Mehdi Ghafourian's essay 'In the Air of Virtue (A Look at the Ethical Life)'

Ethics can be viewed from two perspectives: from an external perspective, which raises the question, "Why should we live ethically?", and from an internal perspective, which asks, "What is an ethical life, and what does it mean to be ethical?" This essay, among the many facets of being ethical and living virtuously, seeks to provide a brief, preliminary introduction to the ethical and virtuous individual—what kind of air such a person breathes—by relying on a common understanding of ethics and familiar situations.[1]

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Nader owns a clothing store and sells many garments daily. What has made his shop so popular and renowned is a trait rarely seen among his peers: when customers browse various clothes, and after trying them on, asking questions, and ultimately not liking any, they apologize and say goodbye, Nader responds with a cheerful demeanor! Because of this cheerfulness, customers feel comfortable asking him for all sorts of clothes from the window display and the shelves inside the shop, and it often happens that they don't like any of them and leave! He is kind to customers not only when they enter the shop but also when they leave, even without having bought anything, and this is what makes him attractive and remarkable to them, turning Nader into a beloved seller among the people. We customers consider Nader good, cheerful, kind, and, in a word, ethical, and we are right to make such a judgment!

Let us ask Nader why he, so to speak, treats his customers so well and, despite the fatigue of serving them and their subsequent failure to buy, sees them off with affection and respect. His answer is: "I do this for only two reasons: firstly, by doing this, I attract customers' attention so they will come back to my shop in the future and see the new merchandise; secondly, I encourage them to recommend my shop to their other acquaintances. With this disposition, I have managed to earn a very good income over these few years of shopkeeping and, at the same time, be popular with them."

With this question, we moved from the external world and the appearance of Nader's behavior into his inner world and inquired about his state of mind, goals, and motivations. We still go to Nader to buy clothes and recommend his shop to others, but our view, having passed from the outside to his inside, changes, and our judgment of him becomes different. It is now difficult to consider his character and disposition as good and right to the same extent that we consider his behavior. Although his behavior is kind and respectful, it is not out of kindness and respect but out of expediency and foresight, aimed solely at boosting his business and increasing his wealth. In other words, in his behavior, he is cheerful and kind, and in this respect, he observes ethical principles and rules, but his motivation for such commendable behaviors is not something that can be counted among moral virtues, and for this reason, Nader is not a virtuous person in our eyes.

Hence, it is appropriate, when we speak of ethics and its various aspects and make moral judgments about ourselves or others, to distinguish between its two realms: the realm of behavior, which is visible to all, and the realm of character or personality, which is not visible to all. In other words, your and my behaviors are one thing, and our personality and character are another. These two are sometimes collaborators and companions, and sometimes not. Ethical principles and rules pertain to behavior, and moral virtues pertain to personality and character. It is quite possible to consider a behavior, like Nader's, ethical, but not a character like his! That is, we can deem Nader's behavior in accordance with ethical standards, but not his character, which reveals his inner self and makes his intentions and purposes manifest, as being in accordance with moral virtues. Therefore, it is fitting to distinguish the ethics of action from the ethics of character.[2] In other words, it is not necessarily the case that the correctness of the ethics of action equals the correctness of the ethics of character, or that the correctness of the ethics of character equals the correctness of the ethics of action. These two, while related to each other, have separate rulings.

Suppose I am crossing a street with heavy traffic and I see an elderly person on my way who is unable to cross the road. I pay no attention to the matter, when suddenly I spot my colleague a few meters ahead coming toward me. I immediately turn back and help the elderly person. Here, my action is correct, meaning my behavior is ethical, but I had no concern for that elderly person and only helped him cross the street so that my colleague would not judge me poorly. Therefore, I cannot be considered virtuous; although my deed is ethical, I myself am not virtuous or ethical. Thus, given the distinction between the ethics of action and the ethics of character, we can judge the ethicality of ourselves and others—as individuals, not merely our behaviors—only when we move from the outward appearance of behaviors to their inner reality and inquire into the why of our behaviors, the motives and goals we have, and the states and moods that pass within us. From a similar behavior by two individuals, we can draw different interpretations. For instance, Mina and Marjan make identical financial donations to a charity; Mina is motivated by increasing the welfare of the needy members of the institution, and Marjan by gaining fame. Although both behave identically and the outcome of their behavior is similar, and for this reason their behavior is ethical, their differing inner states lead us to consider Mina, not Marjan, as ethical and possessing a virtuous character. So, you and I are ethical to the extent that virtues are present in our inner world.

A Note on the Meaning of Virtue

Reflection on the aforementioned examples and other situations we can imagine tells us that virtue refers to an inner quality, that is, a trait of character and personality that 1) directs our thoughts, feelings, will, and behavior, 2) is not temporary and occasional but possesses a kind of stability, and 3) is praiseworthy and deserving of admiration, such that it leads us to have a positive evaluation of the virtuous person.[3] For example, imagine an employee who receives a number of clients daily. In such situations, where others turn to him to solve their problems, and of course in other different situations, he seriously strives to consider their situation and the feeling they are experiencing; he feels good about the effort to empathize with them and desires its continuation; he knows that by doing so he can better help them; his desire and will are directed toward resolving the problems of his clients; and this spirit is manifested in his speech and behavior with them. We consider such a person to possess the virtue of empathy. The virtue of empathy, for which we praise him, is manifested in his beliefs, feelings, desires, and behaviors, and has colored all dimensions and realms of his being. Moreover, the overshadowing of this virtue over his life is not shaky or short-lived; that is, the presence of this virtue in his conscience has a relative stability, and this is a characteristic that plays a role in a character and personality trait becoming a virtue.

Let us return to Nader's example! We, who are Nader's customers, attribute his cheerfulness and good conduct to his foresight, expediency, and utilitarianism (long-term benefit, of course!), and yet our choice for buying clothes is still his shop! But our judgment of him as a person is not laudatory. How difficult it is to consider his inner self as thriving and to regard his character and personality as ethical and virtuous, and to attribute qualities such as self-made, virtuous, good, and admirable to him. It seems that by understanding why Nader is kind, our perspective widened and the depth of our gaze increased, and as a result, we were drawn from the realm of behavioral principles of ethics to the realm of character virtues of ethics, where the inner world and the place of components such as belief, feeling, motive, and goal reside. It is from this point that our being ethical or unethical is determined, and it becomes clear whether, when applying ethical principles and rules in our behavior, we have been virtuous or not. Therefore, our ethicality goes back to what lies behind the curtain of our behaviors, such that having an ethical life depends on encountering virtues and cultivating them, and when we consider a person ethical, we have, in fact, considered them virtuous and of ethical character.

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Now that ethical and virtuous life means inner richness and flourishing, it is good to go further and, hand in hand with ethics, dive into our inner world. Usually, when we speak and hear of a virtuous person, we imagine someone who is kind, respectful, benevolent, empathetic, patient, polite, generous, and forgiving. But is ethical and virtuous life limited to such important virtues? It seems the dimensions of our lives are broader than this. Consider the following example.

Arash has recently fallen in love with Sepideh and, after informing his family, has decided to marry her. A relatively distant acquaintance of Sepideh anonymously contacts Arash and tells him that at a few family gatherings where he saw Sepideh, it seemed to him that she had told some lies; therefore, he advises Arash to ascertain whether Sepideh is truthful or not and, before marriage, to consider and test this as a negative trait. Arash angrily calls the person a liar and ill-wisher and hangs up the phone, but immediately does a cursory review of his relationship with Sepideh over the past two months and sees that he has not heard any lies from her; consequently, he dismisses this possibility and marries her! Arash, regardless of whether Sepideh actually possesses such a trait or not, seems to have no serious motivation to discover the truth of the matter, pays no heed to the importance of marriage and a crucial trait like honesty and truthfulness in a shared life—which is worth further investigation—and is not ready or receptive to hearing opinions contrary to his own views and feelings.

We humans are beings with the capacity for reflective awareness[4], which has given our lives a special hue. By reflective awareness, I mean that you and I can (and apparently have no choice but to!) think about our beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires, wishes, words, and deeds, and evaluate them—that is, to look at our lives from a higher vantage point and, so to speak, to hold ourselves accountable and question the rightness or wrongness of our lifestyle and affairs. In other words, we think about ourselves (i.e., the beliefs, feelings, etc., mentioned a few lines above) and inevitably find ourselves in the position of a thinking being; a being who ponders the truth of its thoughts and beliefs about itself, others, and various phenomena, the appropriateness of its feelings and emotions, the reasonableness of its wants and wishes, and the correctness of its behaviors—in a word, one who has a concern for discovering the truth. So, since we are not free from an evaluative gaze upon ourselves and therefore, whether we like it or not, we think and do so through mental and rational activities, we need to conceive of problems, consider evidence and answers, provide reasons, and evaluate. It is clear that our mental activities regarding various and diverse matters are ongoing, from deciding about buying suitable clothes for attending our brother's wedding to thinking about scientific and philosophical issues and so on.

We, who are concerned with truth and anxious about the correctness of our affairs and, as a result, are questioning and searching, find that our success in thinking does not depend solely on a high IQ, a strong memory, and the like; rather, on this path, we also need character traits and qualities that help us stay on the path of truth. This is where ethics and virtue come into play! Do we uphold virtue when thinking and strive to think virtuously? When deciding and thinking about an issue and weighing various answers and opinions, do we exercise intellectual patience, precision, and courage, and listen to views contrary to our own as impartially as possible? Have we strived in our self-cultivation to make pursuing and knowing the truth, even at the cost of its unpleasantness, our priority and to reduce our self-deceptions and rationalizations? We consider Arash to lack intellectual impartiality, humility, and open-mindedness, and therefore, we do not regard his behavior as indicative of virtue—a virtue of the kind of intellectual virtues that manifest themselves in intellectual activities.

"Thus, individual character also has an epistemic or rational aspect: a person who is fully or largely virtuous must also be deeply concerned with goals such as truth, knowledge, reason, rationality, and understanding; and it is because of this fundamental concern that other traits will emerge in them, traits such as curiosity, attentiveness, precision and order in inquiry, impartiality, open-mindedness, and patience, honesty, courage, humility, and intellectual seriousness."[5]

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Consequently, a person who has their head in the air of virtue and morality moves from the surface to the depths, becoming more precise about the why of their behavior and the nature of their reactions to the diverse issues and events of life, and pays attention to the wide range of situations in which virtues are involved. Such a person strives for their outward behaviors to be a manifestation of their inner traits, and for their way of decision-making and thinking to also be virtuous. They seek, gradually, through encounters with the virtues, to find an inner transformation and make the atmosphere within them bluer—an atmosphere that, the more it is cultivated, becomes more fragrant with honesty, integrity, compassion, humility, generosity, seriousness, flexibility, precision, impartiality, clear-sightedness, and open-mindedness. On this path, life for them comprises countless opportunities to, for example, cultivate compassion and patience within themselves in the face of others' stubbornness and malice, or, in examining various options for changing their opinion on an issue, to host traits such as a concern for truth and open-mindedness. In this respect, they do not cease from seeking and view life's events as a farmer views the land!

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Notes

[1] For an introduction to various conceptions of virtue, refer to the first chapter of the following book:

Battaly, Heather (2018), Virtue: Ethical and Epistemological Inquiries, translated by Amirhossein Khodaparast, Kargadan Publishing

[2] Adams, Robert Merrihew(2006), A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good, Oxford University Press, p6

[3] Timmons, Mark(2013), Moral Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, p270

[4] “Reflective Consciousness” in APA Dictionary of Psychology (Second edition), Gary R. VandenBos (Editor), 2015

[5] Baehr, Jason(2011), The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtue and Virtue Epistemology, Oxford University Press, p2

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In the Air of Virtue (A Look at the Ethical Life)

Mehdi Ghafourian (PhD Graduate in Philosophy)

[email protected]

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