Over a decade ago, I was introduced to the works of Philippa Foot in a graduate seminar. I would not have predicted then that in 2022, I would be getting texts from non-academic friends about her. There has been a flurry of interest in the popular press about Foot lately, in virtue of her belonging to the so-called Somerville Quartet along with Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. In the field of ethics, though, Foot is better known for her attempt to revive Aristotelian naturalism.
The signature claim of Aristotelian naturalism is that goodness is species relative. That is, to be good is primarily a matter of being a good member of one’s natural kind. If Oscar is a cat, then whether or not Oscar is good depends on whether Oscar engages in activities that characteristically benefit cats, whether Oscar has qualities that typically contribute to cats’ well-being, and whether he achieves things that bring out the best of feline nature. Suppose Oscar is disposed to laze around and be satisfied with simple bodily pleasures, to be suspicious of strangers but friendly with his owner, and to enjoy a generally solitary life. These qualities are good for him and make him good as a cat.
But these qualities will not make Oscar good if Oscar is a human. Foot and other contemporary Aristotelians, like Michael Thompson, make much of the observation that we judge things to be good relative to their life forms. They are following up on the suggestion from Peter Geach that “good” is an attributive, rather than a predicative, adjective. The meaning of an attributive adjective—like “tall”—varies depending on what sort of thing it is modifying. When people remark that my 6’8 partner is tall, they are not making a mistake just because he is shorter than a baby giraffe. My partner is a tall human, though he is not a tall giraffe; for “tall” means something different when modifying “giraffe” than when modifying “human.” So too with “good.”
Aristotle and his contemporary advocates adopt a methodology that supports the species-relative view of goodness. Aristotelians take seriously that there is a similarity between our use of “good” in an ethical context and our mundane uses of “good” in describing nonhuman, living things. We go about judging that my cactus is good in virtue of its doing well, and we can observe evidence of its doing well that provides some insight into what makes for a good cactus. So too, they think, we can gain insight into what makes for a good human using observational evidence about humans doing well. But it is clear, from ordinary observation, that human wellbeing, feline wellbeing, and cactus wellbeing are quite distinct. The features that contribute to Oscar-the-cat doing well seem to be features that make most cats do well, and so too for cacti. If human goodness operates similarly, then we should expect the qualities of humans that make them good to be species-specific qualities, too.
Now, I think the Aristotelians have got this notion of relative goodness mostly right. What I want to suggest, though, is that there is more relative goodness than they originally claimed. When we look around at other species—the peach tree in my backyard, for instance—we see that what it takes for them to do well differs quite a lot between one stage of development and the next. The first summer after I planted my peach tree, it yielded seven peaches. I was delighted! My friend who was an experienced gardener came over and exclaimed, “What a good little tree!” Meanwhile, his decade-old tree was producing basketfuls of peaches. His goodness attribution was sincere, but obviously my tree had not achieved what was good for a mature peach tree. What was going on? We were making life-stage-relative normative judgments, of course. Because what it is good for a tree to do and be as a sapling is not the same as what it is good for it to do and be as a mature tree. We make similar judgments about nonhuman animals. The puppy who tears up furniture, has loads of energy, and is not housebroken can still be quite a good puppy, but the full-grown dog who behaves this way will be viewed with disapproval.
Here, then, is a thesis Aristotelians should be ready to take on board: there are distinct forms of goodness not only exhibited by different species but also exhibited by members of species at different stages of development. This is the case with humans just as with other living things. When my child spends twenty minutes painting with unbroken attention and his teacher praises him for his focus and dedication, she is not being flippant or inaccurate. For his age, it is truly good to be engrossed in a watercolor for this amount of time, though it would be utterly unremarkable for most neurotypical adults. Our ordinary judgments about the goodness of children can be vindicated easily on the Aristotelian view if we adopt more relative goodness.
One interesting implication of this expansion of the Aristotelian project is that it indicates there might be different sets of virtues at various stages of human development. For instance, picture the common scene on a playground: little humans flailing their limbs, screaming and chasing each other, collapsing into giggles, and poking sticks at the ground. The qualities that dispose them to engage in these kinds of activities, which seem to be evidence that they are doing well, are not all great qualities for many adults. If something funny happens in a meeting, we expect the adult to laugh but settle down and get back to business. And the caregiver on the playground needs to be vigilant, watching out for his child’s safety. But children are not worse if they lack vigilance and self-control. Instead, it is good for them to cultivate wonder, innocence, and trust.
If there are distinct human goodnesses and virtues fitting to different stages of development, this should influence our way of thinking about child-rearing. Sometimes one gets the idea, reading contemporary ethics or parenting advice columns, that we should be making little adults of children and adolescents. Kids themselves might be picking up messages targeted to adults about what they should be, contributing to the phenomenon of “kids getting older younger.” Of course, we want our children to grow up to be good adults, and we should aid them in the process of becoming good. But the picture offered by the thesis that there is more relative goodness is that often, children and adolescents are also already good. That is, they are good children, or good adolescents. And if we humans are anything like peach trees or cats, being good young members of our species disposes us to acquire what we need to become good mature members of the species. So, we can be, at once, being and becoming good.
Anne Jeffrey
Anne Jeffrey, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Medical Humanities at Baylor University. Her research interests span topics in metaethics, ethics, and political philosophy—and anything related to moral and political improvement. She recently completed a project with a team of psychologists and community leaders in the southern US to create Empowered, a program to promote virtue development in adolescents and is the author of God and Morality (2019). Her current research investigates how contemporary psychology impacts the way we think about human virtues and flourishing.
