What is virtue? In his dialogue Meno, Plato raised up a proposition “virtue is knowledge” in the name of Socrates. This premise, which has been produced 2,500 years ago, established the basic direction of answering the virtue question. “Virtue is knowledge”, only through knowledge can man attain the state of highest good. That is to say, knowledge is a sufficient condition to make a person of virtue. 

 Like his teacher, Socrates, Plato firmly believed that “virtue is knowledge”. He tried to define “goodness” and “virtue”, and sought to explain the relationship between them. In addition to expressing moral commendation, “goodness” also represents someone who has a high level of ability/achievement in one respect. A person who can do things well is goodness. Virtue, on the other hand, represents the highest good. Having virtue is to possess a remarkable essence. So we can say that no matter carpenters, fishermen, farmers, hunters and warriors, each has their own virtue. 

  What, then, is the knowledge that determines virtue? According to his dialogue The Charmides, there is only one type of knowledge that leads to correct behavior and happiness, that is, the knowledge of good and evil. It can tell apart right from wrong, and any skill or activity in daily life must be combined with it. Without the guidance of this knowledge, none of them can play its role to help us become a person with virtue. It is based on the direction and support to people that the genuine “goodness” emerges. It is also a virtue for this knowledge being correctly applied to individuals. 

  Can “virtue” be deal with entirely as an intellectual problem? Whether the question of goodness can simply be solved by knowledge has been criticized by academia all the time. Aristotle, for one, argued that what Socrates took “virtue as knowledge” is impossible because all kinds of knowledge involve rationality, and rationality itself only exists inside the cognitive part of the soul, while morals is more about emotion, will, habit and so on. In Socrates’s opinion, people are evil because they do not possess the knowledge of goodness. That is to say, anyone with rational knowledge is necessarily moral, moral knowledge leads to moral behavior. He partially exaggerated the impact of rational knowledge, attributing all human behavior to cognition, while ignored the irrational factors to the soul. In fact, virtue is not always alongside with knowledge. Although Socrates had realized this, he failed to give a reasonable explanation. In Plato’s eyes, only when a person can identify good or evil and recognize the true virtue can he choose the good side and practice it. As he discussed “justice” in The Republic, he virtually revised some important parts of the proposition “virtue is knowledge”. What, then, is his theory about? This brings us to the following “four classic virtues”.

 Plato believed that every person’s soul has three elements: reason, enthusiasm and desire. Correspondingly, there are three types of virtue, wisdom, courage and temperance. When enthusiasm follows the dominance of reason, there is the virtue of courage; when desire follows the dominance of reason, there is the virtue of temperance; similarly, when knowledge follows the dominance of reason, there is the virtue of wisdom. If all three parts of the soul follows the dominance of reason, there will be the highest virtue of justice. And once a person has the virtue of justice, the other virtues are naturally belonged to him. Therefore, the order of the soul is manifested as justice, and only those who pursue it can attain true happiness. 

  The four classic virtues are well presented in the allegory of the cave. In his book The Republic, Plato depicted the story of a man who bravely stepped out of the cave, but then returned in order to save his deceived companion. Courage requires boldness and fortitude. Unlike recklessness, sometimes endurance is required, too. The person who walked out of the cave, also called “the enlightener”, needs bravery. First is to break loose of chains and inertia, second is be willing to endure the discomfort of transition process, and finally, admit and embrace the reality. Temperance is not only the restraint and control of one’s own desires, but also a sensible, sound and modest attitude. It is a kind of behavior based on self-knowledge. Plato thought “self-restraint is the foundation of all kinds of virtue.” He pointed out that an abstemious and moderate life is the happiest one, for it allows us to wait and delay gratification until we reach the higher and farther goal. When the person exited the cave, temperance plays an important role. Unlike any others, who were arrogant and satisfied for being in the cave, “the enlightener” respected the truth, knowing the difference between illusion and the reality. Of course, when he first came out of the cave, he didn’t know what the truth was. But how can a man, who was hubristic and arrogant, is willing to suffer the pain and find the light of life? 

 Wisdom might be the most important virtue of human being. The virtue of wisdom can lead to other virtues. First of all, it can bring good judgment, so that people make wise decisions; secondly, it can tell people how to put other virtues into practice — when to act and how to act; last but not least, it enables us to put things into perspective and understand what is really important in life. The sun represents the highest good. When the caveman really sees the sun and discerns the truth, he then obtains wisdom. 

  The paramount concern of justice lies in the interests of the entirety.In deciding whether or not to go back to the cave and save others, the enlightener fully embodied the power of justice. He could have saved himself, or laughed at the ignorance of others, but he chose to go back to his cave, to educate, to enlighten the uncivilized, which in itself was a great responsibility and a great pain. For it is very possible to encounter the misunderstanding of others, or even as an alien be killed. But he did it, passing on the truth to others and lit up their lives, which itself was the pinnacle of justice, and also the act of combining the virtues such as courage, wisdom, and others. 

  Plato is the first person to elaborate moral education systematically in the West. His moral education perspective has a profound influence in western educational thoughts. The basic principles can be roughly summarized as the following three points: 

1. Moral education begins with a child

Only under the dominance of the right moral knowledge can a person form the

right moral judgment. Moral belief will have the proper direction, and finally produce the moral practice in accordance with social requirements. Thereby, Plato emphasized that people should pay attention to moral knowledge education since childhood. 

  In his opinion, there is a light and a dark side in the soul. Ineffective education will take away goodness and incite evilness. Therefore, the primary task of moral education is to mold the mind and turn the soul through educational efforts. In terms of spiritual turning, Plato fully respects that man is an independent individual with subjective initiative. It does not create sight in the soul, but to affirm that the sight exists in the soul; however, thinking the soul cannot seize the direction correctly, so every effort was made to make it turn.

  Any constructor of a country is grown up from a child. Without good education, there would be no good children, and thereby no good builders and successors.The future of a country depends entirely on the education of its children. “Shaping children is to shape the future,” Plato had been deeply aware of this. 

2. Cultivate through positive examples

In his book The Republic, Plato emphasized that moral education should be

conducted with good examples, so that young people can gradually form moral beliefs that are noble and unswerving. He believed that education should lead the youth into the right way. Thus, the inspiring and exemplary role model as an example to youth becomes indispensable. 

 Music and art are the most important forms to eulogize the noble figure. In order to carry out “the best education”, we must search for some competent individual and masters, who, by their virtues and great talents, edify our children imperceptibly, and, from childhood, merged with beauty and reason. Their moral knowledge could not have come from scandalous myths and poetry because they contained “bad characters, bad rhythms, bad tones” and of course, “bad examples.” These can only make children form “bad” moral beliefs, not conducive to the development of the country. Plato believed that some “purification work” should be done in the city-states to prohibit the “illegal entertainment” which represented bad examples, that is, music, literary and artistic works that were incompatible with the Republic, either in creation or in circulation.

 However, what Plato dedicatedly created is a moral environment detached from the real life. He took a subjectively passive position to avoid falsehood, evil and ugliness, which is unfavorableto the formation of moral knowledge, feelings and beliefs, especially moral judgment of the educated. On the contrary,moral and immoral are relatively existed, and the former always develops in the struggle against the latter. Using one’s optimistic wishful thinking to cover the objective moral phenomena makes no difference to “self-delusion.” 

  On the other hand, the power of example is infinite, and the moral effect of it is beyond reproach; nevertheless, if the falsehood, evil and ugliness in real life are artificially covered, while only the true, the good, and the beautiful figures left, it is often unable to withstand the examination of real-life practice. This should be reflected by all educators. 

3. Shaping moral characters in practical application

Knowledge without practice is not real knowledge. Without the demonstration of moral practice, no matter how beautiful the theory is, it is worthless in the real society. 

  In Plato’s opinion, we must deepen the understanding and experience of educatees on noble qualities through persistent moral practice over the years, continuously strengthening their moral knowledge and judgment, reinforce their moral emotion, beliefs and will, and make all the required virtues for the builders of the Republic rooted in their hearts without being contaminated or destroyed by any external influence.

  To do this, the knowledge and principles acquired by the young must be examined and made to work from an early age. It is essential to conduct an examination of anti-deception or temptation. Young people should be placed into the midst of poverty and hardship, into the environment of delicacy, in order to see if they can be a good guardian, keep their integrity and protect their self-cultivation. According to Plato, only those who have been “tested from childhood, youth, and adulthood” and have proved that their moral qualities are truly “unimpeachable” can be qualified builders and successors to assume the role of ruler.

  Admittedly, there is a social existence in an era, and also a relative social thought and awareness. The viewpoint of moral education embodied in The Republicis the specific product of that era and the author’s position. We should reject the dross and learn from the essence, because our attitude towards the ancients shouldn’t be the assumption of perfection. 

Bibliography:

1. Virtue is knowledge 
2. Two types of virtue viewpoint in Plato’s ideal city-state 
3. Platonic view of moral education

In this passage, I would like to address certain values and ethics of people in this world crammed with “the Internet”. I would link several references to different western philosophers along my analysis.

The first value I would like to address is people’s denial of their ability of identifying truth. Nowadays, we live in a complicated environment. Information feeds we get is not only coming in faster (leaving us less time to understand and consider all problems), but also is personalized. Online applications and websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Weibo, are constantly pushing contents that they think you tend to watch. This causes a “polarization” in the knowledge we get.

From the very beginning, philosophers are talking about the topic of “reality” or “skepticism”. According to Wikipedia, philosophical skepticism questions “the possibility of certainty in knowledge”. (Wikipedia: Philosophical skepticism) Along with Descartes’s mind-body dualism which states that “the mind and body are distinct and separable” and the doubt that “he has a body or not” (Wikipedia: Mind-body Dualism), people feel that there is no “objective truth”. As Protagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher states, “man is the measure of all things”.

“Man is the measure of all things” by Protagoras. Picture from Bing Pictures.

With all these opinions existing, people tend to think “because I have my own perceptions and understandings, everything is biased, and no subjective truth exists”. This eventually leads to “we don’t need to try hard identifying whether the news are true or fake; we might not be in a physical world”. However, as Michael Lynch kindly pointed out in his TED talk, “we should agree that we are living in a common reality, and ignoring it could get you hurt”. (Xigua Video)

All these evidences lead to my conclusion: in the modern world, people constantly use ideas like “skepticism” as an excuse to deny their ability of identifying truth. In fact, “skepticism” no longer stay as a critical thinking attitude to all things; it became an umbrella shielding you from trying to figure out the truth. Even definitions of words we use are based on common knowledge and the authority. Denying to identify truth does not help, as they cannot change the fact that we are living in “a common reality”.

But how to solve this problem, and somehow “correct” people’s values? In his talk, Michael Lynch pointed out that “people should find out new active ways of gaining knowledge”. Only when we are constantly thriving for knowledge, we can burst through our “information bubble”, not letting the term “fake news” become the meaning of “new that I don’t like”. By gaining more truth, we can hear to other’s opinions and learn how to think critically.

The second topic I want to talk about is the anonymosity of the Internet. When the Internet gives us access to the whole world without having to leave our house, it also block off the opportunity of us meeting with friends face to face. It also opens up a portal to the vast world of voices, a place where you can easily get hurt.

Moreover, anonymosity does not just mean you can safely view contents on the internet without being tracked; it also means you do not need to pay responsibility. Plato, an Athenian philosopher during the classic period of ancient Greece, told an interesting story in his description of Utopia. In his Republican, a story of the “Ring of Gyges” was told: “A cave was revealed in a mountainside where he[a shepherd] was feeding his flock… he discovered [a] ring [that] gave him the power to become invisible by adjusting it. He then arranged to be chosen as one of the messengers who reported to the king as to the status of the flocks. Arriving at the palace, he used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself.” (Wikipedia: Ring of Gyges) This was great piece of evidence on how bad in ethics could a human be when he gains anonymosity. Even the famous Lord of the Rings series alluded this, describing all but those who have a strong and simple heart could withstand the Ring of Power, which gives its wearer invisibility as well.

Another example of what bad things people could do without being watched was proposed by Hobbes. In his Leviathan, Hobbes states: “[When there is no political community, ] there is no industry, … navigation, … commodities, … knowledge of the face of the earth, … and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” As a philosopher exploring social contracts, he clearly states without people watching over, the society will be chaotic. (Wikipedia: Hobbes)

Of course, our country is not letting this happen. Officers and legalists clearly understands that when no rule is present, this anonymosity will cause great damage to the peace of society. According to Luo Xiang, a famous teacher in the realm of laws, put forth the following argument: “Human is an end; human is not a means.” Not only do the laws of the country protect those who are harmed, we also need to learn to respect others: “A person who respects others’ reputation will not insult others.” (Bilibili)

Luo Xiang’s quoted sentence, in chinese. Picture captured from original video.

My approach to this problem is also very easy to understand: gaining more knowledge. Just as the book Calculus Made Easy states, “people quarrel because they can’t argue”. When trolls are cursing and sending messages on the Internet, their words and phrases are no more than stereotypes; they cannot argue for themselves and become more logic because they can’t. Lack of knowledge leads to lack of fear; lack of knowledge also leads to a lack of respect.

Summarization: In the passage we discussed about two different values being deteriorated in the Internet era: the ability of identifying truth, and the respect to others. The approach, in my opinion, is fairly simple: we need more knowledge, not for defending ourselves, but to make us a better person in this era.

References

Wikipedia: Skepticism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Wikipedia: Mind-body Dualism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Wikipedia: Protagoras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Xigua Video: (TED) Finding truth on the Internet. https://www.ixigua.com/i6766829672790491656/?logTag=nAZu9ycviVFYnCTTFIH-a. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Wikipedia: Ring of Gyges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Wikipedia: Hobbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes. Cited June 24th, 2020.

Bilibili: Discussion on Internet Trolls. https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1rk4y1R7id. Cited June 24th, 2020.

P.S. Sorry again for the missing of deadlines. I was constantly not sure about my final topic and thesis, and I didn’t contact you frequent enough…

Ethics – Descartes

Ethics can be described in various ways, some will say ethics are equal to moral laws; some say ethics are sequences of judgments about what’s good and what’s bad, and there are also people who believe that ethics were merely some seemingly true standards created by the strong to control people’s mind by deceiving languages.

As for me, I think ethics are some sort of systematic mindset that is used to determine whether we should do something. To have a more comprehensive perspective of ethics, I am going to analyze this from multiple angles.

Firstly, where did the moral laws come from?

I want to begin with Kant’s moral philosophy. From the earliest recorded history, people’s moral beliefs and practices were grounded in religion. Scriptures, such as the bible and the Quran, laid out moral rules that believers thought to be handed down from God: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery, and so on. The fact that these rules supposedly came from a divine source of wisdom gave them their authority. They were not simply somebody’s arbitrary opinion, they were God’s opinion, and as such, they offered humankind an objectively valid code of conduct. This theory had resulted in people obeying these moral laws with no doubts and they were said to be rewarded with their obedience. On the other hand, if they violated the so-called “commandments” then the punishments will occur as follows.

Subsequently, these godly doctrines were seriously challenged as the commencement of the scientific revolution. The reason why they were challenged is that all of them were given by God, which can be reversed if the figure of god collapses. The tricky thing about this whole system is that what if God is proven to be wrong or what if the followers realize that the god’s omniscience is actually biased, which had bothered the moral philosophers back then and drew the discussion of the authenticity of god. Scottish moral philosopher, Alisdair MacIntrye, addressed this as “the Enlightenment problem”——If religion wasn’t the foundation that gave moral beliefs their validity, what other foundation could there be? If there is no God—and therefore no guarantee of cosmic justice ensuring that the good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished—why should anyone bother trying to be good?

If godly moral laws were not convincing enough, where would the moral law come from?

Consequently, the non-solidified concepts of god had brought up the considerations of what’s good and what’s bad; who’s gonna determine; and do the ideas of “good” and “bad” really exist or they just in relatively speaking.

From my perspective, I think human are gifted with the thoughts of good and bad.

“What is good and what is evil?”; Philosophers of all ages have thought over this question. Each reckoned that he had solved the question once and for all, yet within a few years, the problem would re-emerge with new dimensions. In fact, most of the answers would be later found inadequate or unsatisfactory.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, believed that good and evil are two notes in a symphony. He found that many things change into their opposites, which led him to believe that the combination of opposites resulted in a harmonious whole.

Soctrates, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, believed that knowledge of good and evil and its criteria are imbued in man and he can differentiate between the two if he desires so. With sustained thought and guidance of nature, he is in a position to know what is good and what is evil. Soctrates’s famous saying——“O man! Know thyself” had also indicated that basic principles of good and evil are innate in man.

Taken together of all these thoughts on good and evil, I found that most of the philosophers insisted that man are endowed with the knowledge of good and evil before coming to this world. Only they need the right orientation and inspiration. However, If this premise is hypothetically valid, then why would we need laws and rules of all kinds to constrain and regulate people’s behaviors? Didn’t the government just need to trigger their underlying abilities of judgment? Since all humans are meant to capable of determining good and bad.

Obviously, this is not the case for any generation, not even the generations of philosophers. If there’s life at stake, people will certainly obey the official laws.

There had been lots of great materials regarding the law and its relationship with humanities. Philosophy of law, also called jurisprudence branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of law, especially in its relation to human values, attitudes, practices, and political communities. Philosophy of law often aims to distinguish law from other systems of norms, such as ethics or other social conventions. Views about the nature of law often depend upon, and occasionally have contributed to, answers to some of the most fundamental philosophical questions—for example, regarding the foundations of morality, justice, and rights; the nature of human action and intention; the relations between social practices and values; the nature of knowledge and truth; and the justification of political rule.

From all the discussions of law and ethics, the seemingly fair can be applied—–Based on society’s ethics, laws are created and enforced by governments to mediate in our relationships with each other. Laws are made by governments in order to protect its citizens and they have to be approved and written by these three branches of government before they are implemented and enforced by the police and the military, with the help of the legal system consisting of lawyers and other government servants. Nevertheless, While laws carry with them a punishment for violations, ethics does not. In ethics, everything depends on the person’s conscience and self-worth. So people should remain their obediences to the government law when there’s conflict.

Learning philosophy helps us to better understand the occurrences in real life; I will give the example of George Floyd to illustrate the relationships between ethics and laws. George Floyd, who died on May 25 after being pinned to the ground by an officer who pressed a knee into his neck. From an ethics perspective, this was an extremely racist, unjust, and outrageous decision that the white police killed an unarmed African American citizen. George Floyd was begging the officer not to kill him, which turned out was ignored by the officer who also pointed his gun to the others who were trying to help. Ethically, what the police did back there should have been punished in the consideration of human; however, the government decided to expire his jurisdiction as the

response, which had definitely upset the crowd and directly engendered the riots and protests that came after. Legally, the officer was on his duty arresting Floyd and he has the power to control the suspects using tools; what he did that day was a little excessive but technically still inside his jurisdiction. This example showed exactly how people think about morality and laws. Most of the time the ethics corresponded to the intentions of executing those punishments; they both hope people do what’s right, which people don’t follow very often so the lawful punishments were mostly anti-ethics.

Just like a famous saying “the only thing that doesn’t change is changing.”; sometimes the punishments were added with personal or evil intentions, at which time people will rise up and against evil. But citizens will all obey the laws at the end of the day so when it comes to the counterpart among ethics and laws, the laws will always be considered priorly.

In a nutshell, believe it or not, humans are gifted with the ability to judge good and evil and it’s our choices to do what we believe is right or what we’re told is right. None of the laws of belief can be challenged because they’re all made by man, a species with vastly varied thoughts and behaviors. So we have to explore infinitely to try to find out what type of person we want to become and how authentic our moralities and the laws are.

In my personal suggestion, try to be good as much as possible.

Resources:

https://www.thoughtco.com/kantian-ethics-moral-philosophy-immanuel- kant-4045398

http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php/articles/view/good-and-evil-1-views- of-the-philosophers

https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-law