irwin comment

II—T. H. IRWIN

NIL ADMIRARI? USES AND ABUSES OF ADMIRATION

Both Plato and Aristotle have something to say about admiration. But inorder to know where to look, and in order to appreciate the force of theirremarks, we need to sketch a little of the ethical background that they pre-suppose. I begin, therefore, with ancient Greek ethics in the wider sense,and discuss the treatment of admiration and related attitudes by Homer,Herodotus, and other pre-Platonic sources. Then I turn to the views ofPlato, Adam Smith, Aristotle and Cicero. This order of discussion allowsus to see why admiration is both morally significant and, in some respects,morally unreliable.

I

Questions about Admiration. I’m grateful to Linda Zagzebski(2015) for drawing my attention to some questions about admira-tion that I had been unaware of or only dimly aware of. One of thetopics that she introduces is historical, about the treatment of admi-ration by Plato and Aristotle. The second topic is about the episte-mology of metaphysics of admiration and its relation to correctmoral judgement.

I’ll take most of my time to discuss the relevant historical points,since some of the evidence needs to be set out at some length. At theend I’ll say a word on the philosophical points, in the hope that thehistorical argument will make them a little clearer.

Near the beginning of her paper Zagzebski makes an intriguingcomment:

It appears to me that Plato and Aristotle also neglected admiration,and if so, the neglect of admiration is not merely a modern phenome-non that can be remedied by a more careful study of ancient Greek eth-ics. (Zagzebski 2015, p. 206)

This comment invites some questions:

(1) Is the claim about Plato and Aristotle true?

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(2) Is the claim about ancient Greek ethics true? This questionis distinct from the question about Plato and Aristotle, be-cause the inference contained in Zagzebski’s ‘if so’ is opento doubt. For even if she is right about Plato and Aristotle,it doesn’t follow that we can’t remedy the modern neglectof admiration by studying ancient Greek ethics. Even if weconfine ‘ancient Greek ethics’ to moral philosophy, it con-tains a lot more than Plato and Aristotle.

(3) If we understand ‘ethics’ to include ethical thought that isnot moral philosophy, how much can we learn about admi-ration from ‘ancient Greek ethics’?

Zagzebski does not elaborate further on her claim that Plato ne-glects admiration. She says a little more on Aristotle:

I find it surprising that he discusses neither the emotion of admirationnor the evaluative category of the admirable, when one would thinkthat it would be the natural thing to do. It would be natural in his the-oretical discussion of virtue, and it would be even more natural in hisdiscussion of the way virtue is acquired. (Zagzebski 2015, pp. 206–7)

I don’t altogether disagree with this claim. It is quite true that wecan’t point to a section of the ethical treatises or of the Rhetoric inwhich Aristotle discusses admiration as explicitly as he discussesother emotions. But I don’t think it follows that Aristotle altogetherneglects admiration.

Both Plato and Aristotle have something to say about admiration.But in order to know where to look, and in order to appreciate theforce of their remarks, we need to sketch a little of the ethical back-ground that they presuppose. And so I will say a word on the histor-ical questions I mentioned. I begin with ancient Greek ethics in thewider sense. Then I will then turn to the views of some philoso-phers, Plato, Adam Smith, Aristotle and Cicero. I’ll explain this or-der of treatment at the proper time.


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THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ADMIRATION 225

II

Questions about ‘Admiration’. Where should we look if we want tofind what ancient Greek ethics has to say about admiration?Though I would not want philosophy to be led astray by lexicogra-phy, I begin with the English word ‘admire’ and its derivation fromthe Latin ‘admirari’, i.e. ‘wonder’ or ‘be amazed’. The first defini-tion of ‘admiration’ offered by OED is: ‘The action or an act ofwondering or marvelling; wonder, astonishment, surprise. Nowrare.’ This sense explains the older description of an exclamationpoint (!) as a ‘note of admiration’. The second definition is more fa-miliar to us: ‘Regard for someone or something considered praise-worthy or excellent; esteem, approbation; appreciation. Also: afeeling or expression of this.’1 A similar range of senses can be foundin the Latin word. The facts about Greek are a little less straightfor-ward. The Greek term that corresponds to ‘admirari’ is ‘thau-mazein’. Among the senses mentioned in the dictionary are‘wonder’, ‘be surprised’, ‘be amazed’, ‘marvel’, and ‘admire’.2 Thecorresponding adjective ‘thaumaston’ has a similar range of senses.

We can roughly distinguish the two senses of ‘admire’ in Englishby remarking that the second sense conveys a favourable attitudethat is absent from the first. If I look at a garden after a barbecue,full of beer cans, cigarette butts, half-eaten hamburgers, and so on, Imay be surprised and amazed that it is in such a mess. In the archaicsense I might admire the garden in front of me, but in the usualmodern sense I don’t admire it at all. As Ruskin says, admiration in-cludes ‘discerning and taking delight in’ something. In the Greek‘thaumazein’, however, it is harder to see a distinct sense that in-cludes a positive attitude to the object of wonder. I agree with thedictionary that ‘thaumazein’ can be used to refer to admiration. Butthe relevant evidence suggests to me that the different uses do notintroduce distinct senses. I will try to support this suggestion with afew examples. To show when I am talking about instances of ‘thau-mazein’, I will use ‘wonder’, when ‘be surprised’, ‘be amazed’ mightalso be appropriate.

1 The first example (from 1481) is taken from a translation of Cicero’s De Amicitia, where‘admiration’ renders ‘admiratio’. An illustration of this sense from Ruskin describes admi-ration as ‘the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible Form,and lovely in human Character’.2 See Liddell, Scott and Jones, s.v.


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III

Different Types of Wonder in Homer: Hector and Priam. Homer of-ten uses the formulaic phrase, ‘a wonder to behold’ (thaumaidesthai) for a wide variety of things. One of the greatest wonders isthe shield of Achilles, the work of the metallurgical god Hephaestus.Almost a whole book of the Iliad is taken up with a description ofthis shield. The description is evidently intended to arouse and in-tensify wonder. One especially remarkable feature of it is its convey-ing the appearance of ploughed fields on its gold surface (Iliad18.549). But the wonder is not simply about the shield. Hephaestusdoes not make the shield to hang in a museum, but to be used byAchilles. Achilles takes pleasure in gazing at his new armour, such asa man never carried before (Iliad 19.10–120). The wonder arousedby the shield is intended to increase our wonder at its bearer. Thissort of wonder, we may say, is completely non-moral. It is not clear-ly distinct from admiration. The shield is not only strange and unfa-miliar, and a matter for wonder in that sense, but also an admirabledisplay of the craftsman’s skill. Moreover, when Achilles carries it,he is not simply noticed, but also admired. His wearing this sort ofarmour shows that he is someone extraordinary and remarkable.

We can see a transition from one sort of wonder to another sort inBook 24 of the Iliad. Priam and Achilles meet for the first time whenPriam comes to ask for the body of Hector. Priam arrives, takes holdof Achilles’ knees, and kisses his hands, in the standard gestures ofthe suppliant. Everyone looks at him with wonder, similar to thewonder that people feel when they encounter a murderer who hasescaped and is looking for protection from his pursuers.3 This is astrange comparison because Priam is compared to the fugitive mur-derer who escapes to a foreign land, whereas in fact Achilles is thekiller and the foreigner.4 The strangeness of this comparison shouldat least make it clear that the wonder felt by the onlookers when Pri-am arrives is not moral admiration. We might be amazed by the sud-den appearance of a fugitive, but we don’t immediately admire him.Suppliants provoke wonder elsewhere in Homer (e.g. Odyssey

3 ‘And as when dark delusion comes on a man, who in his own land has killed someone, andhas fled to another people, to the house of a rich man, and amazement (thambos) gripsthose those who look on him, so Achilles was amazed when he saw godlike Priam, and theothers also in amazement looked at at one another’ (Homer, Iliad 24.480–4).4 See Macleod (1982) and Richardson (1993, ad loc.).


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7.144–5), but they can hardly be objects of admiration before any-one knows what they have come to ask for.

But it would be too simple to say that wonder is simply amaze-ment at something strange and unfamiliar. Even in our present pas-sages Achilles wonders at ‘godlike Priam’; something is impressiveeven in Priam’s appearance.5 After they have formed a bond of sym-pathy, they look at each other again, and wonder at each other.6

Here one critic speaks, quite appropriately, of ‘the mutual admira-tion of the two heroes’ (Richardson 1993). They do not admire ex-actly the same things about each other. Priam admires Achilles’ god-like strength and beauty. Achilles admires something about Priam’sappearance (opsin t’agathên), but also something that he has said(muthon akouôn). Priam’s simple and direct appeal for Hector’sbody, expressed without fear of Achilles, without anger, and with-out exaggerated emotion, has aroused Achilles’ sympathy, and hisadmiration for Priam. The wonder that Achilles feels for Priam isperhaps not exactly moral admiration, but it is not wholly non-mor-al either.

I don’t suggest that we should translate ‘thaumazein’ or its cog-nates by ‘wonder’ or ‘be amazed’ when Achilles wonders at Priam’sfirst appearance, and then translate it by ‘admire’ when they wonderat each other later on in their meeting. On the contrary, we wouldmiss part of Homer’s point if we did not use the same word and didnot recognize that it is the same emotion on both occasions. Achillesstill wonders at Priam, but, once they have established some sympa-thy and mutual understanding, he finds something different to won-der at. We might say that Achilles’ wonder on the second occasionnow constitutes admiration.

5 Macleod says, ‘The epithet is more than a generic and decorative one’. Richardson agrees.6 ‘And when they had eaten and drunk their fill, then Priam, son of Dardanus, wondered(thaumaz’) at Achilles, how tall he was and how he looked—for he was like the gods tobehold. And Achilles wondered at Priam, son of Dardanus, looking on his noble appear-ance and hearing his words’ (Homer, Iliad 24.628–32).


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IV

Herodotus: Great and Wonderful Works. Whether or not we arepersuaded that wonder turns into admiration in the last book of theIliad, the Homeric examples help us to understand Herodotus’numerous remarks about wonder and the wonderful. The import-ance of wonder is marked by the Homeric expressions in the intro-duction.7 His intention in this work is to preserve from oblivion the‘great and wonderful works’ (megala kai thômasta erga) of theGreeks and the barbarians, especially in the wars between the Per-sians and the Greeks. When Herodotus speaks of great and wonder-ful works, he implies that these recent exploits deserve to berecorded just as the great deeds of the Homeric heroes were record-ed in the epic poems, because they deserve the sort of renown (kle-os) that Homer has given to the events he records.

What are the megala kai thômasta erga that Herodotus has inmind?

(1) As elsewhere, ‘ergon’ is best rendered by ‘work’ in English,because it includes both products of human action (as in‘public works’ and ‘works of art’) and human actionsthemselves (Asheri et al. 2007, p. 9n.). Herodotus regardsworks of both types as suitable objects of wonder.

(2) Great and wonderful works are not confined to the Greeks,but also belong to the barbarians, just as they do in the Iliad.Herodotus is not parochial in his outlook, and in this respectwonder is impartial and disinterested. He describes some ofthe institutions and customs of the Egyptians and Persianswith appreciation and admiration; he does not dismiss thembecause they are different from what the Greeks do.

This introduction does not mention a further class of wonders thatHerodotus describes for the pleasure and instruction of his readers.These are the wonders of the natural world, including those re-counted in the travellers’ tales from the distant corners of the earth.They are not candidates for admiration.

7 ‘This is the exposition of the inquiry of Herodotus the Halicarnassian, in order that whatcame about may not be erased from human beings by time, and in order that the great andwonderful works of both Greeks and foreigners may not come to be without fame, andespecially the reason why they went to war against each other’ (Herodotus, Histories i.1).


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Does he, then, recognize great and wonderful works that he takesto be admirable? To see which works these might be, we should notconfine ourselves to instances of ‘thômazein’. Since Herodotuswrote his history to preserve the memory of great and wonderfulworks, we can assume that he includes among these works those towhich he calls special attention as being remarkable and worth re-membering. How many of these does he represent as wonderful be-cause they are admirable?

Some of the wonders that result from human effort are remarka-ble in the same way, because they are strange and unfamiliar. This isespecially true of wonderful works on a large scale. The Persianarmy was enormous (Histories vii.21). Xerxes dug a canal throughMount Athos (vii.23–4), because he thought on a grand scale (meg-alophrosunês heineken, vii.24.1). He built a bridge of boats acrossthe Hellespont, and lashed the sea when a storm swept the bridgeaway (vii.33–6). These works are remarkable, but they are notwholly admirable; Herodotus presents them as signs of Xerxes’ ar-rogance and presumption.

But sometimes Herodotus also regards a remarkable thing as ad-mirable. He remarks that democracy (literally, equal speaking, isêgo-ria) is a good thing in many ways, because, for instance, it inspiredthe Athenians to fight more vigorously, so that they defeated forcesthat had previously defeated the Athenians in their pre-democraticperiod (Histories v.78).

Some of the great works are those of the Greeks, greatly outnum-bered by the invaders, and certainly not always successful. TheSpartan Demaratus tells Xerxes the secret of the Greeks’ success;they are free, not like the subjects of the Persian king, but they agreeto limit their freedom by reverence for law.8 This reverence for lawis displayed in failure as well as in success. The three hundred Spar-tans who were killed at Thermopylae stood firm out of respect forthe laws of Sparta. The different qualities of actions that may makethem ‘great and wonderful works’ are brought out in one of Hero-dotus’ significant comments. After Thermopylae he pauses for aconversation between the Persians. They are amazed to hear that the8 ‘Hearing that, Xerxes laughed, and said, “What an absurd thing to say (hoion ephthenxaoepos), Demaratus, that a thousand men should fight with an army like this one! …” To thisDemaratus answered … “Being free, they are not wholly free; for law is master over them,whom they fear much more than your men fear you; for what it orders them, they do, and italways orders the same thing, that they must never flee from the battle before whatsoeverodds, but stand firm in the line and either conquer or die”’ (Herodotus, Histories vii.103–4).


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Greeks compete at the Olympics to prove their excellence (aretê)rather than to enrich themselves.9

Perhaps these few examples in Herodotus of great and wonderfulworks will suggest how misguided it would be to argue either thatadmiration is a moral attitude or that it is wholly non-moral. Itwould be nearer the truth, though certainly much too crude, to ar-gue that it contains non-moral and moral elements on different oc-casions. The behaviour of the three hundred Spartans, or of theAthenians who agreed to abandon their city and take to the ships, ison a relatively small scale, but it displays respect for the law that wefind inspiring rather than simply surprising.

The various idiomatic uses of ‘amazing’, ‘incredible’, ‘tremen-dous’, ‘marvellous’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘awesome’ in modern Englishhelp to illustrate the relevant point about the thaumaston. Herodo-tus’ term extends beyond the initial attitude of amazement, whichcontains no positive evaluation, to wonder that rests on positiveevaluation of something remarkable, to wonder that rests on posi-tive evaluation from a moral point of view. In the last two cases wecan speak of admiration as well as of wonder.

V

Why Admiration is Unreliable. These examples from Homer andHerodotus give us some idea of the scope and range of admiration,as we find it in Greek literature of the fifth and fourth century. Themain point I want to draw from them is the undifferentiated charac-ter of admiration. Even when it contains positive evaluation as wellas surprise or wonder, it may be evoked by different sorts of actionsand qualities. Achilles is a striking example of a remarkable charac-ter who is an object of admiration for his various heroic qualities.Ajax is another such character. The features that make him admira-ble deserve some attention.

In some respects Sophocles’ Ajax presents an unfavourable pic-

9 ‘A few deserters, men of Arcadia, arrived, lacking a livelihood and wanting to find somework. Bringing them before the king, the Persians inquired of them what the Greeks weredoing, … The Arcadians said the Greeks were keeping the Olympic festival … The Persianasked what prize they were competing for, and the Arcadians said it was the crown of olivethat was given. Then Tigranes son of Artabanus stated a most noble opinion … “Alas(papai) Mardonius, what sort of men have you led us to fight, who do not engage in a con-test for wealth but for excellence (aretês)?”’ (Herodotus, Histories viii.26).


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ture of Ajax and a favourable picture of Odysseus. Ajax cannot bearhaving lost to Odysseus when the Greeks awarded the arms ofAchilles to someone whom Achilles regarded as so far inferior tohim. His murderous revenge is prevented only by his insanity, his re-covery of his senses, and his suicide. Odysseus is a far more attrac-tive figure than the other men in the drama, who are out for revengeno less than Ajax was. Odysseus is generous in his appreciation ofAjax, and eventually talks the others out of their plans for revenge.We might conclude that Odysseus is the admirable character in thisdrama, and that he amply justifies the decision of the Greeks toaward the arms of Achilles to him.

This conclusion, however, would be too simple. For Ajax is stilladmirable, not only because of his past exploits, but also because ofhis vindictive and unyielding attitude in the present. He is not to bewholly condemned for his stubborn adherence to his friendships andhis hatreds, or for his refusal to adapt to changed circumstances. Heis not wholly wrong to refuse to make the best of a bad situation. Thesame is true of Medea, who has some of the characteristics of Ajax.He planned unsuccessfully to kill the other Greek leaders. She planssuccessfully to kill her children to take revenge on Jason, who in thiscase presents an unattractive version of the attitude of Odysseus. Me-dea’s thoughts and actions are terrible. Despite them, or rather partlybecause of them, she is remarkable, and in some respects admirable.

The examples of Ajax and Medea suggest that if we take the ad-mirable character as our moral ideal, we will go astray. I do notwant to say that Odysseus in the Ajax is not admirable in his way.But I do not think it follows from his being right against Ajax thatSophocles and his readers think he is more admirable than Ajax. Tosee that admiration is morally ambiguous we do not have to applyour own moral standards, or those of Plato and Aristotle. Sophoclesand his audience notice the ambiguity. Ajax and Medea are greatand remarkable, and so it is difficult to withhold admiration fromthem, even if we recognize that they are not the neighbours or fel-low citizens we would want.

In these examples from tragedy I have not been relying on occur-rences of ‘thaumazein’. I have suggested that, in the light of what wehave learnt about thaumazein and its objects from Homer andHerodotus, these tragic characters are likely to have been objects ofthaumazein for their audience. They are presented as surprising, re-markable, and, in the ways I have described, also admirable.


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VI

Socrates and Achilles. What, then, do Plato and Aristotle thinkabout admiration for these heroic but dangerous people? The firstpart of my answer relies on Socrates’ attitude to Achilles. The Pla-tonic Socrates is familiar with the common view, endorsed by Hip-pias at the beginning of the Hippias Minor, that Achilles is a greaterhero than Odysseus.10 In the dialogue that follows, Socrates castssome doubt on this comparative judgement.

In the Apology, Socrates relies on the same popular view of Achil-les. He imagines someone asking him why he is willing to risk deathin order to stick to his principles. Socrates answers by quotingAchilles.11 As Socrates quotes and paraphrases him, Achilles is readyto die on the spot as soon as he can fulfil the demands of justice.Socrates agrees with this whole-hearted commitment to justice. Buthe attributes this commitment to Achilles only by putting Socraticwords into Achilles’ mouth. The Homeric Achilles does indeed say‘May I die on the spot!’ (autika tethnaiên), but he says nothingabout justice. He is willing to die as soon as he has avenged thedeath of Patroclus; he wants revenge, not justice.12

Socrates’ rewriting of Homer is easy to understand in the light ofwhat we have said about admiration. Achilles is the supremely ad-mirable hero. In the Iliad he does not always keep the reader’s ap-proval; his original withdrawal from the battlefield is not blamed,10 ‘Indeed, Eudicus, I would be pleased to learn from Hippias about what he was saying justnow about Homer. For I also have heard your father, Apemantus, say that the Iliad is a finercomposition by Homer than the Odyssey, and finer to the extent that Achilles is better thanOdysseus’ (Plato, Hip. Mi. 363ab).11 ‘But perhaps someone will say, “Aren’t you ashamed, Socrates, at having engaged in apractice from which you are now in danger of death?” I might justly reply: What you say isnot fine, if you think that a man who is any use at all ought to give any weight to living ordying a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects oflife and death, and ought not to consider that one thing, whether his actions are just orunjust, and the works of a good man or a bad. For, on your account, all the demigods whodied at Troy would be base, especially the son of Thetis, who looked down so much on dan-ger, in comparison with undergoing anything shameful, that when his mother said to him, inhis eagerness to Hector, something like this—“My son, if you avenge the death of yourcomrade Patroclus and kill Hector, you will die yourself— For at once (she says) after Hec-tor, death is ready for you”; he, hearing this, thought little of death and danger, but beingmuch more afraid of living while being base and of not avenging friends. “Let me die forth-with”, he says, “when I have imposed justice on the one who has done injustice, so that thatI may not stay here by the beaked ships a laughing-stock, and a burden on the earth”’(Plato, Apology 28b–d).12 One might seek to punish an offender for the sake of justice, and so one might have Socrates’reason to say what Achilles says. But this is not the reason the Homeric Achilles gives.


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but his rejection of the embassy from Agamemnon (including Odys-seus) is presented unfavourably. He is partly to blame for the deathof Patroclus. But when he returns to the battle, he does not apolo-gize; it is Agamemnon who partly apologizes to him.

Socrates sees, then, that if we recall the Iliad, we admire Achillesfor the wrong reasons. We admire his jealousy of his own honourand status, and his single-minded pursuit of revenge for the death ofhis friend. In Socrates’ view, we are right to admire single-minded-ness in pursuit of the right goal, and so he attributes to Achilles thegoal that would justify his single-minded attitude. The characterthat deserves most admiration is not the character of the HomericAchilles, but the character of someone who has accepted entirelydifferent aims from those of Achilles and is single-minded in thepursuit of them.

Reflection on this passage shows us why Socrates and Plato be-lieve that admiration is a dangerous attitude. Homer, Herodotus andSophocles give us good reasons to believe that Socrates’ contempo-raries admire the wrong things. This admiration is all the more dan-gerous because it is not entirely misguided. Achilles’ single-mindedness and Ajax’s pride are sometimes appropriate to the cir-cumstances. But Achilles and Ajax do not reliably recognize the cir-cumstances that make their attitudes appropriate; nor do the peoplewho admire these attitudes.

VII

Plato’s Republic and Misguided Admiration. If I were to trace Pla-to’s treatment of admiration for heroic characters and patterns ofbehaviour, I would have to say quite a lot about his treatment ofHomer, his remarks on moral education, and several other parts ofthe argument of the Republic. But I will confine myself to some sig-nificant places where he uses ‘thaumazein’, since they give us quite agood idea of his views.

The attitudes connected with wonder and admiration belong tothe spirited part of the soul. And so it is not surprising that peoplewho are guided primarily by their spirited parts are also unreliablebecause they are liable to mistakes in admiration. When the idealstate has begun to decline, people start to admire the wrong things,and therefore start to be ashamed about circumstances that are


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nothing to be ashamed of.13 These people are inappropriately con-cerned about honour and status, and this is the basis of their admi-ration and shame.

In the Laws, Plato takes this outlook based on honour and shameas the starting point for his argument about virtue. He attributes itto the Spartans, and he criticizes them for having confined them-selves to only one part of virtue without understanding that it isonly one part. What they admire is close to bravery. But it is notgenuine bravery that they admire, because they do not understandits relation to the rest of virtue.

This last point should help to explain what I mean in speaking of‘misguided’ admiration. I am not saying that, according to Sophoclesor Plato, the qualities for which Ajax is admired do not deserve ad-miration. We would not be wrong to admire him in the way wewould be wrong to admire the tyrant Phalaris because he had man-aged to kill so many people. We are misguided in so far as we admirethe qualities of Ajax more than we should, and we admire otherqualities less, though they deserve more admiration. In Plato’s view,our normal tendencies to admire great and remarkable people aremisguided only because they mislead us about which qualities aremost admirable.

In the light of this survey of evidence from Greek ethics, whatshould we say about the relation between moral judgements and‘the proper function of the disposition to admiration’ (as Zagzebskiputs it)? Plato is familiar with people who tend to admire the rangeof actions and people who strike them as great and remarkable inthe various ways I have described. Admiration may be aroused bygreat wealth, power, bravery, pride, stubbornness, justice, integrity,and so on. Does this range of admiration belong to the proper func-tion of the relevant disposition? I find it difficult to say what is im-proper about the functioning of the disposition to admire.

One might reply that it is not so difficult to say what is improper

13 ‘Now when wealth and wealthy people are honoured in a city, virtue and good people aremore dishonoured … And so finally they become lovers of acquisition and of possessions,and they praise and admire (thaumazousi) a rich person and lead him to ruling offices, butdishonour a poor person’ (Plato, Republic 551ab).

‘And the rational and the spirited [parts] … he allows, in the one case, to reason or ex-amined about nothing else but about how to get more money from less, and, in the othercase, to admire (thaumazein) and honour nothing except wealth and wealthy people …’(Plato, Republic 553d).

‘These are the ones he treats as friends and trustworthy men, having lost those previousones … And these companions, indeed, admire him …’ (Plato, Republic 568a).


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about the functioning of the disposition to admire if it is activatedby Achilles or Ajax or Croesus. Perhaps it is an improper function ifone admires something that it is morally inappropriate to admire, orto admire as much as we do. We might attribute this view to Plato inthe Republic; perhaps he thinks admiration for wealth is warpedand inappropriate admiration in so far as it admires wealth morethan is morally appropriate. This moralized conception of properadmiration identifies the proper function of the disposition to ad-mire with the morally appropriate exercise. But if this is how we ex-plain the proper function, we can hardly define correct moraljudgement by reference to the proper function of admiration. Theorder of definition will be the other way round.

VIII

Smith: The Corruption of Admiration. It may be useful to expandmy comments on the proper and improper function of the disposi-tion to admire, by turning to Adam Smith. Among the British mor-alists he has the fullest and most thoughtful discussion. Shaftesburyoften speaks of admiration, in terms that are familiar from Cicero.Hutcheson and Hume speak in similar terms, but without analysis.Since admiration has a large role in Smith’s account of the moralsentiments, he treats it more carefully and self-consciously.

His discussion shows that the tendency to admire what is astonish-ing, great and impressive is not a peculiarity of Greek ethics. First, henotices that admiration is not simply approval, the positive attitudethat results from disinterested sympathy with, for example, sometrait of character. Admiration requires something out of the ordi-nary.14 When he mentions ‘wonder and surprise’ Smith recognizes theconnection between ‘admire’ and ‘admirari’ that I have already men-

14 ‘For approbation heightened by wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which isproperly called admiration, and of which applause is the natural expression. The decision ofthe man who judges that exquisite beauty is preferable to the grossest deformity, or thattwice two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by all the world, but will not,surely, be much admired. It is the acute and delicate discernment of the man of taste, whodistinguishes the minute, and scarce perceptible differences of beauty and deformity; it is thecomprehensive accuracy of the experienced mathematician, who unravels, with ease, themost intricate and perplexed proportions; it is the great leader in science and taste, the manwho directs and conducts our own sentiments, the extent and superior justness of whose tal-ents astonish us with wonder and surprise, who excites our admiration, and seems todeserve our applause …’ (Smith 1759, i.1.4.3, pp. 19–20).


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tioned. He remarks that admiration is distinct from any belief aboutthe utility of the object of admiration, either to oneself or to others.15

The wonder and surprise that are excited by superiority explain ouradmiration for people who display self-command in circumstanceswhere most people would find it difficult. In this connection Smithmentions the steadfastness of Cato.16

But our tendency to admire what is great and impressive leads usinto attitudes that Smith describes as the ‘corruption’ of our moralsentiments. He observes that we admire people of great wealth andhigh social status whether or not we benefit from them.17 This admi-ration is unwarranted, because it should only be given to morally

15 The utility of those qualities, it may be thought, is what first recommends them to us; and,no doubt, the consideration of this, when we come to attend to it, gives them a new value.Originally, however, we approve of another man’s judgement, not as something useful, butas right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality: and it is evident we attribute thosequalities to it for no other reason but because we find that it agrees with our own. Taste, inthe same manner, is originally approved of, not as useful, but as just, as delicate, and as pre-cisely suited to its object. The idea of the utility of all qualities of this kind, is plainly anafter-thought, and not what first recommends them to our approbation’ (Smith 1759,i.1.4.3, p. 20).16 ‘The little sympathy which we feel with bodily pain is the foundation of the propriety of con-stancy and patience in enduring it. … We admire and entirely go along with the magnanimouseffort which he makes for this purpose. We approve of his behaviour, and from our experienceof the common weakness of human nature, we are surprised, and wonder how he should beable to act so as to deserve approbation. Approbation, mixed and animated by wonder andsurprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called admiration, of which, applause isthe natural expression, as has already been observed’ (Smith 1759, i.2.1.12, pp. 30–1).

‘We wonder with surprise and astonishment at that strength of mind which is capable ofso noble and generous an effort. The sentiment of complete sympathy and approbation,mixed and animated with wonder and surprise, constitutes what is properly called admira-tion, as has already been more than once taken notice of. Cato, surrounded on all sides byhis enemies, unable to resist them, disdaining to submit to them, and reduced, by the proudmaxims of that age, to the necessity of destroying himself; yet never shrinking from hismisfortunes, … appears to Seneca, that great preacher of insensibility, a spectacle whicheven the gods themselves might behold with pleasure and admiration’ (Smith 1759,i.3.1.13, p. 48).17 ‘Upon this disposition of mankind, to go along with all the passions of the rich and thepowerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the order of society. Our obsequiousnessto our superiors more frequently arises from our admiration for the advantages of their sit-uation, than from any private expectations of benefit from their good-will (Smith 1759,i.3.2.3, p. 52).

‘This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to de-spise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both toestablish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the sametime, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Thatwealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are dueonly to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the onlyproper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been thecomplaint of moralists in all ages’ (Smith 1759, i.3.3.1, pp. 61–2).


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appropriate qualities, and it is not appropriate for wealth and statusin their own right. According to Smith, we tend to admire the wrongpeople because we want not only to deserve respect but also to berespected, and we notice that wealth and status tend to gain re-spect.18 Since we value the respect and attention that rich and pow-erful people receive, we tend to treat them with respect and toadmire them.

We might be inclined to question Smith’s description of our ten-dency to admire different people. In particular, we might deny thatour admiration for powerful and successful people is really admira-tion in the same sense as our admiration for wisdom and virtue. Inthe first sense we might admire spectacular success and achieve-ment, but this is not the same as the admiration that includes moralapproval. Does Smith simply confuse two distinct attitudes?

He agrees that the attitudes are not exactly the same, but he re-plies that the difference between them does not affect his mainpoint.19 First he suggests that if we respect both virtue and high sta-tus, our respect is none the less of different types, though we maynot always notice the difference. But he also suggests that high sta-tus receives our respect, even though we acknowledge that it doesnot deserve it. If we agree with him that the two types of respect aredifferent, it is not clear why status might not deserve one sort ofrespect—the sort that we feel for wisdom and virtue. He seems tovacillate between recognizing two types of respect and recognizingonly one.

18 ‘We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptibleand to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and vir-tue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. … Two dif-ferent characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition andostentatious avidity, the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. … They are thewise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are thereal and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirersand worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinter-ested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness’ (Smith 1759, i.3.3.2, p. 62).19 ‘The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt, different from that whichwe conceive for wealth and greatness; and it requires no very nice discernment to distin-guish the difference. But, notwithstanding this difference, those sentiments bear a very con-siderable resemblance to one another. In some particular features they are, no doubt,different, but, in the general air of the countenance, they seem to be so very nearly the same,that inattentive observers are very apt to mistake the one for the other. … It is scarce agree-able to good morals, or even to good language, perhaps, to say, that mere wealth and great-ness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect. We must acknowledge,however, that they almost constantly obtain it; and that they may, therefore, be consideredas, in some respects, the natural objects of it’ (Smith 1759, i.3.3.3, pp. 62–3).


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Smith seems to offer to explain how we allow the same sort of re-spect to status and to virtue. We think of status as providing somebasis for admiration; it can be cancelled by extreme vice, but we arealways ready to make a considerable allowance for it. Smith believesthat we take this indulgent attitude to wealth and status because weare in general prone to admire success rather than commendable ef-forts that fail.20 Even if we believe A is wiser and better than B, westill tend to admire B more than A if we believe B is more successfulthan A. Since we admire successful virtue, we still admire successeven if it is not connected with virtue. This comparison implies thatwe accord A and B different degrees of the same admiration.

It is not clear to me, then, that Smith takes a consistent viewabout admiration and respect. The tendency to admire greatness,marked by social status, wealth and power is a corruption of ourmoral sentiments only if it causes us to accord to these qualities ahigher degree of the same admiration that we accord to virtue andwisdom. But if the moral sentiment of admiration is a different atti-tude from our admiration for social status and so on, why shouldthe second type of admiration cause the corruption of our moralsentiments?

I do not believe Smith’s argument can be dismissed so easily. Itseems to me that he has identified a genuine difficulty in admiration.Even if our admiration for someone’s virtue is a different type of ad-miration from our admiration for their success and superiority, itcan still be compared with the latter type, and we can still ask whatwe admire more in people. If we admire superior people verystrongly, and we admire virtuous people very weakly, we may valuesuperior people more than we value virtuous people. If Smith isright, our admiration for superiority corrupts our moral sentimentsnot by directing moral admiration to the wrong objects, but byswamping moral admiration with admiration for superiority.

If this is what Smith means, or even if he doesn’t mean it, butshould have meant it, he points out a reason for some distrust ofadmiration as a guide to morality. It may be directed to the morally

20 ‘It mortifies an architect when his plans are either not executed at all, or when they are sofar altered as to spoil the effect of the building. The plan, however, is all that depends uponthe architect. … But their effects are still vastly different, and the amusement derived fromthe first, never approaches to the wonder and admiration which are sometimes excited bythe second. … The superiority of virtues and talents has not, even upon those who acknowl-edge that superiority, the same effect with the superiority of achievements’ (Smith 1759,ii.3.2.3, p. 99).


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appropriate objects, but if it is also directed towards objects thatmay turn us away from morality, it may mislead us. This conclu-sion will not surprise us if we recall the various objects of ‘thau-mazein’ in Greek and of ‘admirari’ in Latin. The people whomPlato describes in Republic viii admire highly objects that theyshould admire only slightly, and do not admire the objects theyought to admire most. They illustrate well the attitudes towardswealth and power that Smith describes among types of admiration.Smith points out to us that admiration inherits some of the variousobjects that we found for the attitudes designated by the Greek andLatin verbs. He does not treat admiration as mere wonder or sur-prise. It is also an impartial appreciation that conveys a favourableevaluation of something remarkable. But this evaluative aspect ofadmiration includes much more than moral evaluation, and inmany people it may relegate moral sentiments to a relatively minorplace.

IX

Aristotle’s Doubts about Admiration. We can now understand Aris-totle’s references to admiration. When we place them against thebackground I have sketched, they turn out to be more significantthan their brevity might lead us to expect.

He describes the ostentatious and vulgar person who lacks thevirtue of magnificence in spending large amounts of money on pub-lic works. His spending for public and for private objects reveals hisdesire to be an object of thaumazein.21 It is plausible to render ‘thau-mazein’ by ‘admire’ here. The ostentatious person does not simplywant people to be amazed at his extravagance; he wants them tothink better of him, and to appreciate his conspicuous expenditurefor the public benefit. Aristotle does not suggest he is indifferent tothe public good. But his main concern is not the public good, butthe admiration he hopes for. Aristotle recognizes that thaumazein is

21 ‘The vulgar person who exceeds [the mean] exceeds by spending more than is right, as hasbeen said. For in small expenses he spends a lot, and puts on an inappropriate display. Hegives his club a dinner party in the style of a wedding banquet, and when he supplies a cho-rus for a comedy, he brings them on stage dressed in purple, as they do at Megara. In all thishe aims not at the fine, but at the display of his wealth and at the admiration he thinks hewins in this way. Where a large expense is right, he spends a little, and he spends a lot wherea small expense is right’ (Aristotle, EN 1123a19–27).


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a way of taking someone seriously (spoudazein), and that it natural-ly leads to friendly feeling towards them (see Rhetoric 1381a25–8,b10–14); these are the responses that the ostentatious person hopesfor.

This is not the concern of the genuinely magnificent person.Someone with this virtue tries to produce a fine result, which willthereby be admirable.22 But the admiration that results, if people ad-mire the right things, from a genuinely admirable action or result, isnot the virtuous person’s concern.

Aristotle confirms this point in his discussion of the magnani-mous person, who recognizes that honour is the greatest of externalgoods, but counts honour as small in comparison to virtue(Rhetoric 1124a12–20). Since actions that result in honour also re-sult in admiration, which is another external good, the magnani-mous person does not value being admired highly either. Nor is heespecially prone to admire, because ‘nothing is great to him’(1125a2–3). To understand ‘nothing is great to him’, we have to goback to the previous remark that I cited. The magnanimous persondoes not believe that virtue is of small value, and so he does not be-lieve it is an unworthy object of admiration. When Aristotle says‘nothing is great’, he means that no good other than virtue is great,because all the other goods are worth less. Similarly, then, when hesays that magnanimous people are not prone to admire, he does notmean that they admire nothing. He means that they are not prone toadmire or to wonder at the various non-moral goods that exciteother people’s wonder and admiration. And so they will not beprone to admire the conspicuous and impressive appearance of thechorus dressed in purple; they will see that this misses the point ofexpenditure that is meant to benefit the public. Magnanimous peo-ple, therefore, are different from other people because they do notlet uneducated feelings of admiration guide their responses to otherpeople and their actions.

When Aristotle says that the magnanimous person is not prone towonder or admiration, his remark recalls, and may be intended torecall, the advice that is sometimes attributed to Pythagoras, ‘mêden

22 ‘For a possession and a work (ergon) have different sorts of excellence; the most hon-oured possession is the one worth most, for example gold, but the most honoured work isthe one that is great and fine, since that is what is admirable to behold. Now what is mag-nificent is admirable, and the excellence (aretê) of the work consists in its large scale’(Aristotle, Rhetoric 1123b15–18).


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thaumazein’.23 Democritus offers similar advice in his advocacy of‘athambiê’. I have left this advice in Greek because it is not clearwhat is ruled out when we are advised not to ‘wonder’ or ‘marvel’.Aristotle, however, gives a reasonable interpretation of such advice;we should not be prone to admire the sorts of goods that other peo-ple admire if they are not really goods that deserve that degree ofadmiration. This is why Horace claims that ‘wondering at nothing’is the only route to happiness.24 Appropriately interpreted, this ad-vice might be offered by Aristotle, by Epicureans, or by Stoics. Aswe have seen, ‘admiring nothing’ does not really mean ‘admiringnothing at all’, but ‘admiring none of the common, but mistaken,objects of highest admiration’. Aristotle is being quite consistent,then, when he affirms that neither the morning nor the evening staris as thaumaston as justice.25 Here we need to translate ‘thaumas-ton’ by ‘wonderful’ or ‘marvellous’. Aristotle and his source arethinking of our wonder at the starry heavens above (as Kant putsit), and at the same time of our admiration for justice, because itcombines all the virtues. This feature of justice is indeed a properobject of thaumazein.

If I have given a reasonable expansion of Aristotle’s brief remarkson ostentatious, magnificent and magnanimous people, he recogniz-es that admiration can mislead our moral sentiments. We can see thesame point in some of the virtues that Aristotle calls nameless.These are cases in which people do not recognize that a mean state23 Plutarch points out that some people misinterpret Pythagoras’ advice to exclude all praiseor honour. He replies that it by no means excludes these attitudes when they are appropri-ate: ‘For there are many who interpret that saying of Pythagoras wrongly and inappropri-ately. For he declared that he had gained this from philosophy, to wonder (thaumazein) atnothing; but these men take it to be to praise nothing and honour nothing, placing it in dis-dain, and seeking to be dignified (to semnon) by looking down on things. For philosophicalreasoning certainly removes the wonder (thauma) and amazement (thambos) that comefrom puzzlement and ignorance by means of knowledge and inquiry into the cause of agiven thing, but it does not abolish good temper, moderation and benevolence (philan-thrôpon); for to those who are truly and firmly good it is the finest honour to accord hon-our to someone who is worthy of it’ (Plutarch, Moralia 44b–c).24 ‘Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, /solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum’[‘Wondering at nothing is practically the only thing, Numicius, that can make us and keepus happy’] (Horace, Epistulae i.6).25 ‘This type of justice, then, is complete virtue, not complete virtue without qualification,but complete virtue in relation to another. And that is why justice often seems to be supremeamong the virtues, and “neither the evening star nor the morning star is so wonderful”, andthe proverb says “And in justice all virtue is summed up”’ (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1129b27–30). Aristotle’s source for ‘neither …’ is not extant. An ancient commentator attributes it toEuripides. When Plotinus refers to this passage, he replaces ‘thaumaston’ with ‘kalon’(under the influence of the Phaedrus; see Plotinus, Enneads i.6.4.10–12, vi.6.6.37–42).


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is desirable, because they tend towards one of the extremes. This istrue of the virtues concerned with anger and honour. In both casesmany people suppose that someone who is willing not to pursue agrievance or who recognizes some constraints on the desire for hon-our is spineless and deficient in proper pride and self-assertion. Thisreaction is a familiar aspect of the traditional conception of the ad-mirable person.

Aristotle agrees with Plato’s view that this traditional view needsto be reformed. And the reform does not consist simply in present-ing alternative objects for admiration. The right sort of reform hasto put admiration in a secondary place. Genuine virtue requires theunderstanding of the human good that reveals the appropriate limitsof the different attitudes that may capture our admiration. Admira-tion is an important secondary aspect of moral understanding, but itshould not determine our moral understanding. Aristotle’s brief re-marks on admiration do not imply that he thinks it is unimportant.I am inclined to suggest instead that he is familiar with it, takes itfor granted, and treats it with some reserve. His reserved attitude iseasily understood in the light of the few points I have mentionedabout the pervasive role of wonder and admiration in ancient Greekethics.

Aristotle’s reservations tend to strengthen doubts about the via-bility of any attempt to define correct moral judgement by referenceto the proper function of admiration. We have to acquire the virtuesin order to learn what we ought to admire most (e.g. justice) andwhat we ought to admire less (the goods that most people tend toadmire too much). Since virtues involve the appropriate aims, be-liefs and emotions, someone who learns to be virtuous also learns tobe afraid, get angry, and admire in the right circumstances, and asone ought. But it would be no less mistaken to try to define the vir-tues by reference to the proper function of admiration than it wouldbe to try to define them by reference to the proper function of fear,anger, and so on.

X

Cicero on the Objects of Admiration. In order to explain and tosupport these claims about the priority of correct moral judgementover the proper function of admiration, I turn to Cicero’s De Offici-


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is. Cicero develops the distinction that I have taken to be implicit inAristotle, between what is admired and what deserves to be admiredand is therefore admired by the virtuous person. I mentioned earlierthat Cicero’s treatment of admiration and its corruption may be onesource of Adam Smith’s discussion. But I discuss him after Smith, inorder to make it clear how his views about what is admired andwhat deserves admiration disagree with Smith. In particular Cicerorejects Smith’s attempted definition of correct moral judgement byreference to admiration.

Many instances of ‘admirari’ in Cicero are properly translated‘wonder at’ or ‘be surprised’, since they convey no positive evalua-tion of the relevant object.26 But some instances convey the relevantpositive evaluation and are properly rendered ‘admire’. The twouses are connected because admiration includes some element ofsurprise or amazement; the good that is admired is regarded as be-ing greater than what one could ordinarily expect.27 This admira-tion, however, is not necessarily directed at moral qualities. All thesefeatures of Cicero’s use of ‘admirari’ are familiar to us both fromour survey of ‘thaumazein’ in Greek and from our survey of AdamSmith on admiration.

In Cicero’s view, our practices are corrupted and degraded by thepopular admiration of wealth.28 He agrees with Aristotle’s attack onthe ostentatious spending that is intended to secure popular admira-tion, and often succeeds in securing it.29 But though common viewsare corruptible, Cicero does not believe they are always corrupt; forhe believes that most people are also capable of admiring virtueseven if they do not possess them. Their admiration includes surprisethat someone can overcome the tendencies to vice that cause most

26 ‘But the just person, whom we recognize as a good man, will never take anything fromanyone to add to his own possessions. Anyone who is amazed (admiratur) by this, let himadmit that he does not know what a good man is’ (Cicero, De Officiis iii.75).27 ‘Those people, then, admire in common all the things that they notice are great and betterthan they expect, And so they look up to, and raise with the highest praises, those men inwhom they think they see some outstanding and unusual abilities (virtutes); and they lookdown on and despise those who they think have no ability, no spirit, no energy’ (Cicero, DeOfficiis ii.36).28 ‘But conduct (mores) is ruined and degraded by admiration for wealth. How is theamount of someone’s wealth relevant to any of us?’ (Cicero, De Officiis ii.71).29 ‘How much weightier and true is the reproach of Aristotle that we are not amazed atthese wasteful expenditures of money that are intended to conciliate the masses’ (Cicero, DeOfficiis ii.56).

Here ‘admiremur’ clearly does not mean ‘admire’. We ought to be amazed at this wasteof resources to gain the favour of the masses, but we are not.


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people to act wrongly on some occasions.30

For this reason the Stoics argue that only virtue deserves unquali-fied admiration, because it is praiseworthy; that is to say, it still de-serves to be praised even if no one praises it.31 For the same reasonsit deserves admiration even if no one actually admires it; that is whyCicero speaks of it as worthy of admiration.32 If we take ‘admirable’to mean ‘worthy of admiration’ rather than ‘capable of being ad-mired’ or ‘likely to be admired’, the Stoics take virtue to be essen-tially admirable. They formulate more clearly the connection thatAristotle assumes between virtue and admiration.

XI

The Admired and the Admirable. As I mentioned at the beginning,Zagzebski introduces some claims about the epistemology, or meta-physics, or both, of morality. At the end of her paper she commentson the bad effects of envy and resentment:

They distort moral judgement to the extent that moral judgements de-pend upon judgements of admirability, and judgements of admirability

30 ‘But the ones who are treated with admiration are those who are thought to excel othersin virtue and to be free from anything unfitting, and also from those vices that other peoplecannot easily resist. For pleasures, most appealing mistresses, twist the minds of the greaterpart of humanity away from virtue; and when the fires of distress are applied, most peopleare terrified beyond measure. Life, death, wealth, poverty move all human beings moststrongly. Those who with a great and high mind look down on these things, good or badalike, and who, when some great and honourable (honesta) goal is presented to them, areturned entirely towards it and grasped by it, then who would not admire the splendour andbeauty of virtue? And so this superiority of mind creates great admirability, and most of alljustice, from which one virtue people are called good men, seems to most people to be awonderful (mirifca) virtue, and quite rightly.

‘[Justice arouses ] confidence and admiration, because it rejcts and ignores the thingsthat seize and inflame most people with greed’ (Cicero, De Officiis ii.37–8).31 ‘Therefore all honour, all admiration, all zeal is directed towards virtue and towards theactions that agree with virtue, and all the things in minds or carried out in action that arecalled by the single name of right (honesta)’ (Cicero, De Finibus v.60).

‘From these things is formed and completed the honourable (honestum) that we arelooking for, which even if it is not widely celebrated, is still honourable, and of which wetruly say that, even if it is praised by no one, it is by nature praiseworthy (laudabile)’ (Cic-ero, De Officiis i.14).32 ‘For nothing is useful that is not also honourable, nor is it honourable because it is useful,but useful because it is honourable. And so out of many admirable (amazing; mirabilibus)examples it will be hard to state one that is either more praiseworthy or more outstandingthan this one [i.e. Regulus]. But out of all this praise of Regulus, that one thing is worthy ofadmiration (amazement; admiratione) that he argued for keeping the prisoners’ (Cicero, DeOfficiis iii.110–11).


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depend upon the proper function of the disposition to admiration. (Za-gzebski 2015, p. 219)

This comment raises a few questions of interpretation:(1) I’m not sure about the force of the qualifying phrase ‘to the

extent that’. It suggests that Zagzebski may not believe without res-ervation the claim that follows the qualifying phrase. But for presentpurposes I will discuss the claim without any reservations that shemay intend, and hence without attributing the claim to her.

(2) How is ‘depend’ used here? The intended relation of depend-ence might be psychological, epistemological, or metaphysical. If weconsider the extent to which moral judgements depend on judge-ments of admirability, we might conclude that sometimes we make amoral judgement—that some action is right or permissible, or thatsome character is virtuous—by noticing that we judge an action orperson to be admirable. This might be a limited psychological claim.It would not conflict with the claim that other moral judgements areindependent of judgements of admirability, and are indeed the basisof judgements about admirability.

(3) What is meant by the claim that judgements of admirabilitydepend upon the proper function of the disposition to admiration? Ican see how judgements about admirability might sometimes de-pend psychologically on the disposition to admire certain things andpeople. But I don’t see the relevance of proper function in this rela-tion of dependence. The judgements that might sometimes dependon the proper function of the disposition to admire seem to be truejudgements of admirability, not judgements of admirability in gener-al. Why could false judgements of admirabiltiy not result from a dis-position to admire that is not functioning properly?

(4) How strong a claim is intended here? Zagzebski might be takento suggest, whether or not she endorses, a metaphysical claim aboutthe direction of dependence. We might claim that the proper functionof the disposition to admire can be identified without reference to itstendency to produce true judgements about admirability; that truejudgements about admirability can be defined by reference to theproper function of the disposition to admire; and that true moraljudgements are essentially products of true judgements about admi-rability. If this is so, true moral judgements are essentially productsof the proper function of the disposition to admire, which can be de-fined independently of its producing true moral judgements or true


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judgements of admirability. If this is so, the definition of true moraljudgements by reference to the disposition to admire is logically par-allel to one version of a ‘moral sense’ theory, which takes moralrightness to be constituted by what the moral sense approves of.

If Zagzebski intends this fundamental role for admiration in theconstitution of true moral judgements and thereby of moral facts andproperties, she is right to believe that it ought to be a more prominenttopic of discussion in moral philosophy than it is. I don’t think it isclear either that she intends this strong claim or that she rejects it. Inany case, I believe the strong claim deserves some consideration.

XII

The Irreducibility of the Admirable. Our survey of some of the rele-vant historical evidence suggests an approach to this strong claimabout the definability of the admirable. It seems to me that AdamSmith comes close to accepting the claim about the fundamentalrole of admiration, and that consideration of Cicero’s views helps usto see why that claim about admiration is doubtful.

I have discussed Aristotle and Cicero after discussing Smith, in or-der to contrast their position with Smith’s position. Both Smith andthe Stoics hold that virtue is admirable rather than admired. ButSmith takes this feature of virtue to be explicable through a reduc-tive account. In his view, what is admirable is what is admired by anadmirer whose moral sentiments are not corrupted in the ways wehave mentioned.

Zagzebski suggests the possibility of a non-circular definition ofcorrect moral judgement by reference to the proper function of ourtendencies to admire. Smith shares the aim of finding this sort ofdefinition. He seeks to describe virtue as the outlook of someonewhose moral sentiments are not corrupted, but function properly. Ifthis claim is intended to define virtue, it appears to offer a reductiveaccount of the admirable as what is admired or would be admiredby someone whose admiration functions properly, and whose moralsentiments are not corrupted.

This attempt at a reductive definition, however, faces familiar dif-ficulties. Cicero’s exposition of the Stoic view allows us to state adilemma for a reductive account: (1) We may take our normal ten-dencies to admire Achilles, Ajax, and so on, as the proper function


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of our disposition to admire. Even if we grant to Smith that the ten-dency to admire wealth and status marks a corrupt, and hence im-proper, exercise of admiration, we still admire people and actionswhom we ought not to admire as much as we do in the circumstanc-es in which we admire them. In that case we have to acknowledgethat, even when admiration functions properly, it may mislead us.(2) We may develop Smith’s point further, and claim that all exces-sive admiration, even for Achilles and Ajax and others who deservesome admiration, is somehow corrupted, because it is not the typeor degree of admiration that is morally appropriate. In that case, wecan avoid having to say that even properly functioning admirationcan sometimes mislead us. But we have to admit that correspond-ence with correct moral judgement constitutes the correctness of ad-miration, so that we have failed to find a reductive definition ofcorrect moral judgement.

I would be inclined to take the first route, partly because of theGreek examples I have cited. Even if we recognize that not every-thing that is amazing or wonderful is also admirable, we might bewise to admit that various things can be appropriately admired, evenif they are not to be admired, or not to be admired so much, from themoral point of view. It is probably better to admit this than to try tomake properly functioning admiration coincide with what deservesadmiration from the moral point of view. While admiration is rele-vant to morality, we oversimplify if we try to make it agree withmorality all the way. And we ask too much of admiration if we ex-pect it to provide some sort of foundation for correct moral judge-ment. We should keep moral judgement independent of admiration,and we should not wholly subordinate admiration to morality.

Keble CollegeUniversity of Oxford

Oxford ox1 3pguk

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Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea). Edited by I. Bywater.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.

—— Rhetoric (Ars Rhetorica). Edited by W. D. Ross. Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1963.


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Asheri, David, Alan Lloyd, and Aldo Corcella 2007: A Commentary onHerodotus, Books i–iv. Edited by Oswyn Murray and Alfonso Moreno,with a contribution by Maria Brosius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cicero: De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. Edited by L. D. Reynolds. Ox-ford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

—— De Officiis. Edited by M. Winterbottom. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1963.

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