When Moral Pleasure Conflicts with Moral Sorrow

Abstract In this paper, I discuss two of Aristotle’s major requirements for the virtuous person. First, the virtuous person takes pleasure in virtuous activity. Second, the virtuous person experiences the appropriate affective states in the appropriate situations. However, in some situations, the appropriate affective state is sorrow. In such situations, it appears that the virtuous person is expected to experience two conflicting emotions, namely, moral pleasure and moral sorrow. This conflict raises the deeper concern that the virtuous person has conflicting values and leads critics to reject Aristotle’s requirement of moral pleasure. I argue that critics need not take such measures because the conflict in the virtuous person’s values is merely apparent. I do this by first considering potential solutions, including an appeal to a de dicto interpretation of moral pleasure, and discussing how they prove unsatisfactory. Then, I recommend a desire-based understanding of moral pleasure and analyse the values underlying it. Through this analysis, I reveal that the virtuous person’s moral pleasure and moral sorrow indicate the same kind of value to the same objects of concern. And, because the virtuous person’s moral sorrow indicates the same value for virtuous activity, I conclude that it is necessary for a person to be able to experience moral pleasure and to be considered a virtuous person in the first place.