Exercise 2.2: What do “doing good” and "living well" mean to me?

\Exercise 2.2. is a four-part exercise, and I will answer two parts of the exercise here as a single essay.  I will answer the third part tomorrow.

1.  What does “doing good” mean to me?

&

2.  What does “living well” mean to me?

I am a vast proponent of virtue ethics -- the system of ethics derived from Aristotelian ethics by Alasdair Macintyre.  From that perspective, the answer to this question set can be answered as a single question, because if I live well, I will do good.  I will do good if I live by my values, and I will live well if, in living by my values, the world becomes a better place.

In Macintyre's formulation, vastly oversimplified, if I live by arête (excellence or virtue), I will achieve eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness or flourishing). 

Doing Good (Living the Virtues)
Most of my decisions are about manifesting myself as a person of virtue.  I often tell people that my decisions are about the ethical self-constitution of myself as a subject (Foucault lingo).  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines virtue as:

arête (excellence or virtue)  a character trait—that is, a disposition... that “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker.

Virtue is not simple -- this is not George Washington and the Cherry Tree, being unable to tell a lie.

The disposition... is concerned with... emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. 

Damn if I am not a person with a certain complex mindset.  

Anyway, the kid who cannot tell a lie is different from someone who holds honesty as a virtue in the following way:

An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truth—but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on.

Macintyre's work begins with honesty as a paradigmatic example of a virtue.  While I did not pick Macintyre for this reason, I will admit:  recently, someone I loved claimed that I had an issue with honesty, a willingness to avoid being honest to avoid conflict.  Because I loved that person, I have reflected on their insight. 

Most of my decisions, in some ways or another, are about demonstrating what kind of person I am, the values and virtues that constitute me.  We have covered some of those -- I am a person who values the ability to self-express in myself and in others, creating a world where we are all richer because no voice is silenced.  I am a person who values critical questioning of institutions that would seem to silence voices through policy or through indirect institutional practice.  I value people feeling comfortable being who they are.  That is who I am, those are the ways tha t I live Macintyrean virtues (honesty and justice are the ones that stick out here).  That is the way that I hold that complex mindset with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities driven by my virtues.

Living Well (Living the World in which the Virtues are Practiced)

I enact the courage (one of the three Macintyrean virtues) to speak my values and to apply good, old fashioned work to make change happen.  That feels like a start.  If I live this way, I am both doing good and creating a world I want to live in, a world where I can be challenged and enriched.  I think this is where Macintyrean courage comes in.

As later works by Macintyre argue, we build social structures that enable our flourishing.

Collectively promoting the social structures we need in order to flourish as individuals enables us to escape from false dichotomies between self-interest and the common interest and between selfishness and altruism. In supporting the networks that are necessary if we are to flourish, I am promoting both my interest and everyone else's, and I am looking out for the common good as well as my own individual good. 

If I live in a way in which I know I am honest, but which does not cultivate a culture of honesty, I am not living my virtue and will not achieve happiness.  But if I live in a way that I am honest, that cultivates a world (or a town or a university) of honesty, I will live a happier life -- and so will others.  I am promoting both my interest and everyone else's, and I am looking out for the common good as well as my own individual good. 

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I look back at this and think:  this is just a long way of saying, I will do good if I live by my values, and I will live well if, in living by my values, the world becomes a better place.