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DIAGNOSIS AND PRESCRIPTION IN ARISTOTLE
1. City states have failed to flourish because leaders of states lack adequate understanding of the purpose of city states.
2. The purpose of city states is to promote the flourishing lives (happiness) of their citizens.
3. What is happiness?
a. Happiness is a life of activity
b. not directly of the body but of the soul of the human being
—in particular of the rational and passionate parts of the soul
c. activity that requires possession and use of virtue
--both moral virtue and intellectual virtue
d. moral virtue is impossible if leaders lack one kind of intellectual virtue (practical wisdom)
Explanation. What is activity? What is virtue?
Aristotle’s mental scheme of potency, first actuality, and second actuality is at work here. This scheme builds on his distinction between matter, form, and final cause. Potency correlates with matter, first act to the unity of matter and an adequate form, second act to the use of that form-in-matter.
The passionate part of the soul is able to acquire moral virtue just as human bodies are able to acquire strength. Strength is to an untrained human body (that is already alive) as moral virtue is to the passions prior to moral training. Strength is first act of the living human body; moral virtue is first act of the passionate part.
What is moral virtue?
Moral virtue (in general) is a state (disposition) concerned with choice and feeling, lying in a mean, the mean, relative to us, determine by rational principle (such as the person of practical wisdom would determine it)
Doing the morally virtuous thing is the use (or activity) of moral virtues already present in the person as a result of a good upbringing. Virtuous activity (which is an instance of second actuality in Aristotle’s technical sense) requires the presence of virtue (the corresponding first actuality). You cannot live in accord with virtue if you don’t have it.
The definition of moral virtue makes a reference to the person of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is an intellectual excellence, a virtue of the intellect or rational part of a person. Practical wisdom is the capacity to deliberate well and choose appropriate means in relation to appropriate ends.
The role of leadership
Leaders need to understand moral virtue and intellectual virtue (and to use their understanding) to shape laws and institutions to promote these virtues.
J. Garrett, October 5, 2011
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