virtue is knowledge

Hegeler Institute

VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGEAuthor(s): Laurence D. HoulgateReviewed work(s):Source: The Monist, Vol. 54, No. 1, Virtue and Moral Goodness (January, 1970), pp. 142-153Published by: Hegeler InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27902167 .Accessed: 31/01/2012 04:45

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VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE

Most people think that knowledge has neither strength nor

authority nor power of command; that though a man may have it, it can be overpowered-by anger, by pleasure and pain, sometimes

by love, often by fear-as though it were some poor slave, to be

dragged about at will by the passions. Is that your view Protagoras? Or would you not rather agree that knowledge is a thing of beauty and power, invincible; that once a man knows good from evil,

nothing on earth can compel him to act against that knowledge Wisdom being sufficient to his aid?

Protagoras 352b-c

I. Although there has been considerable recent dispute as to what Socrates meant by saying that Virtue is Knowledge,1 if the claim is, as it is sometimes taken to be, that knowledge of the essential nature of virtue is sufficient for virtuous behavior, then it is only necessary to point out what seem to be quite obvious counter in stances. The fact of moral weakness, coupled with what large num

bers of scientists and lawyers and plain men now believe about the

capacity of human beings for self-control, demonstrates that a man can surely know the good and yet fail to do the virtuous thing.

What, then, is left of the view that Virtue is Knowledge? The traditional interpretation of the maxim certainly makes it

unbelievable. Indeed, its patent falsity ought to make us suspicious. Could Socrates and others who thought it true have been oblivious

to those facts about our moral life to which appeal is usually made

in refuting it? Or are there other interpretations of the maxim

under which it can be made true or at least not so obviously false?

This is the approach taken by other philosophers. They are in

agreement that the maxim is obscure but they believe that it con

iSee John Gould, The Development of Plato's Ethics (Cambridge, 1955)

[hereinafter cited as DPE]; Gregory Vlastos, "Socratic Knowledge and Platonic

'Pessimism,' "

The Philosophical Review, 66 (1957), 227-232; R. E. Allen, "The

Socratic Paradox," Journal of the History of Ideas, 21 (1960), 256-265; G. Santas, "The Socratic Paradoxes," The Philosophical Review, 63 (1964), 147-164.

VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE 143

tains some important insight into the relation of moral knowledge to right conduct. My aim in this paper is (1) to examine several alternative interpretations of the maxim, and (2) to describe the extent to which moral knowledge can be said to bear a logical relation to the notion of right conduct. Although I shall in the end

reject as implausible what I shall describe below as the "strong" claim made by the maxim, there is another "weak" sense in which it is true to say that Virtue is Knowledge. I must caution the reader, however, not to construe my defense of this weaker interpretation of the maxim as in any way exegetical of Socrates. Although I will screen several interpretations of what Socrates meant to say, exegesis is not my primary aim. My aim is to discover what it is about the relation of moral knowledge to right conduct that might make it true to say that Virtue is Knowledge.

II. There are at least two points that a philosopher may wish to make when he claims that Virtue is Knowledge.

a. Knowledge of the (moral) good is both a necessary and a suf ficient condition of right conduct. A man who knows what virtue is will behave in virtuous ways; a man who behaves in virtuous ways has knowledge of virtue.

b. A morally good act has a special claim to rationality. To know

good from evil is to know what sort of acts can be justified and what sort of acts cannot be justified.2

Each of these claims is suggestive and each demands close analysis. That would be a large undertaking. In this paper I shall limit my attention to (a). It would be foolish to deny, however, that there is a connection between (a) and (b). Thus, as we shall discover, there are some philosophers who would argue for the truth of (a) by asserting (b). However, I shall review only one such attempt, for I

think that there is a more general reason why the effort to support

(a) by asserting a form of (b) must ultimately fail.

Second, Virtue is Knowledge has been interpreted in (a) as a

biconditional. This is its usual interpretation, although critical

2This is the interpretation put on the maxim by H. O. Mounce, "Virtue and

the Understanding," Analysis, 27:1 (October, 1967), 11-17. In this essay Mounce is

out to defend the Socratic view against the Empiricist thesis that what is rational as conduct depends entirely on what one desires ("Reason is the slave and not the

master of the passions").

144 LAURENCE D. HOULGATE

attention is normally directed to the first part of the biconditional: a man who knows what virtue is will behave in virtuous ways. I

shall refer to (a) as the "strong" version of the maxim, and discus

sion in sections (III) -

(V) will be restricted to this version. A "weak" version of the maxim will be introduced and defended in

section (VI). Finally, when someone says that Virtue is Knowledge, and he

means what is conveyed in (a), we may be unclear about the status of the claim. That is, we may be unsure whether or not the cases that come readily to mind as possible counter instances have any relevance to the truth of the claim. Is the claim an empirical generalization about human nature, for example? If so, then one who is confronted by cases of moral weakness may simply limit his

generalization and admit that there are exceptions. Such a reaction, of course, gives it away that the maxim is not philosophical. I think it is generally agreed, however, that the claim made by the state

ment that Virtue is Knowledge is unlike the claim that a person who has knowledge of the good will in fact behave in virtuous ways. The claim, that is, if it is to remain philosophically interesting, is to be taken as a conceptual remark. Something is being said about the

concepts of knowledge of the good and virtuous conduct. We have now to look more closely at the character of the conceptual observa tion.

III. Let us begin with the suggestion that Virtue is Knowledge means that if one knows the essential nature, the definition, of virtue or the good, then he will behave in virtuous ways. If we fail to do the courageous, the honest, the unselfish, or the friendly thing

when the circumstances arise and when we have the ability to do so, then we cannot be said to know the essential nature of the good.

Now the usual objection to this interpretation of the maxim is that even if one did know the solution to the philosophical question "What is the nature of virtue?" it is surely not logically impossible to imagine him persisting in evil ways. Indeed, there seems to be no

more of a connection between virtuous conduct and knowledge of the good than there is between virtuous conduct and knowledge of the essential nature of gold. That is, it is just as implausible to

maintain that knowledge of the definition of virtue suffices for right conduct as it would be to maintain that knowledge of the essential nature of gold suffices for right conduct.


The usual response to this line of criticism is that the person who gains knowledge of the essential nature of virtue knows some

thing about virtue that gives him a motive for acting rightly where as knowing the essential nature of gold provides him with no such

motive. Thus, it is suggested that the person who knows what virtue is also knows that it is always to one's advantage to do what is

virtuous, so that if he has knowledge of virtue, then he will behave in virtuous ways.3 However, the plausibility of this version of the

maxim as a conceptual claim is gained only at the expense of

having to import a dubious form of the egoistic theory of motiva

tion, namely that men always desire to do what is to their advan

tage. I won't repeat the numerous arguments brought forth against this theory. Suffice it to mention that it has never been clear to me

whether those who have advanced it intend it to be a necessary truth. It seems sometimes to be a statement of empirical fact and a

very odd one at that. The most important indication that this is so

is that no evidence is produced to show that men always desire to do what is to their advantage. Indeed, in order to rebut the numerous counter instances suggested by modern psychiatry, the psychological egoist usually begs the question by using the fact that a person does act X rather than Y as sole and decisive evidence that his motive for

doing X was that X would be to his advantage. As a theory of

motivation, then, this form of psychological egoism is not entitled to our respect.

3 This interpretation of the maxim Virtue is Knowledge is not that of Socrates. I

accept the claim of G. Santas (Philosophical Review, 63) that Socrates meant that

if a man has knowledge of virtue and he also knows that it is always better for one

to do what is virtuous, then he will do what is virtuous. The basic difference

between this and the version of the maxim outlined here turns on what

"knowledge of virtue" includes and on the distinction between the items included

in this knowledge. In the former, "knowledge of virtue" included "knowledge that

it is always to one's advantage to do what is virtuous." On the Socractic view,

however, "knowledge of virtue" was logically independent of the latter knowledge so that we could say of a man that he knows what virtue is and not have to impute to him knowledge that it is always better for one to do what is virtuous. Hence, Socrates, on this account, does not deny the logical possibility of moral weakness:

.. if a man commits injustice (or behaves in a cowardly or intemperate fashion) t then he does not know either that he is committing injustice or that doing so is

worse for him or both. It is clear that this proposition does not contradict the

proposition that men sometimes do what is unjust (or wrong) knowing or

believing that it is unjust." (p. 60).


The preceding interpretation of the maxim contains one version of a more general thesis to the effect that the person who knows the

good is the person who is able to determine, within a form of

reason, what acts can be justified and what acts cannot be justified. Let us suppose that the standard of justification is that specified above, namely that an act is justified just in case it can be shown that it is to the actor's advantage to perform it. It does not follow, however, that a person who knows the good cannot do what is

morally wrong. All that follows is that if he does what is morally wrong, he has chosen to do what he himself condemns and can justi fiably be accused of irrationality.4 The only way in which the maxim Virtue is Knowledge might be preserved is to argue that man always does what he believes to be the rational (justifiable) thing to do. I will assume, without argument, that this claim is as poverty stricken as the preceding claim that man always does what is to his advantage.

IV. In response to the difficulties inherent in the view that if one

knows the essential nature of virtue then one will behave in virtu ous ways, it might be suggested that knowledge of virtue is not of a

piece with abstract, judgmental knowledge, similar to the knowl

edge that gold is yellow, that fire burns, that the square of two is

four, but with knowing how, knowing how to do things, knowing the way from place to place, knowing Latin, knowing how to play tennis. Knowledge of virtue, on this interpretation, is a mastery of

techniques rather than mere possession of information. We acquire

knowledge of the good not just from being told things, but from

being trained to do things. The man who knows what courage is is

not the man who can parrot a definition of the essential nature of

the good; he is one who possesses a unique sort of skill or ability the ability to face dangerous situations either without fear or, if he

is afraid, by keeping his fear under control. If this is what is meant

when we say of a man that he possesses knowledge of the good, and

indeed some critics have thought that this is what Socrates meant,5

* Cf. H. O. Mounce, Analysis, 27, p. 12.

5 John Gould, DPE, writes that "epist m which Socrates envisaged was a form

of knowing how, knowing, that is, how to be moral" (p. 7) and further that "since

epist m does not imply contemplation of an object, but understanding, in the

sense of an ability to act, it remains a purely subjective faith." (p. 15) But see the


then the major objections to the preceding interpretations of the

maxim Virtue is Knowledge are supposedly avoided. For unlike

judgmental knowledge of a definition, it seems plausible to hold that behaving in a virtuous way is a criterion for possessing moral

knowledge. If a man does not do what is virtuous when in the

appropriate circumstances and when given the opportunity, then we would simply deny that he possesses this "moral ability."

The analogy between knowledge of virtue and possessing mas

tery of a craft or technique has something to recommend it. Our

knowledge of courage, unselfishness or honesty is in many respects much more like a skill than like knowing a definition. We often drill ourselves, for example, into good habits and out of bad ones. And yet even on this point the analogy seems to break down. As Professor Ryle6 and others7 have argued, the object of moral drills is not, like a drill in tennis, to prevent our knowledge of virtue from getting rusty, but to stiffen us against doing what we know to be wrong. "We do not keep up our honesty by giving ourselves

regular exercises in it. Nor do we excuse a malicious action by saying that we have recently been short in fair-mindedness and

generosity."8 A temperate man may be described as "good at" con

trolling his desires, but it still remains that he cannot be said to be clever or skillful at this, nor is the man who is "bad at" facing danger

incompetent at facing it. Second, the exercise of any skill or capacity is itself subject to moral appraisal. Thus, a man may be either

praised or condemned for the exercise of his skill in handling a

dangerous weapon. Hence, if knowledge of, say, courage were a

matter of knowing how to do something, then we should similarly be able either to praise or condemn a man for his exercise of this

ability. But to say that a man has manifested courage logically

implies that he is to be praised for this-there are no occasions on

which a manifestation of this moral characteristic would be proper

critical responses to this interpretation by Vlastos, Philosophical Review, 66; Allen,

Journal of the History of Ideas, 21; and Santas, Philosophical Review, 63.

6 Gilbert Ryle, "On Forgetting the Difference between Right and Wrong," in

Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. A. I. Melden (Washington: 1958), 147-59. Hereinafter cited as EMP.

7 J. Kemp, Reason, Action and Morality (New York, 1964), pp. 160-162.

8 Ryle, EMP, p. 150.


grounds for condemnation. Finally, even if we accept the suggestion that knowledge of the good is like possession of an ability, it does not follow from the fact that a man knows what virtue is, that he will behave in virtuous ways. To say that A has an ability to do X does not imply that A will do X when the circumstances and the

opportunity arise. Abilities are not pronenesses or tendencies. If a man fails to play tennis when given the opportunity to play, it does not follow that he does not know how to play tennis (though this

may be true) ; it may be that he does not want to play tennis. Hence one of the major objections against the interpretation in (III) is also decisive against this position: a man may fail to do what is virtuous even where he has knowledge of virtue, and this is true

regardless of whether we conceive 'knowledge of virtue* as like

knowledge of a definition or as analogous to possession of a skill or

technique.

V. Another attempt to analyze the notion of knowledge of virtue can be derived from the more general thesis that a person who "knows the difference between right and wrong" is the sort of

person who would care about his own conduct and that of others. In explaining the concept of care as this notion is employed in

moral contexts, Gilbert Ryle writes the following:

This caring is not a special feeling; it covers a variety of feelings, like those that go with being shocked, ashamed, indignant, admiring, emulous, disgusted, and enthusiastic; but it also covers a variety of

actions, as well as readinesses and pronenesses to do things, like

apologizing, recompensing, scolding, praising, persevering, praying, confessing, and making good resolutions.9

Let us say, then, that the man who possesses knowledge of virtue will manifest the relevant "moral feelings" in the appropriate cir

cumstances, and will be ready or prone to do such things as apolo gize, recompense, scold, etc., whenever his own conduct or that of others calls for such actions. The person who knows what virtue is "has views" about the propriety of acting in certain ways. These

views, however, are manifested in his criticism of himself and the

demands made upon himself when deviation from certain patterns of behavior is actual or threatened, and in the acknowledgement of

9 Ryle, EMP, p. 155.


the legitimacy of such criticism and demands when received from others. Typically, then, his knowledge of virtue is manifested in such statements as "I must do . . ." and "It is wrong to . . .," and

typically he will be shocked or ashamed, admiring or enthusiastic, if he or others should violate or conform to the norms.

Does this conception of knowledge of virtue make it true to say that Virtue is Knowledge, that is, that possession of knowledge of virtue suffices for saying of a person that he will behave in virtuous

ways? It might be suggested that it does, and for the following reasons. First, to say of a person that he will behave in virtuous ways is to make a remark about his character, that is, it is to say that he is the sort of person who can be expected to do the virtuous thing when the circumstances call for it. Hence, the conditions under which it is true to say that A will do the virtuous thing are

equivalent to the conditions under which it is true to say that A is a virtuous person. Second, it may be argued that the conditions sufficient for making it true to say that A is a virtuous person are satisfied by evidence that A is ready or prone to exhibit the charac teristic feelings and actions of care when his conduct or that of others deviates from or conforms to the norms. Hence, if we know of A that he is the sort of person who would care about his own conduct and that of others, then this suffices to say of A that he will behave in virtuous ways, that is, that he is the sort of person who can be expected to do the virtuous thing when the circumstances call for it.

Although there is something to be said for the request that we

identify the statement "A will do the virtuous thing" with the statement "A is a virtuous person," this admission, taken together with the claim that knowledge of the good is a kind of caring, does not make it true to say that Virtue is Knowledge. There is surely nothing logically odd in saying that a person who is prone to be shocked or ashamed at himself if he should behave in a cowardly

way is nonetheless the sort of person who will sometimes and even

invariably do the cowardly thing when the circumstances call for

courage. Insofar as he is prone to say "It is wrong to . . .," he is also

prone to say "It was wrong for me to ..."

Second, there is also an objection to the strict identification of

the notion of knowledge of virtue and the care-concepts mentioned

by Ryle. For there is a sense of "knows the good" in which a man


may be said to know the good who is neither prone to praise, admire, or be enthusiastic about acts of honesty, courage, or unsel

fishness, nor who is prone to exhibit the relevant moral feelings toward dishonesty, cowardice, or selfishness. This may happen if he knows of, but he no longer uses, the respective moral standards as a

guide to his own conduct, or as a basis for praising and blaming the conduct of others. He knows good from evil, but he has simply ceased to care. Such cases of moral indifference may be rare, but

they are surely not logically impossible. Indeed, such men have often been the subject of interesting literary treatment. For exam

ple, in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,1 the central character is portrayed as a man who comes to see tragedy

only from an artistic point of view, and who otherwise registers

complete moral indifference toward human suffering. Thus, after

Dorian discovers that his cruelty has caused the suicide of a young

girl who was in love with him, the following conversation takes

place between him and his friend Lord Henry.

"... I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful

ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek

tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded."

"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found an

exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism-"an

extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true explanation is

this. It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their

absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack

of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an

impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes,

however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses

over lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are

no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are

both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us_" (118-119)

Later, in conversation with another friend, Dorian observes approv

io (New York: Random House-Modern Library, 1918).


ingly that "to become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life." I find no logical difficulty in saying of this character that although he does not "suffer," that is, he is not

prone to have the appropriate feelings of care and concern, there is an important sense in which we should want to insist that he knows

good from evil. Indeed, he must possess this knowledge in order "to

become the spectator" of his own life, in order to say such things as

"this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should."

Finally, it would be wrong to conclude that persons who lack

feelings of care must also lack moral understanding since they are so

obviously "psychopathic." For this is to mistakenly assume that the

psy iiopath is morally blind. Case histories exhibit that the psycho path can, if he wishes, carry on a most intelligent, "insightful," and persuasive moral discussion. At times he will very convincingly express "remorse" and "moral conversion"-though he may concur

rently remain actively engaged in his usual conduct. If this per formance is exposed, he does not have the moral feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame, since for him there is nothing morally at stake. He does not care; hence no guilt.11 What pulls us in the direction of concluding that the psychopath lacks moral understanding is the observation that he does not "appreciate" the significance of moral rules and precepts. But this again just means that he does not

possess the requisite moral feelings toward the rules; he neither cares for other persons, nor does he care to abide by rules that go to

promote the interests of other persons. And yet there is another sense of 'know* and 'understand', not so closely allied to 'care* and 'appreciate', in which the psychopath can and does know the moral good, in which, like Dorian Gray, he can become the un

touched spectator of his own life, without guilt and shame and yet

capable of moral discussion. We must now turn to an elucidation of that sense.

VI. I have remarked that the man who no longer cares about his own conduct or that of others may still be said to know good from evil if he knows of, but no longer uses, the respective moral stan

dards. It would be wrong to infer from this, however, that moral

ni owe these observations about the psychopathic personality to Herbert

Fingarette, On Responsibility (New York, 1967). See pp. 25-26 for case histories

cited and discussed.


knowledge or understanding is no more than the ability to use standards or rules to identify and classify acts as right or wrong, honest or dishonest, courageous or cowardly. If this were true, then a man who learns how to classify acts in these ways by watching other persons do this and then successfully imitating them could be said to possess moral understanding. Suppose that such a man also notices that when conduct is called "honest/' "unselfish," or

"friendly" others normally react with pleasure toward the person who manifests such conduct, and that when acts are referred to as

"dishonest," "selfish," or "unfriendly" the typical reaction is dis

pleasure, disgust, or hatred. After a brief period of observation, our

imaginary man is also able to evince such behavior on the appropri ate occasions. There is nonetheless good reason why we should want to resist saying that he knows right from wrong. For moral under

standing cannot be fully described simply by pointing to net results such as those illustrated above. Both we and our imaginary man can

refer to the acts of other persons as cowardly or courageous and can

express pleasure or displeasure toward such conduct. The end result is the same. But we understand the logical connection between this conduct and the attendant expressions. He does not. Reference to a

piece of conduct as "dishonest" is for him no more than what it would be for us to call someone's conduct "blippy." That is, he does not as yet understand that the word is used to judge or to assess and

not, say, to name, to describe, or to perform one of a number of other different kinds of speech acts. Moreover, the connection be tween dishonest conduct and a frown would be for him as con

tingent as would be the connection between such an expression and

blippy conduct. We see, however, that a man's dishonesty is logical ly relevant to a frown. This understanding is captured by the fact

that we see such an expression as an expression of disapproval. Insofar as our imaginary man does not understand these connec

tions, he cannot be said to understand these concepts, and so does not possess moral knowledge. Knowledge of virtue, then, is not a

mere matter of knowing how to recognize and classify acts as virtu

ous or evil, right or wrong. It is to participate in an entire form of

life of which the ability so to recognize and classify is only a part.

Unimpeachable as this brief account of knowledge of the good

might be, it does not make it true to say that Virtue is Knowledge. A man can know the good in the sense specified and yet fail to do


what is morally right. An understanding of moral discourse, that is, does not guarantee virtuous behavior. However, there is one in

teresting consequence of the preceding account of moral under

standing which ought to be stressed and which gives substance to a

somewhat weaker sense in which moral conduct bears a conceptual relation to knowledge of the good. It is this. For a man to be able to act rightly or wrongly in a moral sense, to do what is virtuous or

evil, he must know the difference between right and wrong, and have some ability to apply the knowledge in particular situations. Unless he possessed this knowledge we should not use the expres sions 'morally right' or 'morally wrong' of his actions at all, or if

we did it would only be in the sense that the acts he performs either do or do not conform to the moral rules. The case is not dissimilar to that of a child who makes random moves with a chess piece on a

chess board. He may make moves that conform to the rules of chess, but we would not be prepared to say that the child is "playing the

game." For to say this would be to impute to him an understanding of the rules of chess, and hence a whole set of capacities to think in those critical ways that constitute the playing of the game. And so it is with moral conduct. Morally right and morally wrong acts in volve specific ways of reacting, thinking, criticizing and doing. Just as these ways of thinking and doing mark in the one case the

knowledge possessed by the chess player, so they mark the under

standing we attribute to the moral agent. Virtue is Knowledge, then, not in the ("strong") sense that those who understand and

participate in that form of life we call morality will behave virtu

ously; but rather that those who are logically capable of moral conduct must be beings who have moral understanding. It is not

Virtue, therefore, but Moral Conduct, that has a special claim on the Understanding. This would not satisfy Socrates, although as R. E. Allen has remarked,12 Socrates perhaps knew as well as any man the full extent of his paradox, knew that it was obscure and must remain so. He would also be the last man to rule out the possibility of other ways of exploring the rich conceptual terrain of moral

knowledge and conduct. LAURENCE D. HOULGATE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTAB RBARA

12 Journal of the History of Ideas, 21, p. 265.

virtue is knowledge

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