Virtuous Leadership

I'm involded with two projects this summer that deal with the new kind of leadership culture called "virtuous leadership". Firstly, I'm translating Alexandre Havard's brilliant Virtuous Leadership into Finnish.

It is currently being translated into four or five different languages (following successful sales in the US), and we hope to find a major published next fall or winter. Alexandre Havard is the multilingual director of the European Center of Leadership Development (ECLD). He was born in France, lived in Helsinki for eighteen years, and now works out of Moscow. The man holds seminars in English, Finnish, French, Spanish, and Russian.

Secondly, to help stir virtue-related discussion in the Finnish society, a few friends and I have begun a new blog (in Finnish): www.hyvejohtajuus.fi. It's part of a bigger project of which more will be said in due time. Meanwhile, I encourage all the Finnish speakers to partake in the discussion. Questions, comments and all forms of critique are highly welcome! We are all novices here. There is a lot to learn for everyone.

After Virtue - part 6 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


6. MacIntyre’s Answer

The finale looms near. In the last chapter title the author asks: “After Virtue: Nietzsche or Aristotle, Trotsky, and St Benedict?”

All secular accounts of morality have failed. Nietzsche’s negative proposal of debunking morality altogether is, MacIntyre admits, plausible. But only if moral tradition cannot be vindicated. If Nietzsche wins, he wins by default (others lose). His apparent honesty is his most attractive quality.

However (I am drastically simplifying here), Nietzsche is debunked. His “great man”, too, is exposed as a pseudo-concept. MacIntyre concludes that for 300 years there has been no coherent account of liberal individualism. But Aristotelianism can be restated.

One final possible objection, the salvific claims of Marxism, is rejected. Marxisim, upon closer examination, turns out to be Kantian and utilitarian, which both had been rejected earlier. Also, Marxism in power is Weberian, which was rejected as well. To sum up, MacIntyre lets Trotsky speak: “The Soviet Union is not socialist … the so-called illumination led to darkness.”

In this final chapter just before the Postscript, MacIntyre draws a now famous parallel. He claims that the Western world (Europe and North America) is the Roman Empire – just before, or during, or right after (it is hard to tell), it fell.

After the fall of Rome, St Benedict launched a program that enabled the cultivation of virtues to move from the imperial (now in rabbles) to the community (namely, monastic community).

We have reached a similar turning point. If intellectual and moral life are to be sustained during our “dark ages”, MacIntyre states, we need another “St Benedict” to guide us through.

At the beginning of this series I mentioned that my Master’s thesis ended with a reference to After Virtue. Pope John Paul II’s theological anthropology had been my work’s focus. He, like MacIntyre, felt that modernity was in crisis. At the root of the crisis, the pope believed, was a false anthropology, a false humanism. In order to counter it, he attempted to restore a holistic view of man (virtues and teleology, but also the “image of God” in man, included).

Many are attracted to the “theological painting” the pope designed. In fact, the professor of theology and John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel draws attention to MacIntyre’s last point in After Virtue. “Another – surely a very different kind of – St Benedict is needed,” MacIntyre had concluded.

Weigel himself along with many others (for example, the Polish philosopher-priest Jarosław Kupczak) have speculated on whether John Paul II, or his legacy, will meet the criteria. Time will tell.

After Virtue - part 5 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


5. After Virtue

At this point, there are four chapters (16-19) remaining in the book. The author must make some preliminary conclusions - and he does. Chapter 16 is called From the Virtues to Virtue and After Virtue – hinting at the book’s name, After Virtue.

If is hasn’t before, it becomes clear by now that the meaning of the title is twofold. On one hand, After Virtue is a history of the philosophy of ethics, which includes the modern period after the loss of virtue. On the other, the author is dissatisfied with modern academic philosophy and seeks after virtue. It is one thing to say, “After you, my lady,” and another to say, “I ran after my lady.” (As a side-remark, I must say that the Finnish translation, Hyveen jäljillä, is not horribly unsuccessful.)

What happened to the unity of life? We already know about the loss of teleology. But MacIntyre points to another interesting phenomena: production moving out of the household.

“Practice” isn’t good in itself anymore, and work and pleasure are divided. It is the (emotivist) bureaucratic manager character, not the people in households, who organizes modern work. We live in a linguistic mélange – moral, virtuous, duty, obligation, human rights and so on, are all pseudo-concepts, because they are detached from the unity of life, from teleology.

Surprisingly (and I may add, exhilaratingly), MacIntyre names Jane Austen (1775-1817) as the last great imaginative voice of tradition.

The telos of her heroines is marriage and life of the household. The household is the arena of virtue. Production, sadly, has left the household leaving womanhood split in two: the minority of the leisured (“causing bad novels and gossip”) and the majority of the domestic service, or factory, or prostitution.

For Austen, happiness is Aristotelian. Teleology is restored. Her heroines, as said, seek good through their own good in marriage. Important virtues are true Amiability and Practical Intelligence. We say true Amiability, because Austen introduces a new focus: fake virtues (counterfeits). Self-knowledge which is found through repentance is another new virtue (linked to the New Testament). But the central virtue is Constancy (fin. uskollisuus). It includes both Patience and Courage.

Now, MacIntyre notes (and I detect a certain concurring) that, for Austen, the true genre is not tragedy after all, but comedy. Why so?

Because for Christians, the ultimate reality consists of hope and goodness, or hope in goodness. Dante provides the exemplar.

Chapter 17 is a rather political one. It certainly addresses political theory, namely, the concept of Justice. MacIntyre is dismayed (but not surprised) to note that no mutual conception of Justice can be found. And this, he says, can be considered a real threat to today’s society.

Analytic philosophy sought a foundation. Two accounts stand above all others: (1) Robert Nozick’s (1974) and (2) John Rawl’s (1971) accounts. For the political-minded reader, the right-left division is apparent. Rawl’s “veil of ignorance” stated that Justice is the even distribution of goods. For Nozick, Justice is what is originally acquired justly. These are mutually exclusive accounts, MacIntyre says. The tradition of virtues, he adds, is at odds with both.

Virtue is totally at odds with the whole modern economic order: especially individualism, acquisitiveness (usury), and elevation of market values. Again, why so? The answer is simple. Because modern politics is built on the rejection of virtue (teleology).

After Virtue - part 4 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues

The relationship of pagan and Christian virtues was more than a theoretical question. Society was affected, too. What were the churchmen to teach believers?

The backdrop of the Christian standpoint is: unity of things according to reason. This found its supreme expression in Dante and Aquinas.

Christianity, as said earlier, required not only the concept of character defects (vice), but also breaches of divine law (sin). Christianity understood that virtues and vices were, to some extent, both internal and external, but that the true arena of morality was is the internal will. How, then, is law related to virtues? The answer of the movement of synthesis was to keep the tension. (Not an untypical Christian answer. For instance, the unity of body and soul, human and divine, freedom and truth, and so on.)

Christianity brought to the discussion new virtues as well, which were unheard of for Aristotle.

Charity (agape love), above all. The New Testament’s “love thy enemy” found no resonance in Aristotle’s “a good man cannot be a bad man’s friend”. Also, forgiveness was presented as an alternative to revenge. Later, Aquinas was to redefine the cardinal virtues to contain Patience and Humility. (Humility, for Aristotle, was a vice and not a virtue!) Even more, the dimension of evil was something new. (Augustine and Paul: “We delight in evil.”)

In the end, teleology remains, but with two differences: eudaimonia (happiness or human flourishing) was (1) for everyone (not just the “haves”) and (2) could be pursued everywhere (not just in the polis).

The author of After Virtue seeks to find a core in the different outlooks of virtue. Accounts of social and moral life differ but, the author – who now believes to have found the core – draws attention to the fact that all have some account. In Chapters 14 and 15 he explains the “three stages” of all accounts of the nature of virtue.

All accounts (1) are related to practices, (2) presuppose the unity of life, and (3) hold fast to some form of moral tradition.

Of the first, a succinct definition suffices. The first universal definition of virtue could be: Virtue is a quality that enables goods which are internal to practices.

The idea of the unity of life has two obstacles: a social and philosophical obstacle. As regards the first, modernity partitions life into segments (work/leisure, private/public etc.). As regards modern philosophy, we are taught to think atomistically – true complexity of life is simplified (or reductioned).

Virtuous anthropology (my concept), however, sees life as a unity, and unity as a narrative (MacIntyre's concept). It links birth to life, life to death. The beginning, middle, and end, are treated as a whole. If life is narrative, MacIntyre continues, the true genre of life is tragedy (or drama). Human beings are actors (constraints on a stage), but also co-authors (we presuppose freedom).

Linked to the unity of life is another important concept: personal identity. It is not a psychological continuum of self (see Locke, Hume). It is twofold. First, I am a subject of a history – with a telos. Personal identity presupposes unity of character. Secondly, it is correlative – I am a subject of their story too, the narratives are interlocked.

Consequently, the third stage, tradition, basically states that the self cannot be separated from community socially or historically. This is at odds with modernity, which says: “(American) I didn’t own slaves”, or “(Englishman) I didn’t mistreat the Irish”, and so on. We are part of a tradition, like it or not. (A Christian reader speculates here whether MacIntyre is smuggling in the concept of Original Sin.)

After Virtue - part 3 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


3. Turning Point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?

Chapter 9 marks the midpoint of After Virtue, both as regards its scope and argument. “Nietzsche or Aristotle?” the author asks in the chapter’s title. Society is out of control. Who will lead the way?

The contemporary vision of the world is Weberian (following the father of sociology Max Weber): plurality of values, with a bureaucratic and managerial outlook. Yet it is, as said, rationally unsustainable. (MacIntyre notes that, if all is will, the obvious rejoinder question is whose will is it? He is thankful that in this book he needs not answer this sinister question.)

Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of two genuine theoretical alternatives to analyze our culture, he says. Nietzsche understood clearly that appeals to objectivity were (in fact) expressions of will. He rejected the use of the words good, right, and obligatory.

The most powerful pre-modern mode, on the other hand, is clearly Aristotelian. (The “Christian mode” MacIntyre counts as Aristotelian.)

How ought we to choose between these two – modern and pre-modern – modes?

For deciding either-or, “a short history of virtues is necessary”, the author announces. In truth we are talking about several chapters, nearly the rest of the latter half of the book. In Chapters 10 through 13 he travels through Heroic Societies (in Greek fiction), Athens, Aristotle, and the Christian Medieval era to see how the understanding of virtue (lat. arete) has developed.

Stories were the chief means of moral education in the olden times: Homeric and Icelandic sagas, and the Biblical narratives. Role and status prescribed conduct – or virtue. Courage was important, so was Friendship. For women in the household, Fidelity was the key (remember Penelope?). There was no theory-practice distinction: action was required – man is what he does. Uncontrollable powers, like passions, gods, and Fate, posed a challenge in life. Life, the supreme value, ended in death, which ended all.

Plato, it is known, wanted to expel Homeric inheritances. The conception of virtue changed, it became detached from particular roles. One must note, MacIntyre reminds, that no “Greek view of virtue” exists in reality. There were many views: the Sophist, Plato’s, Tragedians’ (Sophocles), and Aristotle’s. But all shared the context: the milieu is polis. A good man was a good citizen.

Interestingly, humility, thrift, and conscientiousness were in no Greek list of virtues.

For various reasons (which I leave out of these posts), MacIntyre sides with Aristotle’s concept of virtues as the highest Greek representative. (The answer to the either-Aristotle-or-Nietzsche question is given later.)

Aristotle is truly the protagonist against liberal modernity. The Nicomachean Ethics is his moral testament.

Aristotle’s ethics presuppose a metaphysical biology. Everything aims at good – everything has a specific telos. Good, or eudaimonia, is blessedness, happiness, prosperity, being well (and in relation to the divine) – in short, flourishing. A virtue is a disposition to act and feel a certain way. Also, virtues enable eudaimonia – and are it (both means and end). But Aristotle is no consequentialist: it is an astonishing fact that, though objectivity is held, rules are hardly mentioned.

There are two kinds of virtues, intellectual and moral (character). They are inseparable – here, too, Aristotle’s thought is at odds with the modern world. MacIntyre commends Aristotle’s (four-part) account of practical reason, but at the end of the day, Aristotle, too, faces challenges. Three, to be precise.

First, MacIntyre rejects the metaphysical biology that states that some are just slaves by nature, that “barbarians” are incapable of virtue because they have no polis. A better teleological account is needed. Secondly, is a polis indeed required? Is virtue exclusive? MacIntyre answers in the negative. Finally, virtue, according to Aristotle, required some flaw. (Personally, I am not sure Aristotle is here interpreted correctly, or, if he is, that MacIntyre successfully argues why this is a “challenge”.)

After Virtue - part 2 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


2. “Enlightened” Europe

MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment Project had to fail. The root of the problem was the “discrepancy between rules and human nature” – in other words a false anthropology and understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and rules.

The paradigm before the Enlightenment was Aristotelian-Christian. Aristotle provided the teleological scheme of man-as-he-is and man-as-he-could-be-telos. Theism added the concept of divine law. Reason and revelation.

However, Protestantism and Jansenist Catholicism devalued reason, the author claims. This secular rejection of theology coincided with the scientific-philosophical rejection of Aristotelianism – telos was eliminated, essential human nature lost.

MacIntyre is adamant of this being a horrendous blunder, not only ethically, but logically.

Interestingly, he says – contrary to much modern philosophical thought – the famous maxim “no ought from is” is mistaken. “No ought from is” not a “timeless logical truth”, as some claim, yet even today it infects moral philosophy. Functional concepts include (intrinsic) value and purpose: man and living well is analogous to harpist and playing the harp well.

“Today’s moral judgements are linguistic survivals from theism which have lost the context,” he writes. What is felt as “liberation” he calls “loss”.

The individual has been freed from hierarchy and teleology. Quite naturally, MacIntyre notes, some new teleology or categorical status was and is needed: utilitarianism and Kant respectively. However, both failed and fail, he says, though they accomplished social transformations. In the end, “pleasure” and “happiness” remain vague and useless pseudo-concepts.

Consequently, autonomous moral agents are now trying to protect their autonomy. Hence the key modern concepts: rights, to protest, to unmask. “Human rights”, too, are only alleged rights – they cannot be demonstrated “as a matter of fact”. Emotivism unmasks arbitrary will and desire in all human activity.

But emotivism, as a theory, has – as all theories have – practical consequences as well. MacIntyre says emotivism “embodies society”. The characters that embody emotivism are, above all, the aesthete, therapist, and manager (or expert). All trade on moral fictions.

In Chapter 7 MacIntyre addresses there other modern concepts, fact, explanation, and expertise. So-called “facts” deserve attention.

“Fact”, according to MacIntyre, is in modern culture a “folk-concept with aristocratic roots”. It is commonly seen that scholastics were deceived by interposing Aristotelianism, but “moderns” stripped away interpretation and theory and found “fact” and “experience” as they are. (I’m afraid Kuhn’s brilliant The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has not, perhaps because of its unwillingness to resort to “truth”, managed to wholly dispel this myth.)

This fallacy is typical to the Enlightenment which, MacIntyre wittily comments, is “par excellence when most intellectuals lacked self-knowledge”. The modern contrast of morality and human science was alien to classicism because the value/fact contrast was also alien.

The following chapter, “Generalizations in Social Science and their Lack of Predictive Power”, was a very intriguing one. Basically, the author claims most social sciences are tautologous!

The task of social scientists is to produce law-like generalisations, he says. But they never do. The predictive ineptitude of the economist he thinks is “innocent”: at least the economist goes public when his predictions fail. The sociologist and political scientist (or futurologists), on the other hand, never advertise failures. Psycho-babble provides the camouflage.

But Machiavelli was different. Why? Because of his concept of Fortuna.

Life incorporates radical sources of unpredictability, and Machiavelli knew this (as did Karl Popper and others). But since the Enlightenment (and Marx) the widespread belief holds that unpredictability will be overcome in the progressive future.

MacIntyre, however, believes that the “bitch-goddess of unpredictability cannot be dethroned”. He believes in Fortuna’s permanence because of empirical facts. Totalitarianism (total predictability) destroys success – Huxley’s and Orwell’s worlds are impossible. Innovation is required. The idea of “bureaucratic managerial expertise” he rejects as illusion. For him, the best bureaucratic manager is (or must be, for no fault of his) the best actor.

After Virtue - part 1 (of 6)

1. Where Are We Now, and Why?
2. “Enlightened” Europe
3. Turning point: Nietzsche or Aristotle?
4. Pagan vs. Christian Virtues
5. After Virtue
6. MacIntyre’s Answer


1. Where Are We Now, and Why?

On the very last page of my Master’s thesis on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, I quote the emeritus professor of philosophy Alasdair MacIntyre’s (b. 1929) modern classic, After Virtue. At the end of this post series I shall return to this particular reference. What lies between here and there is an attempt to give a relatively brief but nonetheless informative six-part account of the structure and main arguments of After Virtue. I personally look at it as one (if not the only) milestone in modern philosophical ethics.

After Virtue – a study in moral theory (1st ed. 1981) traces the evolution of moral theories up to the modern era. In this sense it is a history of philosophical ethics. But this is only the means to – what I take is – its fundamental task: to make a judgement on this history. The driving motive for writing the book is, according to MacIntyre’s own words, his dissatisfaction in his earlier philosophical work and in “moral philosophy” generally as a (supposedly) independent subject.

In the first chapter, “A Disquieting Suggestion”, the author states his hypothesis: we have nearly entirely lost comprehension of both practical and theoretical morality. The genealogy of morality, if you will, is from order to disorder.

He gives an account of the nature of moral disagreement today and the claims of emotivism. Moral theory is in trouble. We have no rational way for moral agreement in our culture, the author says, and presents, for instance, just war and autonomy of body (abortion) as examples. All sides are logically valid, appeal to objectivity, and all are supported by a historical continuum. Emotivism – the belief that judgments are nothing but preference and feeling – is rampant.

MacIntyre rejects emotivism (as did the analytical philosophers: it is a theory of use and fails as a theory of meaning) but understands its appeal. Most likely the dissatisfaction with “intuitionism” (G. E. Moore 1873-1958 and the “common sense” movement) caused it. Moore’s will had won ground but the “facts” or arguments were unimpressive.

As said, emotivism has won ground. Truth has been displaced as value and replaced as psychological effectiveness. It has “infiltrated both education and religion”, MacIntyre says. Emotivism’s key characteristic is the lack of ultimate criteria.

What, then, had happened?

The answer to this is one of the cornerstones – which the author would like to see resurrected – of his project. What happened is that human telos was abandoned. “Progress” to modernity rejected teleology as superstition. Human life had no instrinsic purpose.

MacIntyre retraces the birth of emotivism to the failure of the Enlightenment Project of justifying morality. He explains what it was, why it had to fail, and what some of its consequences are.

Today’s academic philosophy is marginalized. MacIntyre’s hypothesis is that the roots of the problems of both academic philosophy and everyday social and practical lives are the same: the predecessor culture’s failure to solve its problems. The Enlightenment era sought to found morality on purely rational grounds.

According to MacIntyre, Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was the first to notice the impossibility of the project – he first discovered the concept of radical choice, not rational premises that must lie at the bedrock of morality. We choose our first principles, he argued.

But before Kierkegaard earlier philosophers, too, were reacting to the failure of his predecessors. The genealogy looks something like this: Diderot (1713-1784) said the bedrock or morality desire; Hume (1711-1776) said not desire but passions; Kant (1724-1804) said not passions but reason; and finally Kierkegaard concluded, neither reason nor passion, but choice. Each theory was vindicated by the failure of the previous.

Ultimately, the failure of philosophy (and religion before that) to justify morality is one major cause of the loss of its (morality’s) central cultural role and of it becoming marginal, narrowly academic.

"It's Only Human"

“It's only human.” An expression everyone has heard, and most of us use. But what is its purpose, exactly?

I'd call it a “humane” expression. We often use it as a reassuring comment intended to lift the spirits of a person who is feeling down. But the “downess” cannot have been caused just by any kind of misfortune. If somebody lost, say, their house in a fire, you would not console them by saying, “Don't worry, it's only human.” (“Shit happens,” would be more appropriate, but if the other lacks a sense of humour, not very comforting.)

The cause of the misfortune must be human somehow. But how, exactly?

Could it be a blunder of some sort? I guess if I slipped or bumped my head, you could say, “Poor you. But it's only human.” It is, in fact, quite true: clumsiness is a characteristic peculiar to us humans, most of the animal kindom is not clumsy at all. But still, the expression would ill fit these kind of experiences, even if they are “human” in one sense.

By ruling out non-human and certain types of human incidents, we are near to locating the core of the answer. Isn't it true that the human behaviour we are looking for must be moral behaviour?

“It's only human that I drank a bit too much,” or “It's only human -- how could your wife not understand? -- that you fell in love with this woman,” or “It's only human that you lost your temper.”

And herein lies a danger. It is very true that we do many mistakes or (more often a better word) evil things that are dishonest and/or hurt people. It is, in this sense, human. But we must be careful lest this expression lapses into, not an affectionate way of cheering up a friend, but into a kind of moral “alibi”, a justification for the deed done.

It is also interesting that the expression (“It's only human”) is reserved solely for human blunders. What about human excellences, human achievements?

If I am free of guilt because, after all, “it's only human”, logically I should also be free of merit (e.g. for being a good person, for being multilingual, for making a world-healing scientific breakthrough) because, after all, “it's only human”.

Summer in Finland

As my sister and her husband are back from a week's trip to England and my brother and his wife* from a year's trip to Tanzania, the whole Lepojärvi clan is now within the borders of Finland. At least for a summer. Here, as you can see from the t-shirts, Markku-vaari (paternal Grandpa) is passing on the noble Lepojärvi values: creativity, healthy sportsmanship, and an appreciation of nature (...or scientology, sports fanaticism, and ultra patriotism, whichever way you want to look at it).


*They are looking for an apartment and/or a car for the summer. If you're on holidays and leaving town, even for a week or two, let us know. A place to stay and a vehicle to move from A to B makes family life with a toddler and a baby SO much easier. ;-)

Martin's Bachelor Party

It's an over-used expression, I know, but it's been a hectic week. Last week was a roller-coaster. One one day I was sure I was not going to graduate and would have to cancel my graduation party, on another day I hear that I would, after all, get the grade for my final course in time for graduation. So many people have been praying for me, I am absolutely sure, because I've been working against the clock all through spring - but managed to pull it off.


Last weekend was also hectic, but in a more positive way. My friends Päivi and Martin are getting married in July, and I and another friend Mika are Martin's bestmen. We kidnapped Martin straight from work at noon on Friday and, after having a fun two days, returned him in the early hours of Sunday. The weekend included such things as rally driving, sauna and grilling, midnight poker, unsuccessfully picking a fight with an aggressive group of drunk men, successfully picking a fight with a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu champion, bowling, watching UFC (London this time), and the like. I've enclosed a picture of Martin "meditating" after having "clearly submitted" the BJJ champ. But not without first taking a toll (if you click on the photo you can see a tooth beside his left leg). Seriously speaking, Martin displayed some impeccable sportsmanship. My hat goes off for him.