Hegeler Institute

VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE
Author(s): Laurence D. Houlgate
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Monist, Vol. 54, No. 1, Virtue and Moral Goodness (January, 1970), pp. 142-153
Published by: Hegeler Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27902167 .
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VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE
Most
people
think that
knowledge
has neither
strength
nor
authority
nor
power
of
command;
that
though
a man
may
have
it,
it can be
overpowered-by anger, by pleasure
and
pain,
sometimes
by
love,
often
by
fear-as
though
it
were some
poor
slave,
to be
dragged
about at will
by
the
passions.
Is that
your
view
Protagoras?
Or would
you
not rather
agree
that
knowledge
is a
thing
of
beauty
and
power,
invincible;
that once a man knows
good
from
evil,
nothing
on earth can
compel
him to act
against
that
knowledge
Wisdom
being
sufficient to his aid?
Protagoras
352b-c
I.
Although
there has been considerable recent
dispute
as to what
Socrates meant
by saying
that Virtue is
Knowledge,1
if the claim
is,
as it is sometimes taken to
be,
that
knowledge
of the essential
nature of virtue is sufficient for virtuous
behavior,
then it is
only
necessary
to
point
out what seem to be
quite
obvious counter in
stances. The fact of moral
weakness,
coupled
with what
large
num
bers of scientists and
lawyers
and
plain
men now
believe about the
capacity
of human
beings
for
self-control,
demonstrates that
a man
can
surely
know the
good
and
yet
fail to do the virtuous
thing.
What, then,
is left of the view that Virtue is
Knowledge?
The traditional
interpretation
of the maxim
certainly
makes it
unbelievable.
Indeed,
its
patent falsity ought
to make
us
suspicious.
Could Socrates and others who
thought
it true have been oblivious
to those facts about our moral life to which
appeal
is
usually
made
in
refuting
it? Or are there other
interpretations
of the maxim
under which it can be made true or at least not so
obviously
false?
This is the
approach
taken
by
other
philosophers. They
are in
agreement
that the maxim is obscure but
they
believe that it con
iSee
John
Gould,
The
Development
of
Plato's Ethics
(Cambridge, 1955)
[hereinafter
cited as
DPE]; Gregory
Vlastos,
"Socratic
Knowledge
and Platonic
'Pessimism,'
"
The
Philosophical
Review,
66
(1957),
227-232;
R. E.
Allen,
"The
Socratic
Paradox," Journal of
the
History of Ideas,
21
(1960),
256-265;
G.
Santas,
"The Socratic
Paradoxes,"
The
Philosophical
Review,
63
(1964),
147-164.
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 143
tains some
important insight
into the
relation
of moral
knowledge
to
right
conduct.
My
aim in this
paper
is
(1)
to examine several
alternative
interpretations
of the
maxim,
and
(2)
to describe the
extent to which moral
knowledge
can be said to bear a
logical
relation to the notion of
right
conduct.
Although
I shall in the end
reject
as
implausible
what I shall describe below as the
"strong"
claim made
by
the
maxim,
there is another "weak" sense in which it
is true to
say
that Virtue is
Knowledge.
I must caution the
reader,
however,
not to construe
my
defense of this weaker
interpretation
of
the maxim as in
any way exegetical
of Socrates.
Although
I will
screen several
interpretations
of what Socrates meant to
say, exegesis
is not
my primary
aim.
My
aim is to discover what it is about the
relation of moral
knowledge
to
right
conduct that
might
make it
true to
say
that Virtue is
Knowledge.
II. There
are at least two
points
that
a
philosopher
may
wish to
make when he claims that Virtue is
Knowledge.
a.
Knowledge
of the
(moral) good
is both a
necessary
and a
suf
ficient condition of
right
conduct. A man who knows what
virtue is will behave in virtuous
ways;
a man who behaves in
virtuous
ways
has
knowledge
of virtue.
b. A
morally good
act has a
special
claim to
rationality.
To know
good
from evil is to know what sort of acts can be
justified
and what sort of acts cannot be
justified.2
Each of these claims is
suggestive
and each demands close
analysis.
That would be a
large undertaking.
In this
paper
I shall limit
my
attention to
(a).
It would be foolish to
deny,
however,
that there is
a connection between
(a)
and
(b).
Thus,
as we shall
discover,
there
are some
philosophers
who would
argue
for the truth of
(a) by
asserting (b).
However,
I shall review
only
one such
attempt,
for I
think that there is a more
general
reason
why
the effort to
support
(a) by asserting
a form of
(b)
must
ultimately
fail.
Second,
Virtue is
Knowledge
has been
interpreted
in
(a)
as a
biconditional. This is its usual
interpretation, although
critical
2This is the
interpretation put
on the maxim
by
H. O.
Mounce,
"Virtue and
the
Understanding," Analysis,
27:1
(October, 1967),
11-17. In this
essay
Mounce is
out to defend the Socratic view
against
the
Empiricist
thesis that what is rational
as conduct
depends entirely
on what one desires
("Reason
is the slave and not the
master of the
passions").
144
LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
attention is
normally
directed to the first
part
of the biconditional:
a man who knows what virtue is will behave in virtuous
ways.
I
shall refer to
(a)
as the
"strong"
version of the
maxim,
and discus
sion in sections
(III)
-
(V)
will be restricted to this version. A
"weak" version of the maxim will be introduced and defended in
section
(VI).
Finally,
when someone
says
that Virtue is
Knowledge,
and he
means what is
conveyed
in
(a),
we
may
be unclear about the status
of the claim. That
is,
we
may
be unsure whether or not the cases
that come
readily
to mind as
possible
counter instances have
any
relevance to the truth of the claim. Is the claim an
empirical
generalization
about human
nature,
for
example?
If
so, then one
who is confronted
by
cases of moral weakness
may
simply
limit his
generalization
and admit that there are
exceptions.
Such
a
reaction,
of
course,
gives
it
away
that the maxim is not
philosophical.
I think
it is
generally agreed,
however,
that the claim made
by
the state
ment that Virtue is
Knowledge
is unlike the claim that a
person
who has
knowledge
of the
good
will in fact behave in virtuous
ways.
The
claim,
that
is,
if it is to remain
philosophically interesting,
is to
be taken as a
conceptual
remark.
Something
is
being
said about the
concepts
of
knowledge
of the
good
and virtuous conduct. We have
now to look more
closely
at the character of the
conceptual
observa
tion.
III. Let us
begin
with the
suggestion
that Virtue is
Knowledge
means that if one knows the essential
nature,
the
definition,
of
virtue
or the
good,
then he will behave in virtuous
ways.
If we fail
to do the
courageous,
the
honest,
the
unselfish,
or the
friendly thing
when the circumstances arise and when we have the
ability
to do so,
then we cannot be said to know the essential nature of the
good.
Now the usual
objection
to this
interpretation
of the maxim
is that
even if one did know the solution to
the
philosophical question
"What is the nature of virtue?" it is
surely
not
logically impossible
to
imagine
him
persisting
in evil
ways.
Indeed,
there seems to be no
more of a connection between virtuous conduct and
knowledge
of
the
good
than there is between virtuous conduct and
knowledge
of
the essential nature of
gold.
That
is,
it is
just
as
implausible
to
maintain that
knowledge
of the definition of virtue suffices for
right
conduct as it would be to maintain that
knowledge
of the essential
nature of
gold
suffices for
right
conduct.
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 145
The usual
response
to this line of criticism is that the
person
who
gains knowledge
of the essential nature of virtue knows some
thing
about virtue that
gives
him a
motive for
acting rightly
where
as
knowing
the essential nature of
gold provides
him with no such
motive.
Thus,
it is
suggested
that the
person
who knows what virtue
is also knows that it is
always
to one's
advantage
to do what is
virtuous,
so that if he has
knowledge
of
virtue,
then he will behave
in virtuous
ways.3
However,
the
plausibility
of this version of the
maxim
as a
conceptual
claim is
gained only
at the
expense
of
having
to
import
a
dubious form of the
egoistic theory
of motiva
tion,
namely
that men
always
desire to do what is to their advan
tage.
I won't
repeat
the numerous
arguments brought
forth
against
this
theory.
Suffice it to mention that it has never been clear to me
whether those who have advanced it intend it to be
a
necessary
truth. It seems sometimes to be
a statement of
empirical
fact and a
very
odd one at that. The most
important
indication that this is so
is that no evidence is
produced
to show that men
always
desire to do
what is to their
advantage.
Indeed,
in order to rebut the numerous
counter instances
suggested by
modern
psychiatry,
the
psychological
egoist usually begs
the
question by using
the fact that a
person
does
act X rather than Y as sole and decisive evidence that his motive for
doing
X was that X would be to his
advantage.
As a
theory
of
motivation, then,
this form of
psychological egoism
is not entitled to
our
respect.
3
This
interpretation
of the maxim Virtue is
Knowledge
is not that of Socrates. I
accept
the claim of G. Santas
(Philosophical
Review,
63)
that Socrates meant that
if a man has
knowledge
of virtue and he also knows that it is
always
better for one
to do what is
virtuous,
then he will do what is virtuous. The basic difference
between this and the version of the maxim outlined here turns on what
"knowledge
of virtue" includes and on the distinction between the items included
in this
knowledge.
In the
former,
"knowledge
of virtue" included
"knowledge
that
it is
always
to one's
advantage
to do what is virtuous." On the Socractic
view,
however,
"knowledge
of virtue" was
logically independent
of the latter
knowledge
so that we could
say
of a man that he knows what virtue is and not have to
impute
to him
knowledge
that it is
always
better for one to do what is virtuous.
Hence,
Socrates,
on this
account,
does not
deny
the
logical possibility
of moral weakness:
..
if a man commits
injustice (or
behaves in a
cowardly
or
intemperate fashion)
t
then he does not know either that he is
committing injustice
or that
doing
so is
worse for him or both. It is clear that this
proposition
does not contradict the
proposition
that men sometimes do what is
unjust (or wrong) knowing
or
believing
that it is
unjust." (p. 60).
146
LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
The
preceding interpretation
of the maxim contains one version
of a more
general
thesis to the effect that the
person
who knows the
good
is the
person
who is able to
determine,
within a form of
reason,
what acts can be
justified
and what acts cannot be
justified.
Let us
suppose
that the standard of
justification
is that
specified
above,
namely
that an act is
justified just
in case it can be shown
that it is to the actor's
advantage
to
perform
it. It does not
follow,
however,
that a
person
who knows the
good
cannot do what is
morally wrong.
All that follows is that if he does what is
morally
wrong,
he has chosen to do what he himself condemns and can
justi
fiably
be accused of
irrationality.4
The
only way
in which the maxim
Virtue is
Knowledge might
be
preserved
is to
argue
that
man
always
does what he believes to be the rational
(justifiable) thing
to do. I
will assume, without
argument,
that this claim is as
poverty
stricken
as the
preceding
claim that man
always
does what is to his
advantage.
IV. In
response
to the difficulties inherent in the view that if one
knows the essential nature of virtue then one will behave in virtu
ous
ways,
it
might
be
suggested
that
knowledge
of virtue is not of a
piece
with
abstract,
judgmental knowledge,
similar to the knowl
edge
that
gold
is
yellow,
that fire
burns,
that the
square
of two is
four,
but with
knowing
how,
knowing
how to do
things, knowing
the
way
from
place
to
place, knowing
Latin,
knowing
how to
play
tennis.
Knowledge
of
virtue,
on this
interpretation,
is
a
mastery
of
techniques
rather than mere
possession
of information. We
acquire
knowledge
of the
good
not
just
from
being
told
things,
but from
being
trained to do
things.
The
man
who knows what
courage
is is
not the
man who can
parrot
a definition of the essential nature of
the
good;
he is one who
possesses
a
unique
sort of skill or
ability
the
ability
to face
dangerous
situations either without fear or, if he
is
afraid,
by keeping
his fear under control. If this is what is meant
when we
say
of a man that he
possesses knowledge
of the
good,
and
indeed some critics have
thought
that this is what Socrates
meant,5
*
Cf. H. O.
Mounce,
Analysis,
27,
p.
12.
5
John
Gould, DPE,
writes that
"epist
m which Socrates
envisaged
was a form
of
knowing
how,
knowing,
that
is,
how to be moral"
(p. 7)
and further that "since
epist
m does not
imply contemplation
of an
object,
but
understanding,
in the
sense of an
ability
to
act,
it remains a
purely subjective
faith."
(p. 15)
But see the
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 147
then the
major objections
to the
preceding interpretations
of the
maxim Virtue is
Knowledge
are
supposedly
avoided. For unlike
judgmental knowledge
of a
definition,
it seems
plausible
to hold
that
behaving
in a virtuous
way
is a
criterion for
possessing
moral
knowledge.
If a man does not do what is virtuous when in the
appropriate
circumstances and when
given
the
opportunity,
then
we would
simply deny
that he
possesses
this "moral
ability."
The
analogy
between
knowledge
of virtue and
possessing
mas
tery
of a
craft or
technique
has
something
to recommend it. Our
knowledge
of
courage,
unselfishness or
honesty
is in
many respects
much more like a skill than like
knowing
a definition. We often
drill
ourselves,
for
example,
into
good
habits and out of bad ones.
And
yet
even on this
point
the
analogy
seems to break down. As
Professor
Ryle6
and others7 have
argued,
the
object
of moral drills
is
not,
like a drill in
tennis,
to
prevent
our
knowledge
of virtue
from
getting rusty,
but to stiffen us
against doing
what we know to
be
wrong.
"We do not
keep
up
our
honesty by giving
ourselves
regular
exercises in it. Nor do we excuse a malicious action
by
saying
that we have
recently
been short in fair-mindedness and
generosity."8
A
temperate
man
may
be described as
"good
at" con
trolling
his
desires,
but it still remains that he cannot be said to be
clever or skillful at
this,
nor is the man who is "bad at"
facing danger
incompetent
at
facing
it.
Second,
the exercise of
any
skill or
capacity
is itself
subject
to moral
appraisal.
Thus,
a man
may
be either
praised
or condemned for the exercise of his skill in
handling
a
dangerous weapon.
Hence,
if
knowledge
of,
say, courage
were a
matter of
knowing
how to do
something,
then we should
similarly
be able either to
praise
or condemn a man for his exercise of this
ability.
But to
say
that a man has manifested
courage logically
implies
that he is to be
praised
for this-there are no
occasions on
which
a
manifestation of this moral characteristic would be
proper
critical
responses
to this
interpretation by
Vlastos,
Philosophical
Review, 66; Allen,
Journal of
the
History of Ideas, 21;
and
Santas,
Philosophical
Review,
63.
6
Gilbert
Ryle,
"On
Forgetting
the Difference between
Right
and
Wrong,"
in
Essays
in Moral
Philosophy,
ed. A. I. Melden
(Washington: 1958),
147-59.
Hereinafter cited as EMP.
7
J. Kemp,
Reason,
Action and
Morality (New
York,
1964), pp.
160-162.
8
Ryle,
EMP,
p.
150.
148 LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
grounds
for condemnation.
Finally,
even if
we
accept
the
suggestion
that
knowledge
of the
good
is like
possession
of an
ability,
it does
not follow from the fact that a man
knows what virtue
is,
that he
will behave in virtuous
ways.
To
say
that A has an
ability
to do X
does not
imply
that A will do X when the circumstances and the
opportunity
arise. Abilities are not
pronenesses
or tendencies. If a
man fails to
play
tennis when
given
the
opportunity
to
play,
it does
not follow that he does not know how to
play
tennis
(though
this
may
be
true)
; it
may
be that he does not want to
play
tennis. Hence
one of the
major objections against
the
interpretation
in
(III)
is
also decisive
against
this
position:
a man
may
fail to do what is
virtuous even where he has
knowledge
of
virtue,
and this is true
regardless
of whether we conceive
'knowledge
of virtue* as like
knowledge
of a definition or as
analogous
to
possession
of a skill or
technique.
V. Another
attempt
to
analyze
the notion of
knowledge
of virtue
can be derived from the more
general
thesis that a
person
who
"knows the difference between
right
and
wrong"
is the
sort of
person
who would care about his own conduct and that of others.
In
explaining
the
concept
of care as
this notion is
employed
in
moral
contexts,
Gilbert
Ryle
writes the
following:
This
caring
is not a
special feeling;
it covers a
variety
of
feelings,
like those that
go
with
being
shocked, ashamed,
indignant, admiring,
emulous,
disgusted,
and
enthusiastic;
but it also covers a
variety
of
actions,
as well as readinesses and
pronenesses
to do
things,
like
apologizing, recompensing, scolding, praising, persevering, praying,
confessing,
and
making good
resolutions.9
Let us
say,
then,
that the man who
possesses knowledge
of virtue
will manifest the relevant "moral
feelings"
in the
appropriate
cir
cumstances,
and will be
ready
or
prone
to do such
things
as
apolo
gize, recompense,
scold, etc.,
whenever his own conduct or that of
others calls for such actions. The
person
who knows what virtue is
"has views" about the
propriety
of
acting
in certain
ways.
These
views, however,
are
manifested
in his criticism of himself and the
demands made
upon
himself when deviation from certain
patterns
of behavior is actual or
threatened,
and in the
acknowledgement
of
9
Ryle,
EMP, p.
155.
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE
149
the
legitimacy
of such criticism and demands when received from
others.
Typically,
then,
his
knowledge
of virtue is manifested in
such statements as "I must do
. .
." and "It is
wrong
to
. .
.,"
and
typically
he will be shocked or
ashamed,
admiring
or
enthusiastic,
if
he or
others should violate or conform to the norms.
Does this
conception
of
knowledge
of virtue make it true to
say
that Virtue is
Knowledge,
that
is,
that
possession
of
knowledge
of
virtue suffices for
saying
of a
person
that he will behave in virtuous
ways?
It
might
be
suggested
that it
does,
and for the
following
reasons.
First,
to
say
of
a
person
that he will behave in virtuous
ways
is to make a
remark about his
character,
that
is,
it is to
say
that he is
the sort of
person
who can be
expected
to do the virtuous
thing
when the circumstances call for it.
Hence,
the conditions under
which it is true to
say
that A will do the virtuous
thing
are
equivalent
to the conditions under which it is true to
say
that A is
a
virtuous
person.
Second,
it
may
be
argued
that the conditions
sufficient for
making
it true to
say
that A is a virtuous
person
are
satisfied
by
evidence that A is
ready
or
prone
to exhibit the charac
teristic
feelings
and actions of care when his conduct or that of
others deviates from or conforms to the norms.
Hence,
if we know of
A that he is the sort of
person
who would care about his own
conduct and that of
others,
then this suffices to
say
of A that he will
behave in virtuous
ways,
that
is,
that he is the sort of
person
who
can be
expected
to do the virtuous
thing
when the circumstances
call for it.
Although
there is
something
to be said for the
request
that we
identify
the statement "A will do the virtuous
thing"
with the
statement "A is
a
virtuous
person,"
this
admission,
taken
together
with the claim that
knowledge
of the
good
is
a kind of
caring,
does
not make it true to
say
that Virtue is
Knowledge.
There is
surely
nothing logically
odd in
saying
that a
person
who is
prone
to be
shocked or
ashamed
at himself if he should behave in a
cowardly
way
is nonetheless the sort of
person
who will sometimes and even
invariably
do the
cowardly thing
when the circumstances call for
courage.
Insofar as he is
prone
to
say
"It is
wrong
to
. .
.,"
he is also
prone
to
say
"It was
wrong
for me to ..."
Second,
there is also an
objection
to the strict identification of
the notion of
knowledge
of virtue and the
care-concepts
mentioned
by Ryle.
For there is a sense of "knows the
good"
in which a man
150
LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
may
be said to know the
good
who is neither
prone
to
praise,
admire,
or be enthusiastic about acts of
honesty,
courage,
or unsel
fishness,
nor who is
prone
to exhibit the relevant moral
feelings
toward
dishonesty,
cowardice,
or selfishness. This
may
happen
if he
knows
of,
but he no
longer
uses, the
respective
moral standards
as a
guide
to his own
conduct,
or as a basis for
praising
and
blaming
the
conduct of others. He knows
good
from
evil,
but he has
simply
ceased to care. Such cases of moral indifference
may
be
rare,
but
they
are
surely
not
logically impossible.
Indeed,
such men have
often been the
subject
of
interesting literary
treatment. For exam
ple,
in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture
of
Dorian
Gray,1
the
central character is
portrayed
as a man who comes to see
tragedy
only
from an artistic
point
of
view,
and who otherwise
registers
complete
moral indifference toward human
suffering.
Thus,
after
Dorian discovers that his
cruelty
has caused the suicide of a
young
girl
who was in love with
him,
the
following
conversation takes
place
between him and his friend Lord
Henry.
"... I must admit that this
thing
that has
happened
does not
affect me as it should. It seems to me to be
simply
like a wonderful
ending
to a wonderful
play.
It has all the terrible
beauty
of a Greek
tragedy,
a
tragedy
in which I took a
great part,
but
by
which I have
not been wounded."
"It is
an
interesting question,"
said Lord
Henry,
who found an
exquisite pleasure
in
playing
on the lad's unconscious
egotism-"an
extremely interesting question.
I
fancy
that the true
explanation
is
this. It often
happens
that the real
tragedies
of life occur in such
an
inartistic manner that
they
hurt us
by
their crude
violence,
their
absolute
incoherence,
their absurd want of
meaning,
their entire lack
of
style. They
affect us
just
as
vulgarity
affects us.
They give
us an
impression
of sheer brute
force,
and we revolt
against
that.
Sometimes,
however,
a
tragedy
that
possesses
artistic elements of
beauty
crosses
over lives. If these elements of
beauty
are
real,
the whole
thing simply
appeals
to our sense of dramatic effect.
Suddenly
we find that we are
no
longer
the
actors,
but the
spectators
of the
play.
Or rather we are
both. We watch
ourselves,
and the mere wonder of the
spectacle
enthralls us_"
(118-119)
Later,
in conversation with another
friend,
Dorian observes
approv
io
(New
York: Random House-Modern
Library, 1918).
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 151
ingly
that "to become the
spectator
of one's own
life,
as
Harry says,
is to
escape
the
suffering
of life." I find no
logical difficulty
in
saying
of this character that
although
he does not
"suffer,"
that
is,
he is not
prone
to have the
appropriate feelings
of care and concern, there is
an
important
sense in which we should want to insist that he knows
good
from evil.
Indeed,
he must
possess
this
knowledge
in order "to
become the
spectator"
of his own
life,
in order to
say
such
things
as
"this
thing
that has
happened
does not affect
me as it should."
Finally,
it would be
wrong
to conclude that
persons
who lack
feelings
of care must also lack moral
understanding
since
they
are so
obviously "psychopathic."
For this is to
mistakenly
assume that the
psy iiopath
is
morally
blind. Case histories exhibit that the
psycho
path
can,
if he
wishes,
carry
on a most
intelligent, "insightful,"
and
persuasive
moral discussion. At times he will
very convincingly
express
"remorse" and "moral
conversion"-though
he
may
concur
rently
remain
actively engaged
in his usual conduct. If this
per
formance is
exposed,
he does not have the moral
feelings
of
guilt,
remorse, and
shame,
since for him there is
nothing morally
at stake.
He does not
care; hence
no
guilt.11
What
pulls
us in the direction
of
concluding
that the
psychopath
lacks moral
understanding
is the
observation that he does not
"appreciate"
the
significance
of moral
rules and
precepts.
But this
again just
means that he does not
possess
the
requisite
moral
feelings
toward the
rules;
he neither
cares for other
persons,
nor does he
care to abide
by
rules that
go
to
promote
the interests of other
persons.
And
yet
there is another
sense of 'know* and
'understand',
not so
closely
allied to 'care*
and
'appreciate',
in which the
psychopath
can and does know the
moral
good,
in
which,
like Dorian
Gray,
he can become the
un
touched
spectator
of his own
life,
without
guilt
and shame and
yet
capable
of moral discussion. We must now turn to an elucidation of
that sense.
VI. I have remarked that the man who no
longer
cares about his
own conduct or that of others
may
still be said to know
good
from
evil if he knows
of,
but no
longer
uses,
the
respective
moral stan
dards. It would be
wrong
to infer from
this, however,
that moral
ni owe these observations about the
psychopathic personality
to Herbert
Fingarette,
On
Responsibility (New
York,
1967).
See
pp.
25-26 for case histories
cited and discussed.
152
LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
knowledge
or
understanding
is no more than the
ability
to use
standards or rules to
identify
and
classify
acts as
right
or
wrong,
honest or
dishonest,
courageous
or
cowardly.
If this were
true,
then
a man who learns how to
classify
acts in these
ways by watching
other
persons
do this and then
successfully imitating
them could be
said to
possess
moral
understanding. Suppose
that such
a man also
notices that when conduct is called
"honest/' "unselfish,"
or
"friendly"
others
normally
react with
pleasure
toward the
person
who manifests such
conduct,
and that when acts are referred to as
"dishonest," "selfish,"
or
"unfriendly"
the
typical
reaction is dis
pleasure, disgust,
or hatred. After a brief
period
of
observation,
our
imaginary
man is also able to evince such behavior on the
appropri
ate occasions. There is nonetheless
good
reason
why
we should want
to resist
saying
that he knows
right
from
wrong.
For moral under
standing
cannot be
fully
described
simply by pointing
to net results
such as
those illustrated above. Both we and our
imaginary
man can
refer to the acts of other
persons
as
cowardly
or
courageous
and can
express pleasure
or
displeasure
toward such conduct. The end result
is the same. But we understand the
logical
connection between this
conduct and the attendant
expressions.
He does not. Reference to a
piece
of conduct as "dishonest" is for him no more than what it
would be for us to call someone's conduct
"blippy."
That
is,
he does
not as
yet
understand that the word is used to
judge
or to assess and
not,
say,
to
name,
to
describe,
or to
perform
one of a number of
other different kinds of
speech
acts.
Moreover,
the connection be
tween dishonest conduct and a frown would be for him as con
tingent
as
would be the connection between such an
expression
and
blippy
conduct. We
see, however,
that a man's
dishonesty
is
logical
ly
relevant to a
frown. This
understanding
is
captured by
the fact
that we see such an
expression
as an
expression
of
disapproval.
Insofar as our
imaginary
man does not understand these connec
tions,
he cannot be said
to understand these
concepts,
and so does
not
possess
moral
knowledge. Knowledge
of
virtue, then,
is not a
mere matter of
knowing
how to
recognize
and
classify
acts as virtu
ous or
evil,
right
or
wrong.
It is to
participate
in an
entire form of
life of which the
ability
so to
recognize
and
classify
is
only
a
part.
Unimpeachable
as this brief account of
knowledge
of the
good
might
be,
it does not make it true to
say
that Virtue is
Knowledge.
A man can know the
good
in the sense
specified
and
yet
fail to do
VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 153
what is
morally right.
An
understanding
of moral
discourse,
that
is,
does not
guarantee
virtuous behavior.
However,
there is one in
teresting consequence
of the
preceding
account of moral under
standing
which
ought
to be stressed and which
gives
substance to a
somewhat weaker sense in which moral conduct bears a
conceptual
relation to
knowledge
of the
good.
It is this. For a man to be able to
act
rightly
or
wrongly
in a moral
sense,
to do what is virtuous or
evil,
he must know the difference between
right
and
wrong,
and
have some
ability
to
apply
the
knowledge
in
particular
situations.
Unless he
possessed
this
knowledge
we should not use the
expres
sions
'morally right'
or
'morally wrong'
of his actions at
all,
or if
we did it would
only
be
in the sense that the acts he
performs
either
do or do not conform to the moral rules. The case is not dissimilar
to that of a child who makes random moves with a chess
piece
on a
chess board. He
may
make moves that conform to the rules of
chess,
but we would not be
prepared
to
say
that the child is
"playing
the
game."
For to
say
this would be to
impute
to him an
understanding
of the rules of
chess,
and hence a whole set of
capacities
to think in
those critical
ways
that constitute the
playing
of the
game.
And so it
is with moral conduct.
Morally right
and
morally wrong
acts in
volve
specific ways
of
reacting, thinking, criticizing
and
doing. Just
as
these
ways
of
thinking
and
doing
mark in the one case the
knowledge possessed by
the chess
player,
so
they
mark the under
standing
we attribute to the moral
agent.
Virtue is
Knowledge,
then,
not in the
("strong")
sense that
those who understand and
participate
in that form of life we call
morality
will behave virtu
ously;
but rather that those who are
logically capable
of moral
conduct must be
beings
who have moral
understanding.
It is not
Virtue, therefore,
but Moral
Conduct,
that has a
special
claim on
the
Understanding.
This would not
satisfy
Socrates,
although
as R.
E. Allen has
remarked,12
Socrates
perhaps
knew as well as
any
man
the full extent of his
paradox,
knew that it was obscure and must
remain so. He would also be the last man to rule out
the
possibility
of other
ways
of
exploring
the rich
conceptual
terrain of moral
knowledge
and conduct.
LAURENCE D. HOULGATE
UNIVERSITY
OF
CALIFORNIA
SANTAB RBARA
12
Journal of
the
History of Ideas, 21,
p.
265.