The Utility & Beauty of Virtue

Long time reader and very dear friend Miranda left a comment on earlier post and I thought it deserves a prominent response.  As usual, Miranda poses such penetrating questions that only a rash and presumptuous man would attempt to answer them.  Here are her questions with my answers. 

First, you write, "Virtuous actions are those mostly likely to be provisional in the sense that they are the actions most likely, in most situations, to achieve the best outcome. The virtuous person will be best able to achieve the best human life. She will provide for herself, her family and friends, and her polis."

I would like this to be true - but is it? If so, how do we know? Many of the people in society who seem to be able to best provide for their families, friends and cities do not seem particularly virtuous - unless the version of morality you are writing about is Machiavelli's.

There is actually a great deal of literature on this question in evolutionary science.  It appears that communities of human beings in which there are a lot of virtuous persons (= honest cooperators, willing to subordinate or even sacrifice their own interests for those of their fellows) do much better than communities in which such virtues are rare. 

It is true that in a generally honest community, a con artist will sometimes do very well precisely by exploiting the appearance of virtue.  On the whole, however, it seems clear that virtuous persons do better than less virtuous ones and partnerships between virtuous persons do better still. 

As for Machiavelli, he rehabilitated Callicles’ view from Plato’s Gorgias.  True virtue and vulgar virtue are quite distinct.  The truly virtuous man must appear virtuous in the vulgar sense (honest, trustworthy, generous, etc.) but must be the opposite when circumstances require it.  The person able to do that is truly admirable but can only be admired by the truly discriminating view (i.e., Machiavelli).  This view results from his fundamental disagreement with the ancients.  Machiavelli thought that all law and order was the result of an original act of ruthless power in resistance to nature.  Aristotle believed that law and order were more consonant with human nature, in the sense that we have both cooperative and competitive instincts.  The ancients were right and the moderns wrong. 

Second, what exactly is "beauty?" and is it of more, less or equal value than usefulness?

Some years ago I was listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on a Walkman and a short passage stopped me in my tracks.  The violin was going along in a merry, dancing way, and then suddenly plunged downward into a more serious mood.  It was like a dance party that suddenly turned into the Council of Elrond.  I found it utterly delicious and it occurred to me at that moment that something like what I perceived must have been perceived also by the composer, if from the other side.  It must also have been perceived by Anne Sophie Mutter who wove it out of her instrument.  That is beauty.  It is part of the design space opened up by the individual capacity of three people to compose, play, and listen and thus come to inhabit a common place.  I think that Plato is a better guide to this design space than Aristotle. 

We learn to appreciate beauty by exposure to beautiful things.  As we do, we usually discover that others have been there before us.  What is true of music is true of virtue, if Rudyard Kipling is to be believed.  I am going from memory here:

East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet
Till both shall stand alike before God’s great judgment seat.
But there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth
When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth. 

That stanza, which bookends his marvelous story poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’, suggests that virtuous men recognize each other even when they come from the most distinct cultures.  Moreover, even those who are incapable of virtue or perhaps only modestly capable can recognize the beauty of it.  You don’t have to be any kind of hero to be stirred by the story Kipling weaves. 

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the border side
and he has lifted the Colonel’s mare that is the Colonel’s pride,
lifted her out of the garden gate between the dawn and the day
and turned the calkins upon her feet and ridden her far away. 

Then up and spoke the Colonel’s mare that is the Colonel’s pride,
is there not a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?...

You get the idea.  The beautiful is that which is it is good to look at, hear, and appreciate. 

Socrates held that the beautiful is rooted in the useful but is not quite identical to the useful.  In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates interviews an armor maker.  He admires a suit of bronze that seems so exquisitely fashioned that one could imagine the body of the man it is designed to fit.  The armor is obviously useful to the fellow who put down the deposit but it is not at all useful to Socrates.  It is however beautiful to Socrates.  Thus the beautiful achieves independence from the useful. 

I think Socrates was, as usual, dead spot on.  Our appreciation of beautiful instruments, gorgeous music, gourmet meals, and heroic deeds is rooted in what is biologically functional.  Our basic pallet of appetites (see Southern pulled pork) and emotions (see Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round About Midnight’) have their origins in functional motives that promoted survival and reproduction in our ancestors.  However, evolution works by endowing some animals with the ability to pursue their own agendas.  Human beings are the products of our evolutionary history but we do not serve that history or our genes.  Aristotle says that while the polis came to be for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of the good life.  We do not eat and love merely to survive; we survive in order to eat and love. 

I hold, therefore, that the beautiful is primary and the useful, only useful in so far as contributes to the beautiful life. I would note, in closing, that Winston Churchill stood up to Hitler successfully and Abraham Lincoln saved the union.  I would also note that both of these perfect examples of virtue would be beautiful even if chance had prevented success.  Virtue can never guarantee victory; it can only guarantee that one deserves it. 

I am deeply grateful for your excellent comments.  Please post more of them.