Aristotle suggests that there is "reciprocity" between the virtues: to have one, you need the others. This idea is roundly mocked. Surely, people say, we know people who are kind but not brave. They list their own virtues with great confidence, even though the list is incomplete. Or maybe the point is made that bravery isn't needed in typical settings- it's a virtue for a place like a battlefield.
But I'm with Aristotle. It seems obvious that he is right, to me, because I've failed to even recognize an opportunity to be moral, because I was simply not brave.
Let me make my case.
It was a College dance, the kind of event I followed my friends to, the sponsor mysterious, the place dark and only half full. One fellow classmate was a non-traditional student (read: much older) who had, kind of adorably, become a non-traditional member of a fraternity. He smiled all the time, and, despite his years, had the quality of a puppy dog. And I am sure we were right in our assessment of him in being as harmless as one. Yet as he approached he made us, collectively, nervous as hell. Was he going to ask one of us to dance? What would we do? I'm not doing it. It is hard for me to remember exactly what it was like to be 20, and it is easy to forget the range of things that were completely humiliating. For some reason these included dancing with a bandanna-wearing guy. I mean, people would be looking. Guys would assume we were with him. So when he approached our little crowd, asking if anyone wanted to dance, we awkwardly shuffled backwards and our mumbled our "no's." I think I even remember the hurt in his face. I felt a panic. None of us were mean people. We were just... afraid. Well, with one exception: my friend Mary Ann breezily called out "sure" and starts to pull him to the dance floor. His face lit up as off they went.
In high school a girl wrote a coach a love letter. It seemed funny and my friends and I talked about it. The girl, loud and boisterous, was desperate with love, and the middle aged coach was homely and, as a straight woman, not likely to act on the offer. I do not remember being over-excited about the event, and think that after the chuckle I put it out of my mind. One of us didn't. Karen noticed how quickly the story spread, and felt responsible for having talked about it in the first place. She didn't make use of any of the excuses I would have: weak little explanations of how this is kind of like news and we needed to know. She did something that seemed to me, at the time, unimaginable. Extraordinary.
She went to the girl, confessed and apologized.
She admitted she talked behind someone's back!
We spent half our time lying to get out of trouble back then, and here was something telling on herself. Admitting to something shameful. Likely taking the full blame for something that was hardly all her fault. I was astounded.
I think I lacked the courage to do the right thing in these cases. I think I lacked the courage to even see (in advance) the right thing to do in the second case. Without being brave, I was unable to be kind.
As, of course, this was no battlefield, what was the fear I had about? I suppose, now, that it was it was a fear of being exposed and judged. Like we can ever avoid that. (What kind of moment was I waiting for?)
I have been told a story about a dad who correctly defended his high school son from a false charge, saying that he knew his son would not lie because "I taught him to never be ashamed of himself." I love this take on lying, which is so often explained away by expediency. It also gets at what I was practicing (being ashamed of myself) by how I acted in the cases above.
There is, of course, no real shorthand way of talking about virtue since it must always be checked by its resulting in right action. What right action is being a thorny topic itself, I don't mean to suggest any of this is easy. But the theoretical nature of the subject does not mean that the right thing does not appear to some of us, as clear as anything, on certain occasions. And when it doesn't, when it only becomes clear later, what was it that obscured it? Think about Aristotle's proposal, so often laughed at for being implausible, as you consider the explanation.
The girl who apologized for gossiping distinguished herself from the rest of us in a permanent way. And, boy, did I end up embarrassing myself at that dance.
For a guide to ancient thought on morality, including Aristotle's take on virtue, see these reading tips in this post.
