(Aristotle 9) Human Dignity and Virtue 

We have analogies to Aristotelian thought in our world but below the level of politics and socially fragmented.  Aristotle, I fear, would see most of us as “barbarians,” and not just because we don’t speak Greek but because, like a flower that cannot blossom because planted in desert soil, we have been thrown into a society which, by and large, prevents us from developing an integrated, virtuous character capable of authentic speech and action, a personality that transcends the purely private ego. Basically, human dignity is part achievement and part endowment, like "dignity" in basketball or physics.  Even though a relative few of us achieve great things in particular activities – sports, music, science, engineering, medicine, etc. – and to that extent transcend the merely human, even these people are fragmented, perhaps schizophrenic in a metaphorical sense. For their personality, once it leaves their practice-community, is part of and thus socialized by the larger anti-Aristotelian society. We are overwhelmingly partly at least pre-virtue ego dominated by private desires for external goods and even seeing intrinsic goods as a means to an end – basketball as a means to money, fame, and women. We would not impress Aristotle.

   And Aristotle, impressive as he is, cannot completely impress us. Aristotle had no concept of human dignity. The Greek world he lived in lacked such a concept. The whole world at his time, as far as I know, lacked such a concept. [And our world is in the process of losing it.] I became aware of this early on in my Greek studies. For example, in one of my favorite dialogues by Plato, The Euthyphro, I was disturbed by the incident that led Euthyphro to prosecute his own father for murder (in Athens, anyone could charge anyone else; the judge and jury were the assembly of citizens).

The victim, as a matter of fact, was a certain laborer of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he was employed by us there. Drunk and having been provoked by another one of our household, he slit this man’s throat. So my father bound his feet and hands, threw him into some ditch, and sent a man here to inquire of the interpreter of religious law about what should be done. But during that time he paid no attention to the bound man and neglected him as a murderer and thought nothing of it if he died too, which is in fact what happened, since he died of hunger and cold and his bonds before the messenger returned from the interpreter.

I assumed after reading this that Socrates would approve of what Euthyphro was doing, that the father should answer for the laborer’s death. And it took quite some time before I realized that Socrates – here siding with public opinion – believed that Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father was shameful and impious. It certainly wasn’t a noble deed to leave the laborer to die of exposure in the ditch, but that weighed nothing compared to the impiety of prosecuting your own father (cf. That shalt honour thy father and thy mother). Nobody lost any sleep over the laborer’s death and the insinuation is that Euthyphro can only be using it as a pretext to appear before the Athenians as more righteous than they were and perhaps get back at his father for some wrong done to him, real or imaged. Otherwise, his actions would be unintelligible. Granted the laborer had apparently killed someone in anger. But even such as he is owed justice. I offer this as an illustration of a culture that has no concept of human dignity. That fact that is was a slave society and that women were considered pre-rational as a rule is further proof of this.

    Compare my reaction to the death of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.  I didn’t think that execution was an unjust punishment. But the way it was done and the treatment of the corpse by the mob was inhuman. I later read this view of a witness: “I was convinced Mussolini deserved death ... but there should have been a trial according to law. It was very barbarous.” Moreover, when I read about how the angry mob hung up Mussolini’s body together with the body of his mistress and other fascist party members who had been shot, I was disgusted and actually pitied that evil-doer. This is from Wikipedia:

Their bodies were left in a heap, and by 9:00 a.m. a considerable crowd had gathered. The corpses were pelted with vegetables, spat at, urinated on, shot at and kicked; Mussolini's face was disfigured by beatings. Allied forces began arriving in the city during the course of the morning and an American eyewitness described the crowd as "sinister, depraved, out of control."

Aristotle would probably have considered such behavior vulgar; I consider it – with full understanding of the hatred Mussolini inspired – as evil. That is the difference.

    (Evil done to a person can cause them to lose their soul in hatred and grief – here Dante is brilliant: the scene in the Inferno where Dante comes across two sinners in such close proximity that one is gnawing on the back of the other's neck. Dante offers to tell the sinner's story in the upper world, if the sinner would tell it. He was Count Ugolino, and the soul he feeds upon was Archbishop Ruggieri, who betrayed him in life. Ruggieri imprisoned Ugolino and his four sons in a tower, nailed the doors shut, and starved them all to death. Ugolino is forced to watch his young boys starve one by one. And his hatred for Ruggieri increases with each of his son's death. Once through with his long and passionate tale, Ugolino goes back to feeding on Ruggieri. What a perfect image for how hatred and desire for revenge - even when so understandable - can destroy a soul.)

 

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In "Politics," Aristotle describes a natural hierarchy in which men are naturally superior to women. He argues that men are more rational and suited to rule, while women are more emotional and thus should be ruled. He states, “the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled.” Thus he believed that women’s primary role was in the domestic sphere, as wives and mothers. He viewed the household as a microcosm of the state, with men as the heads of households and women as subordinate partners. Women's primary functions were seen as managing the home and bearing children. In "Generation of Animals," he posited that women are essentially "mutilated males" and that they contribute only the matter to reproduction, while men provide the form and essence. He believed that men’s semen contains the active principle of life, whereas women’s role in reproduction is passive. Finally, he argued that men are more rational and logical, while women are more emotional and less capable of rational thought. This belief influenced his view that men should govern and women should be governed.   It also clearly implies that – all things being equal – men have more human dignity than women: that is, men are (in general) more likely to become fully human. (I already mentioned his views about natural slavery somewhere.)

 

    Thomas Aquinas adopted many of Aristotle's views on women, particularly the ideas of natural hierarchy, biological inferiority, and distinct roles in society. He integrated these views into his theological framework, reinforcing the belief in male superiority while also acknowledging the spiritual equality of men and women in the eyes of God. Well, at least that. But another example of how Aristotle and Christianity make difficult bedfellows. I think this did untold damage in blocking out God's light from the world.

  It’s not just that the science behind this is wrong. As a scientist, he would presumably accept a better explanation of the data as known to science today. The important point is that human dignity – here I use the term anachronistically – can only be a potential and an achievement for Aristotle. Practically it is something only few can aspire to. Most of us lack full human dignity. Our value as human beings is a function of our character, of developing our highest potentials. Accidents of birth and socialization are decisive. That is not how most of us think.

 

. . .

 

Modern Aristotelians like MacIntyre or Nussbaum (from very different angles: MacIntyre is at least sympathetic to Thomism; Nussbaum is a kind of left-liberal) want to reconceptualize what is valuable in Aristotle in a modern context: that is, a context in which all human beings are thought to have human dignity just by virtue of being human. This is valuable, this attempt. In a worldly sense, Aristotle is right. But if there is nothing but this worldly sense, life would turn out to be a horrible thing, at least for all the chaff that gets burned.

   Still it is like trying to harmonize two different scales. I think we constantly go back and forth between them. Sometimes we judge people from an Aristotelian standpoint. “None of the players care about the name on the front of the jersey,” is a common criticism of the University of Kentucky basketball program these days. That means, they are nothing but private individuals with self-gain on their mind; the program and its good mean nothing to them. That is Aristotelian. And a headline from The Guardian today reads: “The brutality and inhumanity of Israel’s assault on Gaza is no surprise. It’s just what was promised.” That makes sense against a morality based on human dignity (as does the condemnation of the Hamas atrocities of October 7).

  I think both frameworks are necessary. It’s a matter of working it out in practice. But whenever there is a conflict between them, human dignity must win out. “Morality” – a word I am not overly fond of – is predicated on human dignity, on the idea of a shared common humanity. To a worldly naturalist like Aristotle (and many people today) this common humanity is not visible. To me it surfaces in the (different) kinds of evil done by Hamas and the right-wing Israeli government. It shows itself in the mutilated body of a child. That is not sentimental. That is reality showing itself. Hamas and the right-wing Israeli government – standing for a multitude of other cases – are just blind to it. Hate can blind. Hatred is a form of Hell. A soul cut off from reality. But even if the destruction of Gaza is motivated by “rational” security concerns – like Cato the Elder of Rome when he insisted at the end of every Senate meeting that "Carthage must be destroyed" – it is just a different form of Hell.

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

This dimension of good and evil goes deeper than anything the worldly Aristotle could conceive of.