any subjective contingencies, and in fact, must hold regardless of any conditioned inclinations, and
even to the detriment of all inclinations. Kant felt that human reason "ought" to derive action from this law. Reason, in its innocence, is well able to distinguish what is good or evil, right or wrong, with absolute necessity, and without imitation, but that it is often corrupted by a perverted definition of the good, and allowed instead to stray from its own principle, which is to guide toward the good. Therefore, once corrupted, reason performs a natural dialectic between motives of happiness, which he saw as conditioned private purposes, and lead away from true contentment and innocent goodness, which is a truer peace. Therefore, he felt that Aristotle's method of deliberating toward happiness cannot be in conformity with perfect virtue, since happiness can follow many ends, some of which are bound to be wrong goods, and the action that follows them therefore anything but moral.
Both Aristotle and Kant also agree that all action depends on the ends we choose, that is, how we define "the good"; to achieve this good, however we define it, is the reason that we act. The dispute between them, I think, arises not from a difference in the way they define the ultimate rgood, for both see it as that which is chosen as an end unto itself and never as a means to
\something else. Kant says an act has moral worth only if it has no other end than reverence for the
law of good, and that this constitutes a "good will", i.e. right motivation, which in turn seems to constitute our very worthiness to be happy; thus right motivation involves choosing goodness for itself, which, because it is a positive power to create out inner worth, incidentally makes us happy. This kind of happiness is more like true contentment and, next to it, pleasure and pain count for nothing. Aristotle, on the other hand, describes what seems to be this same condition, yet calls it
"happiness". According to his definition, it is not a fleeting momentary phenomenon which we may enjoy one day and lose the next, as some, including perhaps Kant, might think he is using it, but rather a general condition which encompasses the whole of a human life, inasmuch as that life displays activity in conformity with virtue. For Aristotle, happiness requires complete virtue for a complete lifetime, during which fortunes may revolve many times, but nobility shines through. The noble cannot be dislodged from happiness.
Thus, for Aristotle, happiness is what the soul feels in a life of virtue, not the fleeting
"inclinations" which Kant warns reason not to follow. These surely have more to do with pleasure, and I think Aristotle would agree that following pleasure is not likely to lead to virtue.
Thus I think it is the difference in their definitions of "happiness" which accounts for most of the variance in their moral philosophies. Again, Aristotle thinks happiness (read: inner contentment) leads us toward virtue, while Kant thinks happiness (read: pleasure) leads us away from virtue, and therefore away from inner contentment. I can't help but think that if each were to see the sense in which the other is using the word, they would agree that they are saying the same thing; that true inner contentment results from true virtue.
Furthermore, if one reaches deeper into Aristotle, it is possible to find that he himself qualifies happiness, explaining that only the noble derive happiness from right action, and that happiness and inclination does not lead to right action for everyone. "People whose constitution is
good find those things wholesome which really are so", he says. It is for this reason, I think, that he contends that correct desire must accompany correct reason and correct will to lead to correct action, and thus must be cultivated in children. He takes care to consider how children's development is all important in this respect, as did Plato. He argues that, since it is pleasure that makes us do wrong things, and pain that keeps us from doing right things, children's education should be such that they learn to feel pain and pleasure at the proper things. Thus they will learn to give and take honestly and justly, relative to their own resource, and it will give them pleasure to do so.
I think that it seems that Kant would have difficulty agreeing with the assertion that correct desire plus correct reasoning and correct will leads to correct choice of action. Yet once the terms
are reconciled, and ouruse of "desire" is qualified, I think the statement will no longer be vulnerable to the obvious objection that Kant allows no "inclination", i.e. desire, into the reasoning process at all. I think my own and Aristotle's use of the word here can be made consistent with Kant, in that acceptance of one's obligation to the supreme principle of goodness is in a sense a "desire" to comply with the supreme principle, though not a desire in the sense that Kant used "inclination"; it is an objective rather than subjective inclination. Kant objects to using subjective inclination as a determination of what is good, but not to "wanting" what is objectively good once we have determined it by a priori principle. I think Kant would have no objection to saying that one wants to follow the law, for its own sake, or wants to do one's duty-- because it is not out of a subjective inclination toward happiness, but out of obligation to goodness alone; it is a rightly motivated desire. Kant wanted to say, I think, that it doesn't matter if you want something different, you "ought" to do what is objectively good anyway; good is what one "ought" to "want" to be and do-- but often isn't; hence his objection to inclination as a guide to virtue. Therefore, in the sense that I use it to compare the two positions, "correct desire" is not the same sense in which Kant wanted to rule out "inclination", but rather the sense that one wants to do what is necessary for goodness, just as Kant would say one "ought".
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So, hoping that I have sufficiently argued that Aristotle and Kant would agree in the end that correct desire plus correct reason and correct will leads to correct action, which equals virtue, I think it becomes apparent how these two are of the same school of thought, i.e. that of the unity of the virtues. For any virtue would necessarily spring from some combination of right desire, reason and will. Thus, an act, if virtuous, is all virtuous. It can't be virtuous if at all poorly motivated or poorly reasoned; an act can't be a little bit virtuous, or virtuous but a little bit wrong. An act is excellent if excellent for Aristotle, and good if good without qualification for Kant. There is no part way measure of virtue in this school; virtue is virtue by virtue of springing from thought that is good.
It is certainly true that, at least on the surface, the moral theories of Aristotle and Kant appear to be quite dissimilar. This is particularly true with regard to their prescriptions for acquiring virtue, I think, since the methods they advocate seem at least inconsistent if not contradictory, in that Aristotle advises following "happiness" toward goodness, while Kant, admonishes this means as centered on self and likely to be corrupted, thus probably wrongly motivated, and therefore as likely to lead away from morality as toward it. Kant suggests that it is necessary instead to look beyond the self's interest in happiness, and to listen to the voice of uncorrupted practical reason which he feels harbors a sound and natural understanding of what "ought" to be, that is, an a priori Ideal of moral perfection which he refers to as "the law". These prescriptions -- one toward happiness and the other toward obligation to the law -- seem to hold these two in opposite corners, irreconcilably disagreeing with one another. Yet this only seems the case on the surface, I think, that is if we take these terms to denote for their authors what they at first connote to us. However, looking deeper into each's philosophy puts these terms back into context, and it becomes apparent that the differences between them are less a question of conceptual alignment than of definition. To see how this is true it seems necessary to sort out the similarities and differences in the theories which lead them to these conclusions.
To begin with, as the question states, both agree that action comes from one's thinking and that virtuous action results from a certain kind of thinking. Toward this end of virtue, both agree that man must accept the leadership of his reason and choose to act as it dictates. For both Aristotle and Kant, right reason and right will are a necessary part of right action. Aristotle thought that virtue is potential in man, and that life is the opportunity to actualize it. It is the proper function of man, he thought, to conform his action with the rational principle in accordance with the excellence of his soul. Thus virtue, for Aristotle, is a voluntary action, as is wickedness, which involves choice after deliberation. For Aristotle, moral qualities are acquired by choosing to balance action between the alternatives of excess and deficiency, that is by finding the mean, which is the point of excellence, and then by habituating the virtuous action. Thus Aristotle's method is somewhat less direct that Kant's, whose method is more like direct apprehension than deliberation and habituation.
For Kant, what is necessary for action to be virtuous is for it to be based on an <CJ:lri.ClTh
Ideal of moral perfection (probably the same ideal that Plato could see which Aristotle could not),'
which is apprehended by practical reason and manifest in the "good will". Itis a supreme principle
!
of humanity which affirms that each person has intrinsic value, i.e. dignity, and because of it, each has a just right to his dignity, and with this, an obligation to the rights of others. It is an iti l_of a
, syst matic union of rational beings whose purpose is to harmonize ..under what, for Kant, is a
comni.on_ob}ective "law", based on no particular interest, and with each member acting also as a maker of the law. For Kant, the will is free, but we are nonetheless morally obligated to this law, by duty, as it is objectively necessary for goodness. This law therefore is not subject to any subjective contingencies, and in fact, must hold regardless of any conditioned inclinations, and
even to the detriment of all inclinations. Kant felt that human reason "ought" to derive action from this law. Reason, in its innocence, is well able to distinguish what is good or evil, right or wrong, with absolute necessity, and without imitation, but that it is often corrupted by a perverted definition of the good, and allowed instead to stray from its own principle, which is to guide toward the good. Therefore, once corrupted, reason performs a natural dialectic between motives of happiness, which he saw as conditioned private purposes, and lead away from true contentment and innocent goodness, which is a truer peace. Therefore, he felt that Aristotle's method of deliberating toward happiness cannot be in conformity with perfect virtue, since happiness can follow many ends, some of which are bound to be wrong goods, and the action that follows them therefore anything but moral.
Both Aristotle and Kant also agree that all action depends on the ends we choose, that is, how we define "the good"; to achieve this good, however we define it, is the reason that we act. The dispute between them, I think, arises not from a difference in the way they define the ultimate rgood, for both see it as that which is chosen as an end unto itself and never as a means to
\something else. Kant says an act has moral worth only if it has no other end than reverence for the
law of good, and that this constitutes a "good will", i.e. right motivation, which in turn seems to constitute our very worthiness to be happy; thus right motivation involves choosing goodness for itself, which, because it is a positive power to create out inner worth, incidentally makes us happy. This kind of happiness is more like true contentment and, next to it, pleasure and pain count for nothing. Aristotle, on the other hand, describes what seems to be this same condition, yet calls it
"happiness". According to his definition, it is not a fleeting momentary phenomenon which we may enjoy one day and lose the next, as some, including perhaps Kant, might think he is using it, but rather a general condition which encompasses the whole of a human life, inasmuch as that life displays activity in conformity with virtue. For Aristotle, happiness requires complete virtue for a complete lifetime, during which fortunes may revolve many times, but nobility shines through. The noble cannot be dislodged from happiness.
Thus, for Aristotle, happiness is what the soul feels in a life of virtue, not the fleeting
"inclinations" which Kant warns reason not to follow. These surely have more to do with pleasure, and I think Aristotle would agree that following pleasure is not likely to lead to virtue.
Thus I think it is the difference in their definitions of "happiness" which accounts for most of the variance in their moral philosophies. Again, Aristotle thinks happiness (read: inner contentment) leads us toward virtue, while Kant thinks happiness (read: pleasure) leads us away from virtue, and therefore away from inner contentment. I can't help but think that if each were to see the sense in which the other is using the word, they would agree that they are saying the same thing; that true inner contentment results from true virtue.
Furthermore, if one reaches deeper into Aristotle, it is possible to find that he himself qualifies happiness, explaining that only the noble derive happiness from right action, and that happiness and inclination does not lead to right action for everyone. "People whose constitution is
good find those things wholesome which really are so", he says. It is for this reason, I think, that he contends that correct desire must accompany correct reason and correct will to lead to correct action, and thus must be cultivated in children. He takes care to consider how children's development is all important in this respect, as did Plato. He argues that, since it is pleasure that makes us do wrong things, and pain that keeps us from doing right things, children's education should be such that they learn to feel pain and pleasure at the proper things. Thus they will learn to give and take honestly and justly, relative to their own resource, and it will give them pleasure to do so.
I think that it seems that Kant would have difficulty agreeing with the assertion that correct desire plus correct reasoning and correct will leads to correct choice of action. Yet once the terms
are reconciled, and ouruse of "desire" is qualified, I think the statement will no longer be vulnerable to the obvious objection that Kant allows no "inclination", i.e. desire, into the reasoning process at all. I think my own and Aristotle's use of the word here can be made consistent with Kant, in that acceptance of one's obligation to the supreme principle of goodness is in a sense a "desire" to comply with the supreme principle, though not a desire in the sense that Kant used "inclination"; it is an objective rather than subjective inclination. Kant objects to using subjective inclination as a determination of what is good, but not to "wanting" what is objectively good once we have determined it by a priori principle. I think Kant would have no objection to saying that one wants to follow the law, for its own sake, or wants to do one's duty-- because it is not out of a subjective inclination toward happiness, but out of obligation to goodness alone; it is a rightly motivated desire. Kant wanted to say, I think, that it doesn't matter if you want something different, you "ought" to do what is objectively good anyway; good is what one "ought" to "want" to be and do-- but often isn't; hence his objection to inclination as a guide to virtue. Therefore, in the sense that I use it to compare the two positions, "correct desire" is not the same sense in which Kant wanted to rule out "inclination", but rather the sense that one wants to do what is necessary for goodness, just as Kant would say one "ought".
0d
i
So, hoping that I have sufficiently argued that Aristotle and Kant would agree in the end that correct desire plus correct reason and correct will leads to correct action, which equals virtue, I think it becomes apparent how these two are of the same school of thought, i.e. that of the unity of the virtues. For any virtue would necessarily spring from some combination of right desire, reason and will. Thus, an act, if virtuous, is all virtuous. It can't be virtuous if at all poorly motivated or poorly reasoned; an act can't be a little bit virtuous, or virtuous but a little bit wrong. An act is excellent if excellent for Aristotle, and good if good without qualification for Kant. There is no part way measure of virtue in this school; virtue is virtue by virtue of springing from thought that is good.
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