Keil 1 Benjamin Keil University of Kansas, Ph.D. Candidate (Philosophy) Please do not cite or publish without permission. A Reconstruction of Aristotle's Account of Honesty David Bostock, in his book “Aristotle's Ethics”, argues that Aristotle's understanding of honesty is fundamentally deficient. One of Bostock's strongest and heretofore unanswered claims argues that honesty, as commonly understood, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in an Aristotelian ethical system. It is the purpose of this paper to refute Bostock's claims and to argue that, while Aristotle's direct account of honesty is limited, larger questions of truth-telling are resolved through Aristotle's understanding of distributive justice. I outline the arguments I shall use to prove this thesis as follows. First, I shall briefly overview Aristotle's presentation of honesty in the Nicomachean Ethics (EN IV.7). Second, having sketched the broad outlines of Aristotle's claims, I shall then present Bostock's three primary objections against Aristotle's account of honesty. Third, I shall construct an Aristotelian account of how such questions may be resolved through his understanding of distributive justice. Fourth, I shall argue for the plausibility of my Aristotelian account, then fifth I shall answer two potential objections against it. Sixth, and finally, I shall explain how my Aristotelian reconstruction answers Bostock's three objections. I: Aristotle's Conception of Honesty I begin with an overview of Aristotle's conception of honesty as found in EN IV.7. Aristotle's ethical framework, of course, is premised on the belief that the virtuous mean lies

Keil 2 between two extremes: those of excess and of defect. Aristotle thus examines his principle's application to the virtue of honesty in EN IV.7, where he notes that he is concerned with “Those who pursue truth or falsehood alike in words and deed and in the claims they put forward” (EN IV.7.1127a18-20). Aristotle draws a dichotomy between the boastful man, who claims more than he has accomplished, and the mock-modest man who belittles what he has accomplished. After noting that falsehood is mean and culpable, Aristotle observes that he is primarily interested in the man who is honest when nothing is at stake – whose honesty, Aristotle notes, derives from the nature of his character (EN IV.7.1127a26-1127b5). Aristotle then concludes the chapter by distinguishing between the various ends which people lie for (such as honor, or money,) both via boasting and by being mock-modest (EN IV.7.1127b9-33). II: Bostock's Arguments This Aristotelian account of honesty is harshly criticized by Bostock in his book “Aristotle's Ethics”. In general, Bostock argues that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is incapable of providing a sufficient account of honesty. In support of this general claim, Bostock advances three specific arguments. First, Bostock argues that Aristotle's account is incapable of covering the full range of misstatements about one's own accomplishments. Preliminarily, Bostock notes that Aristotle tacitly restricts the sphere of honesty to the case where one is describing one's own achievements (Bostock 49). He criticizes the descriptive sufficiency of this limitation, then, even when considered on Aristotle's own terms: Even confining attention as Aristotle does to what I say about my own achievements, it is easy to see that some misstatements are not naturally classified either as overstatements

Keil 3 or as understatements. (For example, I may say 'I have never learned German, because my school didn't teach it', when the truth is that my school did teach it, but I opted out of lessons there, did learn some German subsequently, but now have forgotten it)” (Bostock 49, emphasis in original) Bostock thus alleges that, even given Aristotle's tacit restriction to describing our own accomplishments, our statements are not all naturally classifiable as either overstatements or understatements. Bosock's example, further, is designed to provide an instance where an utterance clearly is a misstatement but its content cannot “naturally” be parsed in terms of either an overstatement or an understatement. The second argument Bostock advances against Aristotle concerns a larger insufficiency in Aristotle's position. Bostock writes “It is clear that the virtue of honesty is not in fact confined to statements about one's own achievements, and that in the general case there is no prospect of dividing deliberate misstatements into those that are overstatements and those that are understatements” (Bostock 49). Bostock offers the example of a stranger requesting directions to a destination and, out of pure maliciousness, the speaker purposefully giving incorrect directions. This is, of course, dishonesty, but it is clearly unrelated to accurately describing one's own achievements. (Bostock 49). Thus, Bostock alleges, Aristotle's account of honesty fails to handle the full range of scenarios related to larger questions of truth-telling. Third, Bostock argues that Aristotle incorrectly presumes that honesty lies in a mean between two vices. He observes: It is clear that there is no good way of applying the Aristotelian scheme to the virtue of honesty, and a sign of this is that we do not think of honesty as lying between two opposing vices. The vice opposed to honesty is simply dishonesty, and there is not also another vice which diverges from the virtue in the opposite direction (Bostock 49, emphasis in original). This argument is, of course, a most serious charge against Aristotle's view. For indeed it entails

Keil 4 that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean cannot even sufficiently explore those virtues which Aristotle himself explored. By implication, if Aristotle's view cannot sufficiently account for the virtues Aristotle himself explored, how much more insufficient will his ethical framework be for the rest of the virtues! III: Honesty as Distributive Justice Of course, such strong charges suggests a corollary principle: if the problems with Aristotle's account of honesty are so glaringly obvious, it is plausible that Aristotle himself was aware of the issue and, accordingly, handled larger questions of truth-telling in some other aspect of his ethical system. It is just such a position that I shall now argue in favor of: Although Aristotle's account of honesty is limited in the ways Bostock suggests when considered by itself, larger questions of truth-telling are resolvable by reference to Aristotle's account of distributive justice. Thus, I argue, the full scope of issues related to the modern conception of honesty are indeed accounted for in Aristotle's ethical system. I begin my formulation of Aristotle's position by noting that Aristotle himself recognizes that questions relating to the virtue of honesty can fall within the domain of other virtues. Thus Aristotle writes: Let us discuss...first of all the truthful man. We are not speaking of the man who keeps faith in his agreements, i.e. in the things that pertain to justice or injustice (for this would belong to another virtue), but the man who in the matters in which nothing of this sort is at stake is true both in word and in life because his character is such (EN IV.7.1127a331127b3, emphasis added). This key clause, apparently neglected by Bostock, indicates that Aristotle was aware that some issues related to honesty will not fall under the virtue of honesty as it is discussed in EN IV.7.

Keil 5 This entails, then, not all questions related to honesty are intended to be accounted for in Aristotle's treatment of the virtue. Thus, to answer Bostock’s arguments, we must search elsewhere in Aristotle’s ethical theory. It is enlightening that Aristotle specifically notes that one of the virtues under which questions of honesty occurs is justice. In fact, I argue that the vast majority of questions traditionally related to honesty are answered by the Aristotelian understanding of justice, specifically distributive justice. Let us now note a key aspect of Aristotle’s justice which will have much bearing on the account I present. In contrast to the emphasis on statements about one's own self as found in the Aristotelian account of honesty, justice is intrinsically concerned with relations to others. Aristotle notes that “Justice, alone of the virtues, is thought to be 'another's good', because it is related to our neighbor” (EN V.1.1130a2-4). Aristotle, in fact, spends most of V.1's final paragraph emphasizing that justice is concerned with others, in contrast with the other virtues. Justice is, by initial appearances, thus a potentially fruitful way of resolving issues left unresolved by Aristotle's concept of honesty. In this light, let us thus further consider Aristotle's scheme of justice and how it might resolve larger questions related to truth-telling. In EN V.3, Aristotle notes that justice is divided into two primary categories: distributive and rectificatory justice. Let us examine how questions of honesty might be resolved by Aristotle's notion of justice after both rectificatory and distributive justice are understood more thoroughly. In broad terms, rectificatory justice is concerned with righting inequalities, specifically by equalizing them. Rectificatory justice is embodied, in more modern terms, in the system of civil law. When one has harmed another and thus created an artificial inequality between two parties,

Keil 6 one will sue the other. The compensatory damages thereby awarded are done in order to reestablish equality between the parties. Rectificatory justice holds little promise, I believe, for resolving most questions of truthtelling. Of course, where a lie has harmed another person, rectificatory justice will be employed to right the inequality thereby created. However, this form of justice is intrinsically applied retrospectively – that is, it corrects inequalities which have already taken place. Thus, if a broader account of honesty is sought in Aristotle's understanding of justice, rectificatory justice will be of little assistance. Distributive justice, contrariwise, holds much more promise for resolving larger questions of truth-telling. Aristotle defines distributive justice and notes the extent of its application when he writes: “[Distributive justice] is manifested in distributions of honor or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution (for in these it is possible for one man to have a share either unequal or equal to that of another) (EN V.2 1130b31-34). This notion of distributive justice is developed further in EN V.3, where Aristotle notes that distributions of such goods are to be conducted “according to merit”; he does note, however, that what sort of merit is considered relevant will vary from one government to another (EN 1131a25-30). It is my proposal that larger questions of honesty, for Aristotle's ethics, are best understood in relation to the virtue of distributive justice. Since distributive justice intrinsically involves one man's share being different than another's, a modern understanding of a general duty to “tell the truth” will be insufficient. Instead, honesty should be understood in terms of the degree to which another is entitled to the truth. By its correlation to distributive justice, we may

Keil 7 infer that the degree to which any two people are entitled to the truth may be different. Being honest, then, involves recognizing how much truth is owed to another person then giving that person what she is owed by speaking neither too much nor too little truth. I submit, further, that this is a view of truth most already hold implicitly. Consider a situation where a man is asked what he was doing last night – if such a question is asked by the man's wife, he has a greater obligation to give a truthful answer than if the same question were asked by a total stranger. Consider further that while lying is generally wrong, lying to a judge or police officer is both legally and morally more harshly condemned than lying in general. This is because we already implicitly accept the claim that some people are “owed”, or have a greater entitlement to the truth, than others. So conceived, the degree to which you are obligated to be truthful with a judge, police officer, or one's own wife is greater than the same obligation to a stranger. Thus being honest, I argue, is already implicitly understood as giving the proper amount of truth to those who are due it, and thereby being neither more nor less truthful than is appropriate. IV: Advantages of Honesty as Distributive Justice This Aristotelian understanding I advocate of “honesty as distributive justice” has two main advantages. First, the view I advocate attributes to Aristotle the avoidance of improperly treating honesty as its own virtue, as if honesty were somehow separate from concerns of justice or other virtues. Implicitly, then, my argument asserts that Aristotle was correct to leave questions of honesty not to their own domain but as one concern of distributive justice. For indeed, if treated as its own virtue, we have difficulty explaining the particular

Keil 8 requirements of honesty. For indeed honesty by itself requires just the telling of the truth. So conceived, it is difficult to offer principled explanations for cases where we feel more or less obligated to tell the truth. Thus, if honesty is taken as a virtue on its own (and thereby distinct from the virtue of justice), it is difficult to justify the greater obligation to tell the truth to judges than to strangers (and other similar instances) without offering an ad hoc rule. The view I attribute to Aristotle, in contrast, proposes that honesty be understood as one facet of distributive justice. In so doing, it can offer principled justifications behind our basic intuition that not all people equally deserve to know the truth. In the view I advocate for, such intuitions are grounded in the fact that all individuals are not equally to the truth. Thus, Aristotle's view as I formulate it provides a principled justification for some of our basic intuitions about honesty. In short, then, my view attributes to Aristotle a correct understanding of truth-telling not as its own distinct virtue but as one crucially related to other questions of justice. Second, the view I propose saves Aristotle's account of honesty from the obvious problems Bostock identifies. Presumably, insofar as Bostock identifies glaring shortcomings in Aristotle's account, we should be inclined to think that Aristotle was not likely to offer such a baldly insufficient account of a basic moral issue like truth-telling. On balance, then, I argue that my view should be accepted as plausible since its rejection entails that Aristotle's account of honesty is as plainly deficient as Bostock alleges it to be. V: Two Potential Objections Now that I have given two reasons in favor of my own interpretation of Aristotle, allow me to respond to two potential counter-arguments which might be offered against my reading of

Keil 9 Aristotle. First, when one thinks of distributive justice, it is not uncommon for distribution of physical goods to be connoted. This is easily resolved, however. Such cannot be Aristotle's intention for he notes that honor is one of the goods falling under the domain of distributive justice. Since honor is obviously non-physical, my attribution of a non-physical entitlement to the truth is no reason to reject its placement under the domain of distributive justice. Second, since justice in the Nicomachean Ethics is a political good, one might believe that distributive justice is concerned strictly with the governmental distribution of goods. Bostock himself endorses this incorrect position when he notes that “[Aristotle] has in mind distributions made by the state, e.g. distributions of honors and of state offices (which are normally worth money)” (Bostock 58). In so doing, Bostock asserts that distributive justice only arises in contexts where goods (such as the “entitlement to truth”) are distributed by the state. Such an understanding of Aristotle's notion of distributive justice is misguided, however. Indeed, Bostock's assertion involves a fundamental misperception of political questions as conceived of in Aristotle's day. For indeed in our own time, “political” questions are only those which fall under a government's domain. As Garver notes, however, such was not true in Aristotle's day: “The polis [is] the Greek city-state that Aristotle sees as the unique locus for political life” (Garver 125). As applied to Aristotle's understanding of justice, then, Garver notes that “Justice [for Aristotle] is an ethical virtue, not a description of impersonal political arrangements” (Garver 140). “Political” interactions in the polis of Aristotle's day, then, were not purely governmental questions. By implication, then, distributive justice as a political good ought not be conflated, as Bostock does, with governmental distributions of honors and goods. Thus, my attribution of an “entitlement to truth” in senses not necessarily explicitly laid out in

Keil 10 legal terms would not be inappropriate. In fact, the sort of error which Bostock makes leads him to miss Aristotle’s crucial point: it is not merely governmental honors and the distribution of governmental jobs which fall under the domain of distributive justice. Instead, it is concerned with the right dispersal of honor, money, or any other goods of which citizens may rightly have unequal shares. Included among these goods, I have argued, is the entitlement to truth. VI: Insufficiency of Bostock's argumentation Having thus discarded two potential objections with my proposed reading of Aristotle, let us now return to questions raised earlier in this paper. Bostock alleges that there are three primary flaws with Aristotle's account of honesty, and in response to these my notion of “honesty as distributive justice” was developed. Let us now return to Bostock's three arguments and see how the position I attribute to Aristotle would answer. Bostock's first asserted that misstatements about our own achievements cannot naturally be classified into either overstatements or understatements. His argumentation for this claim is weak, however. Consider his case once again: “For example, I may say 'I have never learned German, because my school didn't teach it', when the truth is that my school did teach it, but I opted out of lessons there, did learn some German subsequently, but now have forgotten it” (Bostock 49). This example, however, is confused and ultimately fails to support the point Bostock wishes to make. Initially, we must remember that in Aristotle's account of honesty (as considered in EN IV.7) concerns only claims made about one's own accomplishments. Thus, the latter half of the

Keil 11 utterance offered by way of example is misguided; “ I have never learned German” is indeed a claim about one's own accomplishments, but not learning something “because my school didn't teach it” is not itself a claim about one's own accomplishments at all – it is a justificatory claim. Thus, we must discard part of Bostock's example and instead focus our attention on the claim about the speaker's own accomplishment: that he has never learned German. In the scenario as given, such a claim is clearly a mock-modest understatement. The speaker did indeed learn German, but has since forgotten it. The speaker's claim that he has never learned German when, in fact, he did but has since forgotten thus seems an instance of “belittling” one's own accomplishments which Aristotle notes as a token of mock-modesty (EN IV.7 1127a23). In short, then, Bostock's example fails to demonstrate that some claims about one's own accomplishments cannot be expressed in terms of either overstatement or understatement. I shall go further, however – Bostock's claim cannot be correct, given what Aristotle's considers, for his proposal exhausts all three logical possibilities. Indeed, when describing one's own accomplishments, the only three options are to boastfully overdescribe, to mock-modestly underdescribe, or to accurately describe one's own accomplishments. All three options are, of course, accounted for in Aristotle’s system. So since Aristotle's position accounts for the only three logical possibilities, Bostock's claim that some misstatements cannot naturally be classified as either overstatements or understatements is false. Let us thus turn to Bostock's second argument presented against Aristotle's account of honesty. Bostock claims that the virtue of honesty is not confined to statements about one's own achievements. Insofar as it goes, this claim is nothing more than a commonplace truth.

Keil 12 However, the premise on which Bostock's second claim rests is incorrect. Put precisely, Bostock's second claim rests on the assumption mentioned earlier: that Aristotle's account of honesty is restricted to describing one's own achievements. Bostock concludes, based on this premise, that since Aristotle does not address the other facets of honesty, his ethical system is deficient. However, as I have argued throughout this paper, larger questions of truth-telling can be resolved, in Aristotelian ethics, by reference to Aristotle's notion of distributive justice. So while Bostock is correct to claim that the whole range of honesty is not captured by just the accurate description of one's own achievements, it is also the case that these other aspects of honesty can be understood in Aristotle's account of distributive justice. Thus, we may conclude, Bostock's second argument serves as no reason to reject Aristotle's ethical framework. Let us then turn to Bostock's third and final claim: that honesty is not a virtue lying between two vices, and thus that Aristotle's ethical framework is incapable of handling the issue sufficiently in the first place. In response to this, I have argued that honesty should be conceived of as the degree to which another person is entitled to the truth. The practice of honesty, then, is the telling of what is appropriate, and one can wander astray of it by telling more or less than what is appropriate. Understood thus, honesty can in fact be conceived of as a mean lying between two vices. So, I argue that in fact Bostock's third argument is incorrect – honesty both can and should be conceived as a mean between two vices. Thus an appropriate understanding of Aristotle's ethical framework allows this feature of honesty to be captured through his understanding of distributive justice. This paper has spent much time arguing against Bostock's rejection of an Aristotelian

Keil 13 account of honesty. If Aristotle's views on honesty were indeed as simplistic as Bostock suggests, plainly Aristotle's ethical framework would be deficient. A more nuanced understanding of Aristotle's concept of distributive justice, however, shows that the full range of truth-telling issues can be accommodated without abandoning Aristotle's basic ethical framework. Such a position enables Aristotle's views on honesty to be taken seriously once again and, in light of its explanatory power, ought to be accepted.

Keil 14 Works Cited: Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Print. Bostock, David. Aristotle's Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Print. Garver, Eugene. Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006. Print.