As we were returning from an ancient political philosophy lecture on Plato’s pupil Aristotle, my roommate Palak and I discussed the theory of multiple goods and its engine of phronesis — together, Aristotle’s refutation of Plato’s argument that there exists one universal good.
After a small amount of time, I said, “Let us assume the existence of Aristotle’s multiple goods, and define the good that we are discussing as a state of mind from which one can derive actions in any given situation as quickly as possible, with minimal turmoil.”
“That definition makes no sense. What do you mean?” he asked.
“Here is an example. The good of driving is the state of mind which, once attained, allows me to drive a car out of habit without the turmoil of decision-making; likewise, the good of life is the state of mind that allows me to make decisions in a given context with as little painful deliberation as possible. And to clarify, this decision may itself be a decision to deliberate, if the knowledge of the good is insufficient. For example, if I am driving a car and forget what to do at a red light, I must choose to deliberate — a perfect knowledge of the good of driving, however, would allow me to act in full confidence that one must stop at a red light. The focus here is on the means, and not the ends — so the good of murder, by this definition, is not an inherent contradiction. We do not question the morality of the consequences of our actions, only the morality of the process by which those actions are derived in a given context. And our metric for morality is the amount of deliberation required, deliberation which we equate with mental turmoil.”
“What does this have to do with Aristotle?” he asked.
“The way I see it,” I said, “Aristotle considers phronesis as an undefinable process by which people derive actions for a given context from an absolute principle, denoted as a good, with as little deliberation as possible. Different goods have different importance in various contexts, but people are naturally inclined to rank these goods in a given context — this ranking is not a part of phronesis.”
“So basically, there is a way of determining action in a given context — phronesis – and that way is based on absolute principles. But how can there be one absolute principle? Isn’t the claim that there are multiple absolute principles a contradiction? Maybe Hinduism has something to say about this — after all, dharma is a system of determining the right action in a given situation. In fact, ths idea of getting action from absolute principles strikes me as Aristotelian. In observing that much of Hinduism’s view toward morality is Aristotelian, are there still notions of absolute morality in Hinduism?”
At this I thought for a moment, and responded, “I consider Hinduism to be Aristotlean because it presents a set of absolute principles — multiple goods, in a sense — which govern decision-making. But two people may have had different absolute principles, for the caste system divided society into different groups with different aims. One set of people derives its actions from its place in society as the commercial class — another derives its actions from its position as the military and political leaders. Each caste acts according to its own absolute principle, its own good, and the backbone of the entire organism is the common good, the overarching absolute principle which considers adherence to the absolute sub-principles of each caste to constitute moral action — justice, or dikaiosyne, as Plato calls it. In fact, I think that this dharmic conception of justice is similar to Plato’s definition of justice as adherence to one’s place in society.”
Palak said, “Fine, but let us apply this definition to an actual situation.” And he proposed as the situation the Dilemma of the Train (item 3 on this BBC article).
“Given that context, I would push the man off of the train,” I responded.
Palak said, “But what if there are terrorists on that train? Or babies, for that matter? Would that affect your decision?”
I said, “Yes, it would — but that is not a part of the context I have. All I know is that there might be terrorists on the train, there might be babies on the train, there might be a mix of the two on the train, but all I know is that if I do not act, I will regret the decision.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“Because I have derived my potential regret from my own conception of an absolute principle, through this undefinable phronesis. In this situation, the most relevant good is the good of life preservation, and all other thoughts related to other goods — for example, that the people on the train might pay me, or that they might express gratitude for me — all other thoughts disappear in my mind. In that context, my instinct ranks the good of life preservation as the most relevant, and phronesis tells me that I must push the man off the tracks in order to preserve the lives on the train.”
“But that’s inhumane — wouldn’t you agree that later, you would regret that decision?” he said.
“I might, but in that context, the course of action which leads to minimal turmoil is that in accordance with the good of life preservation. If I act in terms of the good of the individual, I would consider the man’s life as sacred, and I would let actions take their course. But in that context I rank the various goods, and the one that I consider most important is the one in which I act to minimize regret. Of course I would regret pushing someone to his doom, but I act in the confidence that my action is derived from an absolute principle. So in that way, the means justify the ends, if that makes any sense.”
“This is a purely numbers argument though — you’re turning human lives into numbers.”
“So it is done in the Mahabharata, where Krishna tries to dissuade Duryodhana from war over the kingdom, over a purely numbers argument, and again where Krishna convinces Arjuna in the Gita to kill his millions of kinsmen on the opposing side of the field, in order to preserve billions of lives thereafter. And in both situations, we must consider the contexts — it is the contexts that allow us to conclude that a given course of action is just, and that we can take that course of action with minimal regret. More importantly though, if I were the man on the tracks, and I saw the train oncoming, I would hurl myself to my doom without a second thought. My absolute principle and the phronesis in that context would give me the confidence to act in this way. And this is why I consider the idea of dharma so powerful — given a dharmic society, the man on the tracks and myself, the one with the fatal choice, should act in the same way, with parallel morality. In this way, I feel that Hinduism is Aristotelian.”
Satisfied with this answer, my roommate asked me later to document the discussion, and I have done so here.
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