This book is a study of the motivation of Aristotle's virtuous person, but its central question can be framed generally: are good people driven primarily by their reasoning about how to act or by their well-disposed feelings and desires? G. argues that neither of these pictures – which she labels Kantian and Humean – is adequate to Aristotle's view. G. sets out to prove, instead, that the virtuous person's thoughts, feelings and desires are so interdependent that asking which of these is the primary driver of their actions is a mistake. Key to G.'s view is choice (prohairesis), which Aristotle describes as equally desiderative thought and thinking desire.
The volume consists mainly of an analysis of the elements of Aristotle's view of virtue and virtuous action, including feelings (pathê), habituation, choice, akrasia and thoughtfulness (or practical wisdom, phronêsis), making it a fitting sequel to G.'s earlier volume on the same topic (The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics [2009]; cf. CR 61 [2011], 408–10). A chapter on the fine (to kalon) and the aesthetic dimensions of virtue offers an intriguing coda, but is not essential to the book's argument. Instead of rehearsing each step in the volume's argument, I will take up three claims about feelings that characterise G.'s position and highlight its more contentious aspects. (For brevity's sake, I must leave aside G.'s analyses of habituation and akrasia, which largely flow from these claims.)
1. The indexical character of feelings
In Chapter 2 G. draws on passages from Rhetoric 2.1–11 and De anima to show that feelings register salient aspects of situations in a way that makes correct feelings indispensable. While many others have defended the cognitive character of the Aristotelian pathê, G. argues specifically that feelings have an indexical content that explains their contribution to deliberation and choice. Fear, for example, does not simply involve an apprehension of something as dangerous, but an apprehension of it as dangerous here and now. The well-tuned emotional responses of the virtuous person are appropriate because they register things as they really are in their specific practical contexts.
Across Chapters 2 to 4 G. draws on this picture to argue that correct feelings are essential for wise deliberation and virtuous choice. I note three main supporting arguments: (1) indexical insight from feelings contributes to the deliberator's picture of the situation; (2) wise deliberation makes reference to good character, and good character requires correct feelings; (3) feelings supply ‘oomph’ (impetus) in the choice of a good action in addition to the wish (boulêsis) of the virtuous person for the correct goal.
Of these, argument (1) is easiest to accept, though G. does not argue for why feelings are responsible rather than perception or imagination (phantasia), the faculties Aristotle says acquaint us with practical particulars. The reason for this omission, presumably, is that perception and imagination are involved in having feelings; to be fearful or angry is to perceive or represent the world as being a given way (though it also involves physiological aspects). But for G.'s conclusion to follow, we need a reason why perception or imagination could not do the work with feeling absent. Is it just a psychological necessity that, when we perceive danger, we are fearful? Is it possible in some cases to notice practical particulars in the relevant way without the corresponding feeling? These issues are important not only for understanding Aristotle, but also for adjudicating disputes between Aristotelian and Kantian approaches to moral motivation.
Argument (2) is less convincing. G.'s theory of the practical syllogism takes one example from a non-ethical context and uses it to reconstruct Aristotle's picture of ethical reasoning. But G.'s construal of character (e.g. ‘I am a courageous person’) as part of the minor premise makes the explanation of virtuous action oddly self-referential. It would make more sense for virtuous goals (e.g. the safety of the polis) to serve as the ‘middle term’ in the practical syllogism, not least since these are accessible to the learner who can approximate virtuous action.
Argument (3) is still less convincing and seems to saddle Aristotle with a semi-Humean hydraulic picture of motivation. Why cannot wish, as a kind of rational desire, supply all the necessary motivation for virtuous choice? It is true that Aristotle's picture of deliberation is more complex than the view on which wish is filtered by practical reasoning and attaches to a particular action, but that point does not introduce a need for a separate source of impetus or ‘oomph’, as G. calls it.
2. The practical neutrality of feelings
Another aspect of G.'s view is that feelings are practically neutral, that is, feelings do not entail a specific desire or aversion. Fear, for example, may motivate a coward to run while attuning a courageous person to the balance of danger and worthwhile goals in a situation. What is strange about this way of putting things is that it runs counter to G.'s emphasis on indexical insight. Is not the coward's fear different from the courageous person's in so far as the latter correctly attaches to what is dangerous (and, further, in what way and to what extent it is dangerous)? Even if the same situations would provoke fear in people of different character states, it is odd to say their fears are the same. But if the point is just that fear as a type of feeling has different practical results in different contexts, each individual fear could very well include a specific desire or aversion as a component.
G. draws on the emotions elicited by drama to show that the desires involved in feelings are indeterminate. If sympathy always meant having a desire to help, then, G. claims, tragic sympathy would be impossible; we do not run on stage to help characters in distress, after all. This argument, however, does not address the possibility that our fully determinate desire to help is simply made otiose by the context. Our sympathy may be genuine, but since we know the real Philoctetes is not on stage, our desire is frustrated. Here, one may begin to worry that G.'s preference for the account of feelings in the Rhetoric over De anima distorts her picture. While the former is more detailed, it seems clear the latter matches the view of the ethical treatises better, where feelings and desires go hand in hand.
3. Character virtue and thoughtfulness concern both goals and means
In Chapter 4 G. argues that thoughtfulness and character virtue alike shape the correctness of our goals as well as the means we take to achieve them. One difficulty for this view arises from passages in the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle seems to posit a clear division of labour between character virtue – which makes our goals correct – and thoughtfulness – which makes us select the right means, passages relied upon especially by Humean interpreters such as J. Moss (Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire [2012]). G. is right to say that these passages do not entail that thoughtfulness concerns means alone, since the specification of a given action as a means entails a certain conception of the goal pursued.
A deeper difficulty arises for the other half of the claim, namely that character virtue shapes the correct selection of means. Virtue and virtuous feelings certainly constrain what options occur to the deliberator, an Aristotelian idea developed by J. McDowell in his notion of silencing (The Monist [1979]). Still, there is an asymmetry between untenable actions ruled out and appropriate actions selected. Finding the latter requires reasoning and discernment, which is precisely why exercising character virtue demands thoughtfulness. Only the virtuous person will select the right means, but this fact is due proximately to their thoughtfulness, not to their feelings.
Overall, the volume is a thoughtful and well-written monograph on Aristotle's views of virtue, feeling and choice. Its distinctive claims, however, require more support – and perhaps also more explicit attention to competing alternatives – than its relatively slim chapters offer.
