24 Philosophy Now ●August/September 2019
the crew onto the island, Odysseus said, “I must give way to force.
I am one against many.” But Homer made sure to emphasize the
consequence of their disobedience. After the crew ate Helios’s
food their ship was destroyed, and only Odysseus survived.Can Virtue be Taught?
I said Odysseus was a good captain even though he deceived his
crew. Why?
For one thing, he always put his crew first and never retreated
from danger to himself. For another, he made them better
sailors. Odysseus worked in partnership not with the more timid
or cowardly impulses of his crew, but with their capacity for
courage and self-sacrifice. There is no dilemma more difficult
than the sacrifice of a few for the safety of many, but the capac-
ity to make and to demand such sacrifice rests on politics’ most
precious resource: the idea of the common good and the abil-
ity to increase it by modelling excellence. Can we cultivate a
capacity for good in both our people and our rulers?
Aristotle was appointed by Philip II of Macedon to tutor his
son Alexander; so for him the question ‘Can virtue be taught?’
was not a hypothetical one. In Annabel Lyon’s novel The Golden
Mean (2009), Aristotle asks Alexander to name a virtue. Alexan-
der, who aspires to glory, names ‘courage’. Aristotle explains
that want of courage is cowardice, while excess of courage is
rashness. At first, Alexander mocks his tutor, anticipating his
argument that virtue is following a mean or middle path, saying:
“You... prize mediocrity.”
“Not at all,” responds Aristotle, “Moderation and mediocrity
are not the same. Think of the extremes as caricatures, if that
helps. The mean, what we seek, is that which is not a carica-
ture. Mediocrity doesn’t enter into it, you see?”
At this point Alexander mentions his brother, who he is
ashamed of due to his cognitive and physical disabilities. “Am I
an extreme, next to him?” he asks. Aristotle answers by inviting
Alexander to spend a day at the beach with his brother. The lesson
is magnanimity – to be moderate toward subordinates
(Nichomachean Ethics , 1124b 20). A further lesson is that the virtues
reinforce each other, or as Amelie Rorty puts it, they ‘hunt in
packs’. Aristotle knew that his young student was vain and cruel.
Without magnanimity he could not develop civic courage, which
involves feeling shame at what is dishonourable. Understanding
this takes character and judgment of the kind that Aristotle called
‘practical wisdom’ ( phronesis), which is a person’s “ability to delib-
erate well about what is good and expedient” and “conducive to
the good life in general.” ( NE , 1140a 25-30)
Practical wisdom was, for Aristotle, the virtue of virtues, or the
master virtue. Without practical wisdom, someone like Alexan-
der might have particular excellences, such as skill in battle, but
he would lack the character and judgment to show magnanimity
toward those he conquered. This would make him a formidable
soldier but a terrible person, and thus a poor ruler. The “virtue of
a ruler differs from that of a citizen” (Politics,1277a 20-25), and
they are not equally worthy of praise. The citizen might be a sol-
dier, teacher, sailor, or doctor. Given the diversity of citizens and
forms of constitution, not all citizens need be similarly virtuous.
Some mightpossess practical wisdom; but all who rule must.
How does one acquire practical wisdom? Aristotle’s answer
was: by practicing moderation in all things.This is not as easy as it might sound. First is the difficulty in
finding the golden middle way, or golden mean. This is not an
arithmetic middle, but neither is it inexact. A ship navigating a
narrow passage might veer more toward one side; but there will
always be a best course for safely reaching port. Second, as the
political theorist Ken Sharpe recently wrote to me, “there is no
algorithm or rule that the navigator can be taught to find the
best passage under the circumstances of changing tides, winds
and weather, but the navigator can be taught through practice,
apprenticed to an expert who models and coaches how to find
the mean in changing circumstances. This is why teachers are
so important.” (Personal communication, July 17, 2018).Can Ethical Politics be Taught?
Aristotle says that the salvation of the community is the common
business of all citizens (Politics,1276b 30), and to this end they
must perform their own business well (40). However, like the
captain who must navigate the ship safely to port, the ruler must
have the wisdom and virtue to transcend the standpoint of par-
ticular citizens and focus on the common good (1287b 5).
The idea that rulers must be wiser and more virtuous than
ordinary citizens is alien to our understanding of politics. We
do not regard elected officials as exemplary citizens. The
strangeness of Aristotle’s view should prompt us to ask why pol-
itics has become so debased in our view.
Aristotle understood democracy to involve the direct partic-
ipation of citizens in public office. Democracy was enabled when
a state was “framed upon the principle of equality and likeness”,
in which citizens “think that they ought to hold office by turns”
(1279a 10). This explains why Aristotle, like many of his con-
temporaries, viewed democracy as an especially demanding
system of government: it required practical wisdom of all citi-
zens, or at least those who held public office – which for Aris-
totle could in principle be any citizen.
Aristotle’s ship metaphor suggests that those in authority
need practical wisdom in order to achieve the common goals
they share with those over whom they have responsibility. But
notice that Aristotle was concerned with a specific kind of rule:
that which “is exercised over free people and equals by birth.”
He was thinking not of the relationship between servant and
master (for the servant obeys due to necessity, not reason), but
of the kind of relationships that exist among free citizens. In
such relationships authority requires the practical wisdom to
find ways of serving the common good. That is why Aristotle
embraced the view that “whosoever has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander” (1277b 10-15). But not every
captain, teacher, or ruler has such practical wisdom. And that,
Aristotle thought, was a serious problem.
Hannah Arendt also recognized the centrality of practical
wisdom to democracy when she argued in The Promise of Politics
(2005) that politics is the art by which we navigate our plurality
and differences. Each citizen, insofar as she enters the public
sphere, must balance diverse aims or goods. Often we are moti-
vated by a cause or an issue; but when we engage in deliberation,
judgment, and act freely as equals with others, we face the even
greater challenge of balancing our own aims with those of other
members of the political community. That takes practical wisdom.
It is therefore deeply troubling that we do not seek to edu-