I’ve discussed ethics before on this blog, and I believe in doing so I’ve made my convictions somewhat clear. Especially in my articles “Whose Eye Beholds Beauty?” and “Living Well in the Cross,” I’ve accentuated the fact that I am a virtue ethicist, inspired in large part by the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. My main attraction to this ethical school of thought is primarily twofold: first, it has enormous compatibility with Scripture (as I discussed in part in “Living Well in the Cross”), and it’s far more “fuller” than other ethical schools, which have certain precepts and tenets that can fall into excessive individualism and collectivism, either of which are ethically and praxeologically vacuous. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be the reigning ethical school (rather than deontology) and why it shouldn’t be presumed by all Christians in their theology
One thing, however, worth discussing about virtue ethics is possibly one of the greatest perceived issues with it. While I’m sure virtue ethics (should) sounds reasonable to many, in listening to its presentation many may become confused, as I have myself, not being able to understand the distinction between what virtue ethics prescribes and what deontology prescribes. Here’s the thing: virtue ethics says that the practice and discipline of a good moral character (a virtuous character) is more important and valid than an emphasis on duties (deontology) or consequences (utilitarianism). People should cultivate courage, magnanimity, patience and other virtues, and not just focus on doing something because we are supposed to or because it leads to 1,000 “utils” instead of 300. However, and this is what a deontologist may argue, isn’t this just saying that “it is our moral duty to be patient, courageous, and magnanimous”?
This is something that I’ve considered while listening to discussions of virtue ethics,1 and has made me wonder where exactly the boundaries of virtue ethics lie, and what in fact those boundaries look like. As I’ve pondered this and contemplated my commitment to virtue ethics, as well as my own deontological heritage, I believe I’ve come to a solution that is more synthetic in nature, but entirely appropriate. Namely, this issue only persists insofar as we think we can’t hold to anything deontic as virtue ethicists.
Here’s how I came to this conclusion: by observing the histories of deontological and aretaic thinking. I was raised as an American exceptionalist and was nurtured by the ideas of the Founding Fathers, and I read classical liberals such as Locke and Montesquieu, in all of whom I found the idea of natural law and liberties. This deontological ethic is truly foundational to American society, which is why I assume its presumed by the majority of American Christians.2 In all my readings of classical liberal and libertarian theories I was repeatedly returned to the same pioneering thinkers: in more modern times, as torchbearers of the liberal order that has spread globally, you have the aforementioned names of Locke, Montequieu, the Founders, and a few others (like Jean-Baptiste Say, David Hume, even Kant), but classically, as the theorists par excellence, you will find two names across the board: Aristotle and Aquinas.
It is indisputable for most historians and theorists that Aristotle and Aquinas are the pioneering figures of the natural law/deontological tradition, both arguing for universal first principles that prescribe set moral duties for (human) moral agents to perform.3 I’ve known this for a while, and am somewhat familiar with the texts by these major philosophers that their natural law theories derive from,4 but as I became more familiar with virtue ethics I made another observation, one that has made me a bit disappointed in the reigning deontologists and virtue ethicists for not noticing. You know who also appears as foundational in the thought and history virtue ethics? Aristotle and Aquinas! As related by Alasdair MacIntyre in his autobiographical account at the start of his work After Virtue, a work foundational to contemporary virtue ethics,
When I wrote After Virtue, I was already an Aristotelian, but not yet a Thomist, something made plain in my account of Aquinas at the end of chapter 13. I became a Thomist after writing After Virtue in part because I became convinced that Aqiunas was in some respects a better Aristotelian than Aristotle, that not only was he an excellent interpreter of Aristotle’s texts, but that he had been able to extend and deepen both Aristotle's metaphysical and his moral enquiries.5
Indeed, just like deontological ethics’ indebtedness to Aristotle and Aquinas is inarguable, so is virtue ethics’! Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is undisputed as the classical treatment on the role of virtues in ethics, and Aquinas’ contributions in his ethical writings are well-recognized as well, a fact Thomistic scholars are always ready to point out.6 So, as I myself contemplated what the difference was between moral duties and moral behavior I came to recognize this common descent of aretaic and deontic ethical systems, with both coming back to the famous duo. Indeed, the same observation arose when I turned to biblical theology, for just as often as natural law theorists turned to Romans 2:14-15 as a proftext I saw virtue ethicists turning to Galatians 5:22-23, and so just like with Aquinas and Aristotle these two different schools saw their respective systems in the same Apostle.7 As I thought, “Well, somehow these two different schools are seeing elements of both deontological and aretaic ethics in the same thinkers, thinkers who I’m pretty sure understood what they were writing and didn’t themselves accidentally write two entirely separate systems into their works!” Clearly, Aristotle and Aquinas had to have been cognizant of the aretaic as well as the deontic elements of their ethical philosophies.
Rather than presenting this issue with the solution of “well Aquinas and Aristotle’s deontology (or aretaics) was wrong, so we’ll toss out their deontology (or aretaics) and keep the good stuff,” I’d rather accept that, if we are so beholden to the esteemed Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, we engage in a synthesis. Actually, not even that, for a synthesis denotes the bringing together of two separate entities, while, as I’ve demonstrated, either of these philosophers, in their own writings, advocated for a deontic as well as an aretaic system. So, rather, I think I’ll call for a resourcement, an unblinded and unhindered rediscovery of the fact that, clearly, Aristotle and Aquinas taught these two “separate” systems as one and such a fact must be reckoned with in the appraisal or continuation of their thinking into modern philosophy.
How exactly can we understand this rediscovery? How, in a truly Aristotelian-Thomist fashion, can we parse the compatibility between these systems? While decades of virtue ethicists and deontologists drawing lines in the sand between each other might’ve obscured things, I believe all it takes is noticing that in their efforts to effect a distinction they’ve inadvertently overlapped in their delineations. The appropriate response, then, to the question “Is virtue ethics actually saying that it is our moral duty to be patient, courageous, and magnanimous?” is in the affirmative, “Yes, that is what it’s saying, but what exactly does that mean?” If Aristotle and Aquinas, genius men in their own respects, could hold these views in unison, so can we.
Having ruminated upon it, I believe the best way to parse all this is one of two ways, which are simply inverses of each other. First, we can say that our moral duty (which, in continuity with Aristotelian-Thomist deontology, we’ll agree is the natural law) provides a framework in which the virtues are embodied. Alternatively, we might say that the virtues themselves precipitate a principle (the natural law) that frames the eudaimonic journey. I am impartial to either, and I’m fine with these two being where the debate in ethical philosophy turns to in the future (all thanks to me), rather than continuing the obfuscation of these two truly compatible and genius schools. What I won’t hold as alterable is what the principle/framework in these formulations is: the natural right to private property.
While the conceptualization of the natural law as being this (propertarian) has been contended over the centuries, and is something Aquinas in particular likely would’ve questioned,8 I believe it makes the most sense. While the American natural law tradition would, in continuity with the Founders, accept that our rights are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” hence threefold, what the propertarian would argue is that life, liberty, and happiness are reducible to, or contingent upon, property, and, as a matter of fact, as various historians would agree, Jefferson’s wording of “pursuit of Happiness” still carries propertarian notions, for the original Lockean motto had property as the possession that civil society was purposed to “preserve…against the injuries and attempts of other men,” and a man’s property consisted of “his life, liberty and estate” (VII.87). Another way to put it, a man’s life is secured by having property in himself (and so, if property is inviolable, then the integrity of a man’s body is also inviolable), a man’s liberty is secured by being absolutely sovereign over and in his property, and a man’s happiness is secured by being able to partake in voluntary direct exchanges with another man with properties that they each freely possess (i.e., in having economic freedoms).9
So, the natural law is that which prescribes the intrinsic right of all men to acquire, appropriate, and retain, privately and absolutely, property (whether by original appropriation/homesteading or exchange).10 With this in mind, we again return to the two potential formulations of a “deontic virtue ethics” or “aretaic deontology” given above.
Using the second formulation for the sake of an example (“the virtues themselves precipitate a principle that frames the eudaimonic journey”) we can see how this works. Virtues are important to practice, as they foster a good character within ourselves, cultivate harmony between persons, and they fuel our journey toward eudaimonia. However, what circumscribes or provides backbone to this journey? What helps us provide structure in our eudaimonic journey as well as order in our relations to other moral agents? So, as discussed, here I’ll identify property as our iron standard. When we have property we have something specific and absolute to be sovereign over and care for; vicious characters will tend to have their properties dilipdate from misuse or neglect, while virtuous characters would be more than willing and capable of maintaining properties, and the virtues of magnificence, prudence, and even justice might all be relevant to this. To really see this I invite you to consider the classical economic problem raised against common ownership: the aptly named tragedy of the commons.11
As the original scenario goes, in old rural England farmers would have plots of land that were collectively owned, the commons, wherein they’d allow their cattle to graze. The issue that arose, however, was that since every farmer “owned” the farm, and all had responsibility for it (had an “equal, quotal share in the ownership,” as Rothbard would phrase it12), it soon became the case for certain commons that each farmer would pass the responsibility for maintaining the commons to the next farmer, and then the next, then the next, then the next, until every farmer was shirking his responsibility. The eponymous tragedy that arose because of this was that the commons would become so overgrazed there’d be nothing left to graze, impacting the farmers’ livelihoods since their cattle suddenly had no food. If the arrangement had instead been that each farmer had their own grazing grounds, or that one farmer owned a grazing ground he allowed the others to use (for a fee), there’d be a much more direct and evident responsibility: the private grazing ground would obviously incur greater responsibility, for its farmer-proprietor would be directly concerned with keeping his own herd fed; the rented grazing ground would also inculcate a private responsibility but also a commercial one, for only as long as the resources of the grazing ground were maintained could the farmer-proprietor continue to make money from letting other farmers make use of it and from the continued fitness of his own flock.13 Indeed, this is an ancient understanding, as Aristotle himself once wrote,
Property that is common to the greatest number of owners receives the least attention; men care most for their private possessions, and for what they own in common less, or only so far as it falls to their own individual share for in addition to the other reasons, they think less of it on the ground that someone else is thinking about it.14
Thus, common ownership can lead to vice by promoting pettiness, recklessness, injustice, obsequiousness, among others. Indeed, what Aristotle says with concern to these issues are great evidence for my earlier assertion, that the aretaic deontology we’re presently working with is what he (and Aquinas) intended to promote in his works. Aristotle, in contrast with his teacher Plato, was in favor of private property and a complementary social order, and the quote I gave above is right from a very relevant discussion of his. As he says:
Community of property therefore involves these and other similar difficulties; and the present system, if further improved by good morals and by the regulation of correct legislation, would be greatly superior. For it will possess the merit of both systems, by which I mean the advantage of property being common and the advantage of its being private. For property ought to be common in a sense but private speaking absolutely. For the superintendence of properties being divided among the owners will not cause these mutual complaints, and will improve the more because each will apply himself to it as to private business of his own; while on the other hand virtue will be exercised to make “friends’ goods common goods,” as the proverb goes, for the purpose of use.15
Aristotle here explains to us that without property there is no real basis for certain virtues. How can one be prudent or munificent when they don’t truly own anything to be prudent or munificent with? If the erection of a monument or the founding of a shelter is but the quirk of political maneuvering carried out by an obscure commissariat it really isn’t building any character, but rather building one’s tact at politicking and conniving. If one is directly, privately responsible for such a venture, however,16 they directly acquire responsibility for said venture, and cannot alienate themselves from it lest they impinge on their honor or suggest some defect in their character. Matt Summers explains Aristotle’s reasoning accordingly,
When a man has property to himself, he assumes full responsibility for it. His attention is fixed on his own responsibilities. Because the property is his, he has no one but himself to blame if it is unkempt. He must apply his efforts to his property, or he alone will suffer the consequences.17
If he doesn’t, or is able not to, through communal ownership, then a tragedy of the commons will ensue, with blame-shifting and shirking festering until no one is doing their duty.
Because Western civilization was greatly influenced by the Aristotelian tradition (as well as Thomism within Catholic Christendom), especially for most of the 2nd millennium (when the European miracle was both seeded and harvested), and the neo-Aristotelian trio of virtue, property, and natural order deeply influenced European institutions consequently, this contributed to the famed political, economic, and cultural success of the continent, as various economic historians and sociologists have corroborated in their studies of this phenomenon.18
Taking this understanding and applying it, we have what I believe is the fullest and completest possible expression of the deontological and virtue-ethical systems. For in it we have the acceptance of duties and laws supplied by deontology as well as acknowledgment of virtues that comes from virtue ethics. I can’t see any reason why these should be held in tension, or that they are placed in tension by the formulation provided. It also solves an infamous issue with propertarian ethics and opens the door for an improved system, adding more dimensions to the ethical activity of human agents than merely “If person Y owns property A he can do whatever he wants within/to it,” as now we can assert “Y might own A but that doesn’t mean he isn’t being acratic in doing whatever he wants.” We don’t need to fret over violating the non-aggression principle or criminalizing “victimless crimes” (a vacuous concept as it is), but instead we can harmonize our personal sovereignty and our rightful enforcement of morals within our cooperative realms of sovereignty (“civil society”). Likewise, when moral defects are perceived in the economy (perceptions that usually lack a consideration of whether all other things are being held as equal), such as the lack of a “just price” (or wage),19 and solutions are presented that compromise the integrity of private property we can respond at once in defense of virtues and property by outlining the integral and complementary bond that exists between the two, and making it clear improvement can only be discussed within the system (of aretaic deontology) rather than gutting the system and erecting something in its place (as the Marxists and social-democrats have attempted).20
As I’ve suggested, this is (nominally) the system that influenced the West, and its prosperity, for centuries, and ever since this system started to be abandoned (and bifurcated) in the 1700s we have seen the proliferation of many vices and blights in the fabric of Western society, errors I believe we can work toward rectifying by a major change in our social order, a revolution not forward, but backwards, a push ad fontes to what built the great glories of the West in the first place. We will do good to keep following in the footsteps of great men like Aquinas and Aristotle.
Such as Michael Jones’ video essay “Christian Virtue Ethics.”
Maybe mostly Americans, although the spread of liberal democracy to much of the Western world (which has been mainly championed by America), especially since the 20th century, I assume would’ve spread this presumption as well. I won’t say anything for sure, as I can’t enter the mind of a Canadian, British, or French Christian.
Simona Veru, “Aristotle’s Influence on the Natural Law Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Western Australian Jurist 1 (2010): 115-22.
Not just in a general sense, from absorptions of popular history, or grade school lessons; in particular, see Murray Rothbard’s discussion of natural law theory and its thinkers in The Ethics of Liberty, 3-26.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (3rd ed.), x.
Consider, e.g., the playlist “Aquinas 101: Virtue” by the Thomistic Institute.
On Paul’s theological and historical connections to either see Daniel Harrington and James Keenan, Paul and Virtue Ethics; Jane Adolphe, Robert Fastiggi, and Michael Vacca, eds., St. Paul, the Natural Law, and Contemporary Legal Theory. Similarly, for an intriguing analysis of the possible influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Paul’s thinking see C. John Collins, “Echoes of Aristotle in Romans 2:14–15,” Journal of Markets & Morality 13:1 (2010): 123-73.
Although, here’s the thing, when it comes to historical figures and their ideas, and my interaction with their ideas (like the Church Fathers), I don’t focus on proving that they’d completely agree with me (as many types do, especially in theological arguments), unless it’s a pretty clear fact that they do, but rather I focus on if I can reasonably believe that I could convince them. Did Aquinas agree that private property was prime and ultimate? No, it’s well established (and received by Catholic social tradition) that Aquinas considered private property secondary or limited. But do I think I could convince him? Maybe! (For a Catholic response to free market skepticism/distributism see Thomas Woods Jr., The Church and the Free Market, esp. 163-231.)
For the further discussion and justification of a propertarian/libertarian ethic see Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty (2nd ed.), 27-53.
See John A. Baden and Douglas S. Noonan, Managing the Commons (2nd ed.).
Rothbard, For a New Liberty, passim (pp. 34-42).
And this is the very basic reason why, under properly-understood free market economics (and theory), economic mismanagement or unsustainability isn’t a thing. But, that’s a whole other conversation far beyond the realm of a theology blog. At the least, see ibid., 301-328.
Ibid., 2.1263a20-27 (emphasis mine).
Even if it’s a venture they go in on with several others; consider my earlier example of a commonly rented but privately owned grazing ground.
Summers’ article is a great discussion of Aristotle’s views on the natural right of property, see “Aristotle’s Legacy: The Reality and Ethics of Communal Property.” See also Murray Rothbard, “Aristotle on Private Property and Money,” and Paul Meany, “Aristotle’s Arguments for Private Property.”
Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason; idem, How the West Won; Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell Jr., How the West Grew Rich; cf. Thomas Woods Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
See Woods, The Church and the Market.
A lack of understanding of the mechanics within the system (to be understood as economics) contributes, as I see it, to the preponderance of modern Western theologians demeaning “capitalism” and promoting some scheme of mercy/altruism by fiat. Economic illiteracy among theologians needs to be addressed, especially if theologians are going to keep attempting to address economics.