Anna's The Morality of Happiness

According to Aristotle, virtue is the excellence of the soul, and it should be a stable condition but not an unthinking or vulnerable one; in addition, it is the activity of the soul based on rationalization, choice and deliberation. However, Aristotle's theory of virtue has been considered to belong to ancient ethics because modern ethics doesn't recognize virtue as a state of the soul, or a disposition, but rather it is a sense of duty and must be motivated. Julia Anna is an author who favors much more Aristotle's viewpoints on virtue than the modernists, and in her book, The Morality of Happiness, she gave strong arguments along with precise proofs cited from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and her ambitious compliments for Aristotle to protect Aristotle's ideas. Speaking specifically, she lays out in the second chapter that virtue is a disposition and that there are four main issues revolving the affective aspects of virtue in the ancient ethics that modern ethics doesn't completely agree with; and briefly, these issues: (1) self-control is a higher state of virtue; (2) the development of virtue as an internal conflict or stress that is thought to be a good challenge for acting virtue; (3) arguments have great effects on the soul; and (4) whether I have virtue is not "up to me". All these issues that the modern ethics see as serious problems turn out to be no problem at all to Annas, and she made a lot of arguments in trying to prove for her strong beliefs in Aristotle's accounts of virtue. I will, in the following paragraphs show Annas' main arguments and comments, and I will also express my own ideas and thoughts about Annas' defenses as well as my own comments as where I stand in relation to Annas and the modern views.


First, Annas discusses what a virtue is: is it an emotion, a capacity or a disposition? To answer for this question, Annas takes Aristotle's definition of virtue in Nicomachean Ethics that virtue is a disposition, not a feeling or a capacity; moreover, it is a more stable than a less stable "disposition", but generally, it is considered as a characteristic. Having finished characterizing virtue, Annas proceeds to the first view point of ancient shools that is attacked by modern schools; i.e., the characterization of virtue. Modern schools think that if a person must perform virtue in a stable state, then it is just as what he or she can do is to follow a habit. To defense for this attack, Annas again uses Aristotle's definition of virtue that it is a state involving choice, rationalization and action. Thus, a virtue is not like a habit because a person must choose to do right or wrong before he or she does it. Making choice is developed further by Annas as having three strategies: entering a choice, repeating a choice, and developing a choice.


All of these strategies prove that virtue is not a passive form because Aristotle rejects candidates who practice virtue in a passive way by letting their feelings affect or lead their ways of doing right or wrong things. What Aristotle means is that if a person lets feelings control what he does then doing the right things by following feelings is less desirable than having a knowing or an understanding that can make one deliberately do something right for it involves knowledge and choice. For someone who may do the right thing but may act on it reluctantly with pain and stress is not as good as a person who acts gladly with pleasure. Another example is that a person's honesty doesn't mean that she can't help having it, but it means that she has chosen to be honest.


A further problem is the self-control problem in which modern ethics thinks that a conflicting person who beats down his bad feelings is admired more than people whose feelings encourage just actions. Annas is using Aristotle's opinions to prove that modern ethics misconceives it since Aristotle thinks that "the person who is self-divided and finds doing the right thing painful is lacking something desirable which the undivided, non-agonizing person has; self-control is a lower stage than virtue." (Annas, 53).

For this issue, I think Annas and Aristotle are not wrong that self-control people are not perfectly virtuous people, rather they have to struggle to obtain virtues, but my question is: Does the struggle shows that they are making choices or actively fighting to be better persons? What I mean is that by feeling that it is hard for them to become virtuous, and then by knowing that to be virtuous is better although it causes us to have difficulty, they make a choice to be virtuous; thus, they have changed themselves and have shown that they actively fight with themselves to be better people. That is considered to me a great achievment since a person who is not tempted never knows whether he or she can become virtuous or not. In addition, once people have overcome the difficulties, they will never come back to the ways they were before because they have experience on how to cope with difficulties, and they will continue making more progresses, knowing strongly and precisely how to obtain good things and to avoid bad things. Thus, eventhough, Annas and Aristotle succeed in defending that a person who originally possesses good virtues is better than a person who does not, I still think that in circumtances where challenge or attempt happens, a person with good virtues may not know how to cope better than a person who doesn't have a virtue but knows how to obtain it by choice, hard struggles and by refraining himself from following bad choices. Unfortunately, Annas doesn't think so. Annas doesn't think that internal conflicts or stresses are good challenges for virtue because as I already pointed out above that self-conflicted people are not considered better than non-agonizing people or people who have perfect virtue by Aristotle.


Occasional makings of choice is the second important issue that Annas discusses next; thus, she says that it takes time to practice, to develop to become a virtuous person. By this, Annas means that initial intellectual conversion is not enough; if one's character has already so developed that acting in accordance with one's new beliefs is repugnant or difficult then it takes time and practice for one properly to become a virtuous person. The whole issue of this idea involves in making further choices and developing virtue, and both Stoics and Epicureans retain the insistence on subsequent practice and habit. The Epicureans says that 'all the other virtues have come by nature from intelligence', and many Epicurean social practices are best explained as having the aim of the student's internalizing the beliefs required for virtue, so that they become emotionally accepted and part of the agent's attitude and outlook. And the Stoics emphasize that virtue has to be built up gradually; thinking of it as a skill or craft, they take it to be formed as the different insights that one has over the area come to be 'practice together'. However, Annas takes Aristotle's ideas that if arguments were self-sufficient for making people decent, they would justly have won many great rewards. "Rather, having a virtue is having one's character developed in such a way that one not only grasps what the right thing to do is but takes pleasure in doing it... Virtue is a state of agent's character and emotions, not merely a disposition to act in certain ways." (Annas, 55). Here we see that Annas comes back to the issue of characterization of virtue and the stable state of virtue, but she also mentions that we are not only constantly aware of what we want to do but also we should develop it to become our habit in which we have precise feelings of whether what we are doing is right or wrong.


Now, Annas jumps from an idea that having selected what is right to do occasionally, we must turn what we have known and learned into a characteristic so that it will stick with us and become a stable virtue. And this point of view of the ancients creates another objection for the modern schools who think that a habit acts like a feeling and therefore we cannot avoid it because it is how we feel. Thus, they say that based on the ancient definition of habituation, whether I have a virtue or not become "up to me" because once I have it as a habit, it is not up to me to make any more choice on what I should do any more concerning it because I already have inside me an excellent 'disposition' that is instrinsic as a habit. Once again, Annas gives out more arguments to protect for the ancient conception of habitualization. Annas says,


When I wonder about where my life is going and whether I can change it,
I am asking if my life as a whole might change direction. And when I ask
whether I could acquire one of the virtues, I am not asking whether I could
become generous now... So I cannot now be virtuous. But it is still up to
me whether I become virtuous or not; for once I am convinced that it is
important to become virtuous, I can take steps to enable myself to act
virtuously -- by thinking harder before the appropriate occasion and
conciously resolving to do so, for example. (Annas, 56)


I see that at this point, Annas is returning to her previous idea that the development of virtue is an important strategy in obtaining virtue, and by development, Annas has meant deliberation, occasional makind of choices and practicing doing the right things. I think I should intervene at this point what I have mentioned earlier in the fifth paragraph that whether self-control is perhaps better than perfectly virtuous? I also think that Annas is returning to the habit issue that she already tried to defend against in the third and fourth paragraphs above that virtue should not be considered as a habit for didn't Aristotle says that a virtue that followed a good instinct feeling or a good instinct disposition was not a fully developed virtue?


On page 56, Annas makes a better argument by saying that "there is a clear intuitive distinction between the way it is up to me to do a certain action, and the way it is not up to me to have a certain feeling about it. The ancients seem to make an impossible demand: I am generous only if I not merely do the generous thing but have generous feelings; but I cannot choose to have generous feelings in the way I can choose to do a generous action, so it seems that whether or not I am virtuous is not wholly up to me." According to this passage, what Annas wants to stress is that a virtue is not an "up to me" feeling, but it is a stable state that I create for myself. That means either I deliberately choose to act virtuously or I act virtuously because I have a natural trend or an innate characteristic that urges me to always do the right things. That is why she has said that 'it is still up to me whether I become virtuous or not', and "by making this into a consistent pattern in my life I can bring it about that acting virtuously is less and less effort on each occasion, and the more I get used to it, the more comfortable I will feel with it, and the more pleasant it will be for me." (Annas, 57)


Now, we can see clearly Annas' most important point of view that a virtuous person not only does the right thing but has the right feelings and emotions about what she does. Thus, feeling and emotion are very important for being virtuous because a virtuous person should not do the right things reluctantly or with an unhappy state. And this is what Annas calls an internalization or habituation: "I begin copying what someone does in order to acquire the right habits for myself; I internalize them." (Annas, 57) And again, this is of course taken by Annas from another account of Aristotle's in his Nicomachean Ethics that virtue requires habituation, practice and development. Annas writes,


Rather, I must continue to appreciate how my behaviour is changing,
and monitor in an intelligent way the modifications of attitude and
feeling as they develop; for letting my behaviour become mechanical
will defeat the aim of the process, which is to make the way I am one
which I endorse rather a mindless pattern of acting. (Annas, 58)


Conclusively, I already presented all of Annas' main arguments regarding a virtue as a stable state which a person deliberately has by making choice, and obtain knowledge about; it should also be developed into a habit but not a mechanical or mindless one, and it should be practiced occasionally. What I finally think is that although Annas has tried to demonstrate sufficiently good arguments and presentations to defend ancient views of virtue based on Aristotle's accounts, I see that Annas has not completely defeated modern objections against those view points because she has put herself in a circle way of argumentation because the internalization or habituation of a virtue is a very ideal way of obtaining virtue, especially if in circumtances where there are external challenges or trials that can impede one to become virtuous then although he or she understands very well or has right feelings about a virtue, it is still hard for her or him to actualize it -- sometimes people are forced to commit doing wrong things by external oppression or power. Besides, Annas has first made a claim that a self-control and self-divided person was not better than a perfectly virtuous one. and if so then the concept of internalization or habituation is just an alternative way to say that one should have self-control and should struggle inside one's mind to make one become virtuous. Furthermore, once one has made oneself become virtuous by habituation, it was no longer "up to" one to be virtuous because one has already know what one should do and how one should live; thus, making choice is no longer applicable to a person whose virtue has been internalized. But Annas has seemed to prove the other ways around from early education, making choice, developing it to the last step which is internalization as she follows Aristotle's suggestions.




References


Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford University Press. 1993.