Virtue, Spirit and the Enviable Life
The immoralist poses a serious threat to contemporary ethics. None of the major moral paradigms—Kantianism, Utilitarianism or even the more recent theories of virtue-based ethics—can currently answer the question, “why be moral?” They must all assume that a commitment to morality precedes moral discussion. However, while this assumption probably proves correct for the vast majority of writers in the field of ethics, the question of rational justification for morality remains a fundamental problem on the level of pure theory. Further, characters like Callicles from Plato’s Gorgias, people who actually do engage in a degree of reflection on morality but come up with a cynical immoralism, must be taken seriously in the absence of ultimately compelling reasons for adopting an ethical viewpoint.
A possible solution to this central problem, the problem of morality’s justification, may be found if we can establish a connection between virtuous living and the good or enviable life. I will argue that such a connection can be made, first through existential reflection and second, through examining a newly emerging concept of spiritual wellness. The idea that the good life must contain a component of meaning is one that Viktor Frankl develops in his highly acclaimed book Man’s Search for Meaning. I will argue that cultivation of the virtues, and thereby cultivation of morality, can be a way in which the individual can create meaning for herself. But even further, what Frankl calls “the will to meaning” is ultimately part of the human spiritual faculty, part of that within us that would ground a sense of life purpose in meeting the needs of the larger human community. Spirituality, it turns out, seems to encompass both the need for meaning and a distinctive component of virtuous self-development (where virtue is understood—on Christine Swanton’s view at least—as a tendency toward meeting the demands of the world).
The attractiveness spirituality holds for all humans lies in an idea increasingly popular in psychology and psychiatry—that spiritual wellness is a central component of overall mental health. The spiritual faculty is by no means restricted to religious practices (although historically religion was perhaps the only outlet for spiritual expression), but a study of religion can help us outline the basic human needs and desires that make this faculty so important. I will engage in one such study over the course of my paper—the study of divine-law theory.
The logical strength of the divine law lies in its promises of punishments and rewards after death. Since humans can all be expected to operate on some degree of self-interest, divine law theory can motivate all human beings through promising rewards for moral behavior and punishments for vice. Where such a clearly defined concept of moral judgement in an afterlife is no longer plausible, it is conceivable that spiritual rewards (such as mental health, peace of mind and moral satisfaction) in this life can motivate the individual to cultivate the virtues.
PART ONE: SECULAR ETHICS AND THE IMMORALIST’S CHALLENGE
For over a millennium, the strictures of Christendom shielded Western moral philosophy from cynicism and doubt. There was little cause for angst about the basic nature of right behavior; a good act was an act done in accordance with the will of God revealed in the Scriptures and interpreted by the Church. Were anyone to pose the question, “why be moral?” the simplest peasant could answer it in a heartbeat: one obeys the moral law of God because one’s actions in this life determine his status in the next.
Thus the moral skeptic did not worry philosophers of the Middle Ages. A certain optimistic, or at least self-assured, outlook on the purpose and fundamental nature of right action pervaded the intellectual scene. Man knew why he must strive for goodness; it was in his own best interest. Perhaps this security and moral peace of mind was Western religion’s greatest achievement. Any serious scrutiny of modern moral philosophy, when contrasted with the self-assured divine law Theology of its ancestors, reveals just how much was accomplished through faith in the Dogmas—and how much was lost in the unraveling of the Judeo-Christian cosmos.
Modern science cared little for the existential and moral groundwork man needed for his self-evaluation. It charged ahead blindly, valuing nothing but the impersonal truths and observable data of nature’s repeatable processes. Time and again, with steady, devastating precision, Science undermined the intellectual comforts man had amassed for himself through faith. In pursuing science, man had wanted only to understand God’s creation, but that creation betrayed him through its cold, mechanical laws and random biological processes. Scientific inquiry began as a pursuit that accorded with the laws and demands of God, but it came to strip Man not only of his God but also of his perceived reason for being. Three and a half centuries after Copernicus found Man revolving firmly around the sun, Nietzsche found him “straying through an infinite nothing.”
Moral philosophy continued of course, even after its divine roots were dislodged. Kant attempted to build an entire system on humanity’s a priori knowledge of a moral law. But in the end, even he could not completely avoid theological dualisms in establishing a cogent system.
“The [moral] law must lead us to affirm the possibility of the…highest good (i.e. happiness proportional to morality). […] This it can do on the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to that effect. It must postulate the existence of God as necessarily belonging to the possibility of the highest good” (Edwards/Beck 311; Kant 124).
Kant found the God who in an afterlife distributes happiness proportionate to virtue still an indispensable concept in the formulation of coherent moral theory.
In her highly influential paper “Modern Moral Philosophy” G.E.M. Anscombe elaborates on the inseparability of a concept of God from the idea of a moral law:
“To have a law conception of ethics is to hold that what is needed for conformity with the virtues, failure in which is the mark of being bad qua man…that what is needed for this is required by divine law. Naturally it is not possible to have such a conception unless you believe in God as a law-giver…but if such a concept is dominant for many centuries and is then given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of “obligation”, of being bound or required as by a law should remain though it had lost its root” (31).
Thus, not only is it philosophically impossible to have a moral law without a Lawgiver, the very concept of morality as a law stems from the West’s monotheistic heritage. And the idea has proven durable. Even without a Lawgiver concept it is psychologically possible, perhaps psychologically necessary, for the foundationless pursuit of moral philosophy to carry on.
The consequentialists have tried to skirt the messy dilemmas of modern moral philosophy by evaluating actions based on their consequences—not on some abstract law. By compiling a list of acceptable results and saying simply that right action is that which produces such and such a consequence, these theorists have purportedly eliminated the Lawgiver problem; you do not need a Lawgiver if you do not have a law. But how then does one understand right action? One cannot, as there is nothing intrinsically right about right action. We are never fully justified in prescribing any act in any situation, since all we can cite is the probability of such and such an action producing such and such a result. But suppose an agent does act based on her perception of the highest chance of achieving a good consequence, and suppose that by some twist of fate the result is bad. All we can say in this case is that the agent has behaved immorally in failing to bring about moral results, and Anscombe calls such ideas “stupid.”
There is an even more fundamental problem with the consequentialist’s theory—and indeed with all secular moral systems. The concept of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people (or for that matter of Kant’s Categorical Imperative) may not appeal to the immoralist. Modern (secular) moral philosophy is incapable of making it worth one’s while to be moral, since it provides no afterlife in which the agent is rewarded, and it gives no guarantee of happiness in this life. So it becomes fair to ask the question, “why is the moral life preferable to the immoral one?” And it is this question that philosophy has not yet managed to answer.
Eudaimonia: A possible foundation for virtue
Anscombe argues that though we feel we must do moral philosophy, “it is not profitable for us at present…until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking” (26). She does not just leave it there, however. Instead she takes a stab at defining the issues this adequate philosophy of psychology will address. One major task of this (future) endeavor will be to provide an account of what she terms “flourishing”—a rough translation of Aristotle’s eudaimonia. It connotes a sort of objective happiness.
In recent years, certain philosophers have rejected action-based or social justice-based approaches to morality in favor of a much older approach, one that draws heavily on Aristotelian ethics. In the classical conception, moral theory begins with the question, “how should we live?” This approach examines the agent before drawing conclusions about moral action—asking, what are good or praiseworthy character traits, and how do those traits fit into the enviable life? Only once we have answered this problem can we define right action.
For these philosophers, the key to living morally is to possess certain character traits labeled “virtues.” Those who possess the virtues will act rightly because they act out of virtuous character; right action is defined as “what a virtuous agent would characteristically… do in the circumstances” (Hursthouse 28). These virtue ethicists rely fairly consistently on a standard list of virtues that most members of polite Western society will agree on: justice, humility, self-control, courage, charity, and others. Thus, reaching a consensus on how a virtuous character would behave in simple moral situations should not be difficult in the context of developed Western society (applied virtue ethics would be something of a task however, as it would deal with real-life moral dilemmas). Virtue ethicists today are more or less agreed on the list of morally desirable traits, but they understand fully that this list does not hold for all cultures at all times (for instance, Aristotle’s morality included elements that contemporary sensibilities would deem repugnant—like elitism and sexism). What virtue ethics must provide, then, is a non-culturally relative theory of what makes a trait a virtue.
For Rosalind Hursthouse, a defining characteristic of a virtue is that it allows the agent to achieve eudaimonia. She makes the following claims:
"(1) The virtues benefit their possessor. (They enable her to flourish, to be, and live a life that is, eudaimon)
(2) The virtues make their possessor a good human being. (Human beings need the virtues in order to live well, to flourish as human beings, to live a characteristically good, eudaimon, life.)" (Hursthouse 167)
Eudaimonia seems to be construed here as possessing an inseparable component of virtue—and vice versa. Virtue not only benefits its possessor; it makes one “characteristically good”—able to function as a moral contributor to the human community. For Hursthouse, then, a trait must meet the criteria of both (1) and (2) in order to be considered a virtue.
Hursthouse justifies the claim “the virtues benefit their possessor” by presenting the idea that the virtuous life is the “best bet” for happiness. In other words, all else being equal, the virtuous agent has a better chance at happiness (eudaimona) than the vicious one. She cites as an example the benefits of honesty:
“(i) [Being honest is] so much easier than being dishonest; you don’t have to keep a constant guard on your tongue and worry about the details of what you should say—mostly you just tell the truth. Lying is usually so pointless and silly. People know and you just look a fool, trying to pretend that you never make mistakes or are admirable when you’re not.”
So since the virtue of honesty is more reliable and “easier” to operate under than the vice of dishonesty, even a self-interested person should want to be honest in order to provide herself with the greatest chance for happiness. Additionally, this virtue also renders its possessor a good person in the context of a community:
“(ii) [Honesty] plays such an important role in human life; it enables human beings to rely on each other, trust each other and form intimate relationships, learn from each other, do science, run various beneficial and/or worthwhile institutions effectively” (168).
Where (i) stresses the importance of honesty for one’s personal well being, (ii) deals with honesty’s role in human relationships.
Hursthouse claims that virtue must be defined in both spheres (i) and (ii), which are instances of (1) and (2) respectively. Her central claim in this line of reasoning involves unifying these premises with (3): “[(1) and (2)] are interrelated” (167)—a fact she hopes to illustrate with the honesty example in (i) and (ii). While (i) deals with virtue’s direct effect on a person’s wellness and success in life—moving to discuss this in the context of relationships with others—(ii) describes the individual from the perspective of the big picture human community. Honesty is the individual’s “best bet” for happiness (or flourishing) and is therefore good for the collective of individuals; conversely, since it benefits the community, it will likely benefit the agent.
A glaring difficulty in Hursthouse’s view immediately presents itself: we cannot reasonably conclude that the immoralist shares our conception of the enviable life. What if the difficulties of vice cited by Hursthouse fail to faze or deter the immoralist? Suppose he decides that telling the truth in a specific incident will be much less pleasant than covering it over. Perhaps this is simply a case of poor perception; the vicious agent doesn’t know what is good for him. But suppose the agent lies and in so doing averts harm to himself. Can Hursthouse truly argue that it would have benefited the agent to have told the truth? No, and she concedes as much; virtue only increases the agent’s probability of flourishing. But the example remains a problem. It seems that if action is to be based upon the greatest chance for happiness, then an agent should evaluate his actions on a case-by-case basis.
Hursthouse’s (and Aristotle’s) concept of eudaimonia does not simply involve some loosely-construed idea of happiness, however. It is rather happiness or well being viewed from the perspective of both society and the individual. The question “why be honest?” really encompasses two different queries for Hursthouse. First one must ask, “what is good, for me, about my being honest?” Then, “why does honesty make its possessor a good human being” (168)? The assumption here is that the enviable life includes not only happiness (material or otherwise) but moral excellence as well. Thus Hursthouse is catering to a certain kind of self-interest, a motive not shared by everyone, in positing that the virtues benefit their possessor. She gives up on trying to morally motivate the “mafioso drug baron” who says, “I don’t care about being a good human being, I want to be a good drug baron” (194). Her audience is rather those who view the good life as containing a degree of moral excellence—the agent for whom, in the words of L.W. Sumner, “the conviction that [he has] tried to be a good and decent person [is] a source of great fulfillment” (Sumner 33).
For Hursthouse, the primary question is not so much, “why be virtuous?” but rather, “what is virtue in the first place?” And in this context, the immoralist is irrelevant to her project, as he will be presumably unconcerned with answering this latter question. But perhaps the immoralist isn’t so morally unreflective as we might hope; perhaps he is not as easily turned away from this discussion as Hursthouse makes him out to be. Consider this statement by Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias:
“The truth of it…is like this: wantonness, lack of discipline, and freedom, if available in good supply, are excellence and happiness; as for these other things, these fancy phrases, these contracts of men that go against nature, they’re worthless nonsense!” (Cooper/Hutchinson p. 835, Gorgias 492c; emphasis mine).
In this statement we have the somewhat crude makings of an immoralist list of virtues, a list based entirely on what the agent happens to want. What Callicles wants—namely “wantonness, lack of discipline, and freedom”—is clearly not conducive to Aristotle’s eudaimonia. But should we view Callicles as being wholly unconcerned with morality, simply because his principles are driven by his appetites? Or is it possible that we could we take his claim to be a legitimate alternative to Hursthouse’s view of virtue?
In the Gorgias, Socrates challenges Callicles’ vision of the good life not merely by denouncing it as morally repugnant; he insinuates further, and more importantly, that Callicles is genuinely mistaken—not morally, but rationally. “Listen to me and follow me where I am, and when you’ve come here you’ll be happy both during this life and the next” (527c). Callicles’ error, according to Socrates, is not that he is self-interested but that he has a mistaken notion of what will lead to his own happiness. Socrates asserts rather that his conception of virtue, when rightly pursued, provides the most benefit to the agent. For the purposes of this paper, I will assume that there is no good reason to believe that Socrates was right. While the classical list of virtues differs from that of contemporary virtue ethicists, the structure and method of constructing that list has remained the same (Hursthouse 13). Therefore Callicles’ challenge remains relevant.
Hursthouse’s initial project of identifying the virtues cannot then proceed without also answering, (a) “why be moral?” To ask, (b) “what are the virtues?” is to ask, (c) “what traits should the agent cultivate?” The answer to (c) is, (I) “cultivate list of virtues X”—a moral imperative which needs justification. If we assume that the essence of morality is contained in (I), in cultivating the virtues, (a) becomes an inescapable query. To ask, “why be moral?” is to ask, “why cultivate X?” In order to justify one’s answer to (c), and therefore to (b), one must answer (a). And as it stands now, (a), as posed by Callicles, remains unanswered on a post-Christian worldview.
Self-interest as a Moral Motive
While the dilemma posed by the immoralist remains unsolved, we can postulate what a viable solution might look like. As was shown above, the question “what is virtue?” can be rephrased, “what traits should humans cultivate?” The answer, “humans ought to cultivate x traits,” implies a notion of what constitutes an “ought.” While every system has attempted to account for the concept of “ought,” it is only the consequentialists who can deal with it completely. We can easily understand “ought” in the context of a goal: “one ought to do a in order to bring about c.” I intend to argue that it cannot be understood in any other way. Anscombe writes, “the moral sense of ‘ought’ ought to be jettisoned” (26). I understand this to mean that any “ought” or obligation statement that does not invoke a desirable consequence is meaningless. For example, the statement, “you ought to love your neighbor as yourself” leads inexorably to the question, “why?” Any response along the lines of, “because it is right,” has not actually answered anything apart from some universal standard of right action. And all hope for such a standard (strictly as stated, at least) died with the Judeo-Christian worldview.
The consequentialist, as we saw earlier, cannot truly talk about right action—only right consequences. But in a way this restriction, although definitely a problem for consequentialism, applies to divine-law theory as well. The advantage that the divine law has over other systems of motivation lies not in any mysterious inherent worth it gives to actions but rather in its linking of specific actions with eternal rewards. Whereas with secular consequentialism one can only talk about the probability of action a resulting in good consequence c, under the divine law system, God ensures that the right action is met with the right reward. Thus divine law theory might be viewed as a sort of action-based consequentialism.
Divine law theory does give right action a certain moral worth by rewarding the agent for righteous deeds (“great is your reward in heaven”—Matthew 5:12). But for humans, the real worth lies in the reward, not the deed itself; this system appeals to an aspect of universal human nature, as we can reasonably expect every agent to be self-interested to some degree. An “ought” statement makes perfect sense in light of divine justice: you ought to do a in order to ensure your eternal reward. Further, if you fail to do a, or if you instead do wicked act w, your sin will be punished (barring, for the sake of argument, a concept of grace or atonement). Every human being can relate to this system of unambiguous punishments and rewards, and its logical strength in dictating morality remains unparalleled in Western philosophy.
What a moral philosophy needs, then, if it is to win over the immoralist, is a system that rewards virtuous action itself—a system that provides the benefits of religion without demanding dogmatic belief. Morality must make it worth the agent’s while to be virtuous, just as the Christian God makes it worthwhile to be righteous, in order to reclaim a stable foundation. One might object that it runs against moral intuition for the agent to base her moral choices on her own interests. After all, is not morality inherently others-centered—concerned with those things that transcend personal interest? Perhaps. But in a way, my discussion precedes morality. Once the individual adopts the moral point of view, self-interest is no longer a prime consideration in her evaluation of choices. I am concerned with asking, “why adopt that moral view to begin with?” And in order to find a rational justification for becoming moral, we must appeal to a value that every human shares. As far as I can tell, only self-interest fits that criterion.
The extent to which self-interest manifests itself in various individuals is open to debate. It might be that for certain people in certain situations, self interest is a poor description; perhaps some other term would better describe their motivations. I intend to avoid this debate. In the context of this paper, self-interest means the motive out of which an agent acts to fulfill her perception of what will most benefit her (this includes, but is not limited to, Hursthouse’s eudaimonistic self interest).
While being careful to avoid moral egoism, the thesis that every action is selfishly motivated, I would like to assume that self-interest is present to some degree within every human being. In any case, the truly altruistic or naturally moral agent (if there is such a thing) is not the target of concern in my discussion on moral motives. It is the naturally self-interested individual who needs motivating. But I think an honest assessment of human nature reveals that characteristically virtuous traits—such as love, compassion, sympathy and duty—factor only intermittently into the agent’s reasons for acting; no one’s perfect after all. And yet the presence of self-interest can be reliably expected to some degree in every situation facing every human being. {1}
What is still needed, however, is a view of the good life that every rational being can agree on. While it would be a tall order to postulate such a thing, it would be absolutely necessary in order for ethics to become a fully justifiable activity. The immoralist’s question will resurface: “does the good life necessarily entail virtue?” If we can define the good life as a life of virtue —and by defining it demonstrate its desirability to every rational person—we can posit a universal morality that transcends culture and time. We can find a meaningful use for “ought” statements because we will have discovered the logical equivalent of the divine law.
PART TWO: THE GOOD LIFE AND THE DEMANDS OF THE WORLD
Even the most cursory overview of the various objects of human value, both around the world and throughout history, should dispel all hope of finding universal agreement on a single conception of the enviable life (let alone a conception that includes virtue). The immoralist’s attitude is just one of many problems such a project would face, as Hursthouse again reminds us:
“The immoralist who recognizes that the virtuous are enjoying their lives may dismiss their enjoyments and satisfactions as paltry, or pathetic, or despicable, or, at the very least, not for him; from his point of view, that is how they look in contrast to the sorts of things he enjoys and finds satisfying” (188).
The religious fundamentalist values her beliefs above all, while the skeptical scientist places complete trust in testable methods of inquiry. A father finds hope and stability in committing to his family, while a teenage girl runs away from conservative parents in the name of finding herself. Where the bohemian aesthete—in recognition of life’s brevity—will recklessly chase stimulating experiences, the militant Islamist will destroy his life and the lives of others for the sake of political revenge. There may be as many variations on the good life concept as there are people.
Presumably, then, I have couched the central problem of morality in a way that would render the project of dealing with it doomed to fail. If we need either universal agreement or a divine law in order to proceed with a philosophically grounded morality, and if neither is possible, why pretend any longer that we can actually do ethics? Either I have poorly defined the central issue, or self-delusion is the best moral philosophy can hope to accomplish.
In a way, I have in fact insufficiently defined the central question of morality. The good life requirement, that we must agree on the nature of the enviable life before we can properly motivate morality, simply cannot apply meaningfully to the real world; such expectations are unrealistic and therefore unreasonable. Thus the rigid terms in which I have couched the problem must be softened considerably if we are to proceed on the issue in a productive way. Morality has never been cut and dry, and it would be foolish to simplify it in such a way that we are forced to demand the impossible.
But perhaps all we are left with, then, is self-deception. On the level of pure logic, the issue does seem to require the impossible of us. And if it really is important that we come up with workable answers to the questions of metaethics, perhaps we truly must stoop to irrational and delusional thinking. The choice seems a dismal one: we can either choose to ignore the fact that morality has lost its foundation (and Anscombe accuses many philosophers of doing just that), or we can choose to adopt a relativist perspective that would acknowledge all other moralities (even those of the immoralist) as equally valid to our own.
I for one am unwilling to accept either choice. Relativism provides no answer to the basic human need for moral guidance, and self-deception can lead to all sorts of evil (after all “evil” systems of thought such as racism and Nazism rely heavily on willful ignorance; history has shown that humans are capable of anything if they can only delude themselves sufficiently). However, perhaps we may make a less forceful requirement about the good life that would include virtue but would not require universal agreement. While it seems futile to talk about that which every rational being agrees on, perhaps we could establish a view of the good life that every rational being should agree on. Rational people can and do disagree on moral issues, and, further, simply because a person is rational doesn’t mean that they have an adequate understanding of what is best for them. Thus, shifting the question to what is genuinely best for the individual lends a certain objectivity to the debate (however difficult it may be to answer). What we need is a concept of the good life that can be viewed separately from what rational agents perceive to be the good life. And I will argue that such a concept can be discovered through research on health—particularly mental and spiritual health.
Let me pause here and acknowledge that behind my discussion thus far is the implicit assumption that when we arrive at an objective notion of the enviable life, we will find in it a component of virtue. I have at this point provided no good reason for this, and, in fact, there are well-articulated arguments for rejecting such assumptions (Hursthouse 193-194). However, I intend to argue that the human spiritual faculty contains both necessary elements for human well being and a certain requirement of virtue. Many in the mental health field are finding that spiritual health is key to mental health, which surely must figure prominently in a conception of the enviable life. If this line of reasoning is sound, it will support the Socratic contention that the immoralist is genuinely mistaken in erecting an appetite-based morality.
Meaning in the Good Life
Viktor Frankl asserts, “man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life” (105). If he is right then we can partially define the good life as a life that holds meaning for the agent. But what does this mean? Presumably a racist would find great meaning in belonging to what she perceives as a superior race; a corrupt businessperson could find meaning in acquiring wealth and power at all costs. Do these sorts of people live meaningful lives on Frankl’s view? If so, it would seem that the concept of meaning lends little help in trying to construe the good life as inherently virtuous.
What Frankl means by “meaning” is somewhat complex, and it is in fact not at all clear that his idea of meaning entails virtue. Nevertheless, a statement like his, that “the primary motivation” for human action has been found, warrants looking into if we are to define the good life. On his view, humans all possess a “will to meaning”—a drive roughly analogous to (but for Frankl, more important than) Freud’s pleasure principle (104). Humans express this will to meaning through activity and achievement—through setting life goals and meeting them. Frankl asserts: “mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish” (110).
However, one’s work cannot be viewed as inherently meaningful. Recall Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus,” which describes the man sentenced by the gods to endless, pointless toil. The correlation is drawn between the meaninglessness of Sisyphus’ situation and that of all human endeavors. Of course, this problem of meaning was very easily answered on the dogmatic worldview, but the dismantling of the Christian cosmos greatly endangered (Western) humanity’s sense of purpose. If we are not the pinnacle of God’s creation but rather the products of blind biological forces, how can we see our lives as having meaning? Frankl asserts that things need not be this dismal, that humans can experience meaning in ways that do not require a theology. Further, he shares Camus’ contention that while existential crises can arise from an absence of an inherent life purpose, humans possess the ability to create meaning for themselves. “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked” (113).
However, in America at least, the human situation is often one of existential frustration and distress. Frankl has diagnosed a “collective neurosis” in modern culture that he calls “the existential vacuum”—“a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning” (131). He originally did his research on this topic in the 1960’s, when he taught both in Europe and the United States. Where sixty percent of his American students reported symptoms of the vacuum, among his European students that figure was only twenty-five percent. He uses Schopenhauer’s pessimistic evaluation of humanity to shed light on the unique emptiness in the American psyche: “mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom” (111). He associates the existential vacuum with boredom.
“Let us consider, for instance, ‘Sunday neurosis,’ that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them” (112).
I think we can fairly conclude from this analysis that consumerism and the insatiable drive for material success (prevalent in middle-class Americans) betray misconstrued values that have no place in a well-reasoned conception of the good life. We can easily imagine the workaholic, ambition-crazed businessperson as Plato’s immoralist reincarnated. Such a character throws himself into fulfilling his lust for power and achievement, but when he is left by himself—without people to manipulate—he has few resources with which to create meaning and purpose. Presumably, contemporary moral philosophers would view this immoralist’s approach to living as repugnant (however common it may be); but this immoralist does more than offend generally accepted ideas of morality. If we accept Frankl’s psychiatric viewpoint, we may view this immoralist’s life outlook as definitively unhealthy and therefore wrongheaded. On its surface, in showing a connection between the meaningless life and the vicious life, this example may hint at a positive correlation between the good life and the life of virtue. However, much more of Frankl’s theory must be taken into account before we can move to denounce all vicious living as pointless.
Frankl asserts that the individual can create meaning in three ways: “(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering” (115). He ties these principles to specific experiences in his own life and the human experience in general.
The first way involves overcoming the lack of inherent or transcendent value in one’s work. For Camus’ Sisyphus, meaning is found in abandonment to the task at hand. Sisyphus ceases questioning the ultimate purpose of his work and simply decides that “all is well.” His task, like all human projects, does contain an immediate end: he must roll a large rock to the top of a hill. When the rock reaches the top, it rolls automatically to the bottom again—rendering the entire endeavor absurd; but Sisyphus counts that fact unimportant. He has simply decided to throw all his energy into reaching the top of the hill. In the moment of exertion, the destination is all that matters for him. And he reaches it again and again, throughout eternity. If with every trip up the hill he is able to throw his entire being into his task, then, Camus asserts, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” And on Frankl’s view Sisyphus has indeed found a meaning to his life.
The second way of creating meaning is to have an experience of something excellent or beautiful, like art or—most importantly to Frankl—love (115). He writes:
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
Love, therefore, can be a great source of meaning, for it contains an inherent purpose; the goal of love is to enable the self-creation of the other. One therefore finds meaning in enabling another to find meaning, and this can only be accomplished through love. And by love Frankl means a specifically non-sexual phenomenon: “love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.”
The last path to meaning that Frankl cites is the one that was forced upon him as a holocaust victim: the way of suffering. He writes, “when we are no longer able to change a situation…we are challenged to change ourselves” (116). Meaning therefore can be found when we have nowhere to retreat but to the raw truth of our being. And it is in seeing ourselves for who we are, at this core level—without banal amusements or bustling activity—that for Frankl forces us to either discover a meaning or give up on life. While Frankl cites many examples of men in places like Auschwitz who simply lost all will to live, he also claims—based largely on his personal experience—that “in some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning” (117).
For Frankl, the good life, insofar as it is construed to be a life with meaning—a life worth living—is possible in nearly every circumstance. His contention that a will to meaning underlies human action rests not merely on philosophical speculation. Rather, Frankl’s experiences both as an inmate in Nazi death camps and as a clinical therapist have given him ample empirical data to support his conclusions. Of course, his theory, which he named logotherapy, is only one among many psychological paradigms that have arisen in the last century. But much of what he claims is grounded in concrete experience and observation, and, perhaps more interestingly, it fits soundly into the Continental paradigm established by Nietzsche and Sartre.
Frankl illustrates the superiority of a will-to-meaning or existential approach over the Freudian pleasure principle, perhaps logotherapy’s most direct rival, by citing a case in which a woman could not achieve orgasm during sex. She had been sexually abused as a child, but Frankl contended that this was not her main issue (contrary to the contentions of much contemporary psychological literature). Rather it was the very fact that during sex she focused almost completely on herself, on achieving orgasm, that in the long run made her frigid. In actuality orgasm itself had no meaning for her—in fact, pleasure in all its forms can only be a by-product of meaningful activity; it exists to highlight the inherent worth of the object of action, not to serve as an end in itself. “When her attention was refocused toward the proper object, i.e., the partner, orgasm established itself spontaneously” (126).
So an answer could then be given to a certain formulation of the immoralist’s challenge, to the view that would idolize pleasure as the chief end of living. According to Frankl’s research, pleasure is greatly decreased when it is the sole aim of one’s actions. Only through truly meaningful activity can humans experience the full satisfactions offered by things like sexuality. However, the immoralist does not always idolize pleasure in the same way that the woman in Frankl’s frigidity case did. We might conceive of the “enlightened immoralist,” who is adept at creating meaning in one or all of the three ways specified by Frankl but who shows outright contempt for the greater needs of the human community.
Saddam Hussein devoted himself to building an Arab empire, and this quest surely lent some sort of meaning to his life. He had a self-proclaimed life mission, and all was permissible in its attainment. No person, however close to him, could possibly become more important than the central drive that gave him purpose. He found meaning not only in devoting himself to achievement but in the grandeur of his imperial dreams—in the ancient tradition of Mesopotamian emperors that made him feel part of something larger than himself. Examples like Hussein’s pose a serious problem to the quest for a unified notion of the good life. We may view Hussein as being without morals and without the most basic human decencies, but we cannot view his life as lacking meaning (in the same sense that Camus’ Sisyphus did not lack meaning). Sumner calls this type of example “a compelling reason to think that no objective theory about the nature of welfare could possibly be correct” (25). Frankl’s “will-to-meaning” theory may be relevant to the good life, but it by itself is unable to give us an account of how the virtues factor into that life. Thus, if the good life contains an inseparable element of virtue, we must define it as more than simply a meaningful life.
Frankl’s theory nevertheless remains very relevant to the task of finding virtue within the good life. Whether or not one accepts his contention that meaning is humanity’s primary volitional drive, it can be successfully argued that a concept of the good life should contain a component of meaning and purpose. And what is the quest for virtue if not a quest for finding meaning in virtue? Much of the language Frankl employs bears significant similarities to the language of virtue ethicists.
For instance, Frankl stresses both the importance of the individual’s taking responsibility for creating meaning and the necessity of love in relationships. Christine Swanton similarly capitalizes on both love and creativity as underlying forces in the virtuous life. On her system, self-creation is crucial to the quest for virtue—for responding out of concern for the human community: “creativity’s function is to serve [the promotion of a value] and thereby to promote the value of the highest cultural and aesthetic ideals” (242). Creativity is necessary for virtue because the very nature of a virtue for Swanton is that it is “a disposition to meet the demands of the world” (27); and the agent must find creative solutions to the problems these demands present. But even further, creativity is necessary for the individual to become virtuous—that is, the virtuous agent must create the disposition to meet the demands of the world within herself (244). And Frankl can lend significant insight to this dynamic by describing the individual as searching for meaning in this act of self-creation.
Similarly, Frankl’s idea of a second path to meaning, the path of love, parallels Swanton’s view of love as a necessary trait in cultivating the virtues. Where Frankl puts stress on the personal relationship between two humans, Swanton emphasizes the need for “universal love” in meeting the demands of the world. However what she means by this is “not love of humanity as such but a bond (of a certain non-erotic kind) between individual persons” (155). We can see again how Frankl’s will-to-meaning concept can bear relevance to a study of the virtues. The meaningful bond he talks about between two human beings can, on Swanton’s view, be translated into the agent’s universal concern for humanity viewed as a grouping of particular individuals. Thus if we take Frankl and Swanton in tandem, we can see how the individual, through “grasping another”—a universal other—can find meaning in meeting the demands of the world. If the agent is able to create meaning through creating the fundamental elements of virtue in the two ways specified above, then at the very least virtue can play a fundamental role in the enviable life.
But to say that virtue can enter the good life is not sufficient to actually solve the immoralist’s challenge. That is to say, the immoralist could still claim that a good (meaningful) life is possible apart from virtue, and since he is committed to vicious behavior he will not be interested in the sort of good life that includes virtue. Perhaps this is as far as virtue ethics can really go—to say to the immoralist, “you can live just as well, i.e. just as meaningfully, as a virtuous agent; take it or leave it.” I think we can go farther.
Spiritual Health
Anscombe’s idea of developing a philosophical psychology as a basis for assessing morality was a good one. Perhaps it is the only project that has any hope of establishing the virtuous life as the rational life. If the life of optimum mental health is the virtuous life, we can tie morality to an objective notion of the good life. Historically, only religion was able to group virtue with the good life in this way, and historically, spirituality was the domain of religion. However, the fact that spirituality is increasingly seen as a faculty transcending and preceding religion (Thompson, 2002) may also wrest the virtue-good life connection from dogmatism. Current literature on mental health and spirituality, now a serious academic pursuit, contains some extremely interesting discoveries on this subject.
Frankl’s concept of meaning can fit nicely under the general heading of human spirituality—where spirituality is defined separately from any religious or dogmatic set of beliefs. Kaut (2002) defines spirituality as “the summation of diverse aspects of life that collectively gives meaning to each person’s existence” (224). This, of course, would appear to make an analysis of the human psyche like Frankl’s immensely relevant to the study of the human spiritual dimension. While meaning is an innate feature of spirituality, however, the defining characteristics of this aspect of humanity—the characteristics most relevant to ethics and virtue ethics—lie in what the spiritually healthy agent finds meaning in. Chandler and Holden see spirituality as “the innate capacity to, and tendency to seek to, transcend one’s current locus of centricity, which transcendence involves increased knowledge and love” (1992). The relationship between spirituality and existential reflection—and even more excitingly, spirituality and virtue—becomes increasingly clear in this sort of research.
Mahoney and Graci list the character traits that the spiritually healthy person exhibits: “charity, community or connectedness, compassion, forgiveness, hope, meaning, and morality” (1999). Of course, the list of virtues varies from culture to culture, and for that reason I have refrained from trying to come up with such a list in this paper. However, the spiritually healthy individual’s traits are not so culturally fickle, and the fact that these traits happen to line up with the lists of virtues compiled by virtue ethicists is significant. What this suggests is that, in order to cultivate spiritual wellness, one must cultivate the virtues. And we see from Frankl and others that spiritual wellness is immensely important in the mentally healthy life. Chandler and Holden further suggest that spiritual wellness is a fundamental component underlying all other types of wellness—meaning that without a degree of spiritual wellness, the individual is not likely to experience social, physical, or emotional health.
Conclusion
The demands of the world were for years construed to be the demands of God. Our spiritual nature was bound up in the self-explanatory meaning provided by the dogmas, and was therefore devoted to finding a purpose in meeting God’s commands. Now, it would seem, if we accept Swanton’s definition of virtue (and, I think, one would have to accept it to some degree), then our spiritual faculty can still be active in pursuing the demands of the world. This pursuit is a necessary one—one that spiritually healthy and therefore mentally healthy people should accept.
There is a bridge of sorts to be made between that which contributes to personal excellence in virtue and that which caters to the agent’s self interest. My view is that a psychologically sound conception of spirituality can form that bridge. It should be said of course that much more research remains to be done on the question of spirituality. I do little more than suggest its relevance in this paper. It is only recently that “spiritual health” has come to be viewed as a component of mental health, and measuring this faculty is no exact science. We can, however, see the individual as needing certain spiritual elements to be in place to comprise a mentally—and perhaps physically—healthy life. Such a healthy life, I assert, should be desirable to any informed self-interest, and since such a life contains an inseparable component of virtue, it is in fact in the agent’s self interest to be moral.
Endnotes:
{1} I am not saying that self-interest completely motivates the individual in every situation; that is moral egoism. My claim, my assumption, is that it is always possible to appeal to a person’s self-interest—where it is not always possible to appeal to intermittently experienced emotions like sympathy.
Works Cited
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