Edward Skidelsky on Virtue

Shall we start with Plato? I assume you chose this to define the meaning of virtue.

Plato is the founding figure in the Western philosophical tradition and the Symposium is one of his most charming books – you can read it like a novel. It’s set in the house of an Athenian, and he’s invited Socrates and some of his other friends around after a theatrical event for a drinking party. They’re chatting, and they each give a speech where they set out their concept of “Eros”. The one everyone remembers is the speech of Aristophanes, the comic playwright, who says that originally human beings had four legs, four arms, and two heads, and then Zeus broke us in two. So we’re all going around looking for our other half and when we find it, we will feel complete again. It’s a little twee, and I think it appeals to our romantic sensibilities, but it isn’t actually Plato’s idea of Eros at all. His idea is that it’s a desire for “the good” itself, and that we only desire an individual insofar as he appears to us to embody the good. Ultimately, sexual love is a kind of misdirection of this desire for the good, which we’ve got to transcend. I’ve become fascinated with this idea, because I think it explains a lot of problems to do with moral motivation. A lot of people think that in order to motivate somebody to behave morally, you’ve basically got to make it in their interest: by setting out some system of rewards and punishments. But what Plato seems to be saying is that moral education is not a matter of imposing principles on people against their natural bent, it’s more a matter of engaging with their desires and educating them ­– leading them towards the good. And that, I think, is very attractive and important.

The Nichomachean Ethics was written at the same time, wasn’t it?

A little later. Aristotle was Plato’s most famous student. It’s not nearly as readable as the Symposium: it’s dense and obscure in places and you really do have to struggle with it, but it is a sophisticated and subtle analysis of the various virtues: courage, temperance, and wisdom among many others. It’s incredibly subtle and precise, especially when you compare it with the way a lot of moral words are used today.

I was struck by Aristotle’s description of courage in particular. The word as it’s used today by journalists and politicians has almost no meaning at all. People will say that some writer who wrote a very revelatory book about his son’s drug addiction showed incredible courage, or that someone who stands in the middle of Trafalgar Square and masturbates as part of some artistic performance shows real courage. And suicide bombers are “cowards”, which is precisely the one thing they are not. We use the words “cowardly” and “courageous” very loosely: really just to express the fact that we approve or disapprove of something. Whereas Aristotle shows you that you can really think very precisely about courage and what it means. He says courage is overcoming fear of something. Not just fear of anything: there are some things which you should feel fear about, like disgrace – so someone who overcomes their fear of disgrace is not being courageous, they’re just being shameless.

Aristotle also talks about the virtues as being means between extremes. So wit is a mean between the vice of deficiency, which is boorishness, and the vice of excess, which is buffoonery. Most modern moral philosophers would think that there’s nothing really to be said about wit: it’s just a matter of subjective opinion or preference, not something you can analyse or discuss rationally. But Aristotle shows that you can say quite a lot about it that is really plausible and persuasive.

Shall we move on to Jane Austen? Why did you choose Sense and Sensibility?

Really to make the point that many of the greatest moral thinkers are not philosophers, but novelists. Alasdair MacIntyre, one of my other choices, describes Austen as “the last classical moralist”, and I think Sense and Sensibility bears that out. There are two central characters, sisters, and they’re both in love with men who may or may not reciprocate. But whereas Marianne, who represents sensibility, reveals her love and is then snubbed and humiliated by the worthless Willoughby, Eleanor is much more discreet and after many twists and turns she finally marries her man. Jane Austen’s purpose is to illustrate this very Aristotelian virtue of prudence: that you’ve got to look out for your interests, you mustn’t just give in to passion. Passion must be guided by reason, which goes against the grain of the way we think about it today. But Jane Austen is saying that passion that is rational and controlled is no less deep than passion that’s uncontrolled: in fact it may be deeper. This might sound cold or austere, but I think it’s right.

Are all these books you’ve chosen in some sort of conversation with each other?

Yes.