When it comes to “virtue,” there shouldn’t be much mystery or confusion. The word “virtue” comes from the Latin virtus, which translates the more interesting Greek word arete, meaning “excellence.” So a virtue describes the excellent performance or embodiment of a thing, skill, attribute, or capacity. Thus a “virtuous” flute player is a flute player who plays excellently. A “virtuous” bricklayer lays brick excellently. A “virtuous” runner runs a mile (or 50) excellently. A “virtuous” eye sees with 20/20 vision. As Aristotle points out, we aren’t generally content to play the flute, lay brick, run, or see poorly or in a middling way. We want to do these things well, so we practice. Thus he develops the ergon (“work” or “function”) argument with respect to human excellence, asking, “is there an ergon, or work, for a flautist, bricklayer, runner, and an eye, but not one for a human being qua human being? If there is one for a human, what is it and what does it mean to do it excellently?”

He concludes that the two uniquely human works relate to the soul’s capacity to think and reason toward the true and the soul’s capacity to desire, feel, and act toward the good. The excellent performance of the former depends on intellectual excellences and of the latter on moral excellences. These excellences are “virtues.” 

Intellectual and Moral Excellences

Among the intellectual virtues, one is exclusively oriented toward good action. This is phronesis, a.k.a. “prudence” or biblical “wisdom.” It differs from Aristotle’s “wisdom,” sophia, because sophia is an intellectual virtue oriented toward the true that combines the enduring understanding of theoretical first principles—a virtue called nous—with the ability to reason well discursively—a virtue called episteme.

We need the intellectual virtue of phronesis to move from knowing general moral truths and principles (e.g., “love your neighbor”) to recognizing the morally relevant particulars of any situation (“this student in front of me, the person reading my article, and the orphan in Uganda qualify as my neighbors”) to deciding how the principle should inform our actions in each context (“I should prepare my lesson well, write my article clearly, and support the orphan’s education”). 

We then need the moral virtues to ensure that our wills accept and obey the dictates of phronesis and act accordingly. For instance, prudence may tell me, “it’s not healthy to eat the entire chocolate cake at midnight” but whether I act on that and restrain my desire to eat the midnight cake depends on whether I have developed the active condition of “temperance.” Temperance moderates my desire to pursue pleasure and frees me to obey prudence. Likewise, prudence may tell me, “you should confront your friend about his arrogance” but whether I actually initiate that painful conversation depends on whether I have developed the active condition of “courage.” Courage moderates my desire to avoid pain and, again, frees me to obey prudence. Here, Aristotle rightly recognizes the same disconnect St. Paul and St. Augustine do—namely, that we often know the good we ought to do but do not do it. We may possess the intellectual virtue of prudence but lack the moral virtues of temperance and courage, and so intemperately pursue pleasurable things and cowardly avoid painful ones, both leading us away from the good.

Cultivating Intellectual and Moral Aretic Hexeis

In the above paragraph, we should note the phrase “active condition.” In Greek, this is hexis (plural, hexeis), which we could also describe as a habituated disposition, tendency, or inclination. For example, the virtuous “active condition” of kindness implies that anytime a situation arises in which a kind person could be kind they will act kindly. Anytime a patient person encounters a tedious person or taxing situation they will respond patiently. 

This is no different from the virtuous, or excellent, tennis player who responds “naturally” to whatever serve they receive from their opponent. Rafael Nadal does not stand thinking how to return the 115-mph ball speeding across the net from Novak Djokovic. Instead, as a “ virtuous” tennis player, he moves instantly, and does so almost naturally, almost instinctively, except his response is neither natural nor instinctive because it has been learned and practiced until it became a “second nature” active condition. That habituated readiness to respond with excellence to whatever stimuli presents itself is what Aristotle calls an “active condition.” When an active condition of the emotions or will is oriented toward the good (e.g., patience, courage, temperance, kindness) it is a moral virtue, and when an active condition of the intellect is oriented toward the true (e.g., wonder, intellectual humility, intellectual courage, coherence) it is an intellectual virtue. Therefore, a virtue is an aretic hexis, that is, an excellent (arete) active condition (hexis) acquired through practice.

Of course, the vices are also active conditions, but they represent malformed habituated dispositions that lead neither to the true nor the good. Aristotle famously describes vices as active conditions of excess and deficiency that fall on either side of the virtue in the middle (the “mean”). So if courage is the virtue, the vice of excess on one side is rashness and the vice of deficiency on the other is cowardice. The virtue of generosity is positioned between wastefulness on one side and stinginess on the other. Humility (which is not a virtue for Aristotle) is situated between pride and self-deprecation. 

The intellectual virtues oriented toward the true are similar. Wonder is flanked by the vices of indifference on one side and curiositas on the other. Intellectual prudence by naivety and skepticism, intellectual humility by servility and arrogance, intellectual integration by muddling and siloing. 

Each fall, I have my students make a chart of the virtues that lists the vices of excess and deficiency on either side. They then place an “X” on each line as if a continuum for where they (think they) are with respect to that virtue and its attendant vices. (I always threaten to have their parents fill out the same chart for them but have never followed through because I’m afraid they will ask my wife to do the same for me.) I tell them that if they really are patient, they should place the X in the middle on the word “patience,” but if they tend toward impatience on the one hand or indulgence on the other, they should place the X accordingly. We end by discussing how to practice the virtues we do not yet have so that 4 weeks, 6 weeks, or 8 weeks from now, when we do the exercise again, the X may have moved a bit toward the virtue in the middle. 

Educators as Virtue Coaches

Our job as educators is to help students develop both the intellectual and moral virtues, but to do so we must adopt the posture of coaches. We can’t simply tell them to “be better” or “be virtuous” any more than we can simply say “write better” or “play better.” A coach who simply says “play better” is a lousy coach, or rather, no coach at all. A good coach breaks down the complex actions involved in trapping a soccer ball, shooting a jump shot, blocking a middle linebacker, hitting a curveball, or returning a 115-mph serve. The educator who wants to help students cultivate the excellent intellectual and moral active conditions (that is, virtues) should be able to explain what a virtue is and how it is developed, as well as what each individual virtue is and when, why, and how that virtue should be actualized in different contexts. Educators must also, like good coaches, provide opportunities to practice and thus develop the virtues so they are ready when students need them in the “game” of life. That’s what a coach does to help players develop the athletic virtues they lack, and it’s what a teacher does to help students develop the intellectual and moral virtues they lack. 

Aretic Hexeis and the Telos of Education

To the question, then: is virtue the end of education? Well, yes, if by that we mean helping our students become more excellent practitioners of human being so that they can fulfill the uniquely human ergon given the nature they have. 

However, as I have written elsewhere, I would expand Aristotle’s two categories to seven, arguing that as educators help their students become excellent practitioners of their intellectual and moral capacities oriented toward the true and good, they should also help them develop their aesthetic and spiritual capacities oriented toward the beautiful and holy, as well as their physical, practical, and social capacities oriented toward the healthy, beneficial, and neighborly. 

To be a skilled practitioner in these seven areas is to be an excellent practitioner of human being similar to the excellent flautist, bricklayer, runner, or tennis player, each of whom must develop a range of excellences in order to perform their ergon well. And these skilled practitioners would each testify that they became skilled practitioners because mentors, coaches, masters, and teachers apprenticed them to do so. By analogy, education is apprenticing students toward the excellent practice of comprehensive human being. If that’s what we mean, then, yes, virtue is the end of education and, as Erasmus reminds his discouraged teacher friend, John Witz, in 1516, teaching is an extraordinarily high calling:  

To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you count it lowly employment to imbue the minds of the young with the things of Christ and the best of literature and return them to their homes honest and virtuous persons? In the opinion of fools, it is a humble task, but in fact, it is the noblest of occupations. 

     

Brian Williams, Templeton Honors College

 

 

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