Sometimes, the road to virtue comes by way of vice

Imagine you want to improve your character. You are a bit irresolute and would like to be able to persevere on tasks. Maybe you are a bore and desire to be humorous, or are impatient and need to learn to wait well. Perhaps you are stingy, aspiring to be generous, or cowardly and desire courage. How do you make these changes? How do you improve your character?

I have some advice you may expect: find someone you admire and emulate them. Read good books that clarify the human condition. Locate friends with similar character goals and hold each other accountable. Select your situations so you are not tempted by bad choices. Reflect. Say you are sorry and try again. Do good deeds until you are reliably disposed to perform them without thinking, and they define you in a stable way.

But I also have advice that may surprise you: sometimes the road to virtue comes by way of vice.

Several philosophers employ an image of warped wood to describe our moral character. Immanuel Kant wrote that ‘from such crooked timber as humankind is made nothing entirely straight can be made’. When Xunzi made his notorious declaration that human nature is evil, he said that we must be denatured, straightened like warped wood to correct our naturally twisted moral condition.

In Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, this image appears in a discussion about whether virtue can be taught. Protagoras offers a pedagogical sequence that is built around punishment and constraint, which are seemingly required because the student never comes to love what is choice-worthy. A student is given directives to ‘do this, and not do that. If he readily obeys, – so; but if not, they treat him as a bent and twisted piece of wood and straighten him with threats and blows.’

Aristotle also used the image of warped wood. He viewed moral virtue as a mean positioned between two vices – a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. For example, courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness. Wittiness is the mean between buffoonery and boorishness. In the context of a virtue mean, the image of warped wood has interesting implications for character development.

This is like adopting hypothermia in response to heatstroke, or frostbite to fix a burn

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers advice for how to achieve the mean and attain virtue. First, we must notice the errors to which we are prone, since ‘different men are inclined by nature to different faults’. Then we should ‘drag ourselves away in the opposite direction, for by steering wide of our besetting error we shall make a middle course. This is the method adopted by carpenters to straighten warped timber.’

On the one hand, this is odd advice. People are like warped wood, which must be corrected not by inching closer to the mean but overshooting it entirely. You have a vice, so you should act in terms of a different vice, to develop a virtue. This is like adopting hypothermia in response to heatstroke, or frostbite to fix a burn. Both vices negatively impact one’s ability to flourish. Both involve unfitting emotions, thoughts and actions. Though acting in terms of the opposing vice is meant to be an intermediate condition, not a final state, developing virtue through such an erratic process brings a novel set of concerns.

On the other hand, Aristotle’s image matches folk intuitions about improvement. If you are inclined to be a bore, you might put yourself out there, making more jokes. Even if you get the balance wrong – making too many or unbefitting jokes – you can develop greater ease in joking, then find an appropriate balance. If you are a coward, you can take more risks – maybe too many risks – and thereby become comfortable in situations of threat. This seems like a reasonable suggestion.

There are a few things to note about Aristotle’s warped timber advice. First, even if a practice in overcorrection results in consistently acting in terms of the mean, moral virtues have additional requirements. For example, the virtuous person acts for good reasons. This means that, as a tool for character development, the method of overcorrection is only partial.

Vices also have motivational components. So, when someone who is irresolute overcorrects toward intransigence in order to develop perseverance, this is not sufficient to qualify as possessing the vice. Regardless, intransigence can have negative consequences for the agent – injury, illness and relational costs. Acting in terms of a vice, even without possessing that vice, makes one vulnerable to these costs.

Additionally, some cases of overcorrection will not involve vices at all. This is because we may misperceive the location of the mean. A bore may imagine himself a buffoon when he tries to loosen up and partake in good humour. In reality, he is not acting like a buffoon; he is just acting a bit more humorous. What he perceives as overcorrection is merely drawing closer to the mean.

Misperceptions account for many cases of this phenomenon. Moreover, overcorrection will not work for every moral virtue, considering not all virtues are describable in terms of a mean. For example, there is no such thing as being too fair-minded or too wise. For virtues such as these, there are only vices of deficiency, not of excess. Even so, there are good reasons to think that sometimes our best bet for developing virtue is by inclining ourselves toward vice. A recent teaching experience suggests why.

In an ethics seminar, I assigned students a project in virtue development. They drafted plans to develop an intellectual virtue of their choosing, then journaled about their progress throughout the semester. Several selected open-mindedness, reporting that they had trouble engaging with ideas with which they disagreed. Upon reading their reflections at the end of the term, what I discovered was not a reduction in closed-mindedness by degree, but an exercise in overcorrection. Students surpassed open-mindedness, acting indiscriminately in an attempt to cure their closed-mindedness. They read and took seriously too many ideas – implausible, dubious, unthoughtful ideas from questionable sources.

My students’ commitment to character change was admirable, but it resulted in a complete reversal of their previous tendencies to their detriment. They were in an epistemically vulnerable position throughout their projects, taking in both good and bad information uncritically. I also worried that this overcorrection might stick, with students developing a habit of indiscriminateness, rather than developing the virtue of open-mindedness, or even regressing to their original state. It is unclear whether this vice is preferable to closed-mindedness.

Moral development can involve overcorrection as a kind of fact-finding mission

In making a change, it can be easier to err in the direction of an opposing vice, as my students did, than it is to make subtle changes toward the mean. Emphatic corrections both signal one’s commitment to change and can seem more actionable than making small adjustments toward a virtue. For example, to develop digital temperance, people often start with austere overcorrections, such as total social media fasts, instead of decreasing their usage incrementally.

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Overcorrection can also help us to locate the virtue mean. Humility is defined as owning one’s limitations, neither presuming too much nor too little of one’s capabilities. Imagine a runner attempting to acquire this virtue. She may start races too quickly (presuming too much of herself) or too slowly (thinking too lowly of her ability) until she finds where her capacities lie. This is the erratic process of humility’s development. The key is to make sure this process eventually ends – that the agent does not remain in a state of unstable egoism, toggling between presumption and despair.

Stated differently, moral development can involve overcorrection as a kind of fact-finding mission to discern where the ‘mean’ is located. Regarding humility, should the agent never exceed the mean, she may not be able to locate the mean. Should she fail to go the proverbial ‘well’ sometimes – pushing herself too far, presuming too much of herself – she may remain too comfortable and miss the mark of excellence. Overcorrection can help us more honestly evaluate constraints. We may need to do that to develop a virtue.

For some virtues, in exceeding the mean, we are not just locating it but actually shifting its location. Virtues are often bodily phenomena, and the body changes through strain. This can impact where the mean is located. For example, to become excellent in perseverance as an athlete requires exceeding the mean relative to oneself. The athlete persists, pressing past the point of discomfort. Eventually, the outer limit of her perseverance is raised, and the location where she previously felt strain becomes comfortable. The ‘mean relative to oneself’ shifts as one develops the virtue.

Excess and deficiency shift the virtue mean of temperance, too. Hunger and satiety cue changes in response to how much or how little one consumes. Should one grow in response to eating more, temperance rises to a new level of demand.

A final example is courage. Suitable fear, relative to oneself, shifts as we become more physically capable. As a rock-climbing novice submits himself to his craft, he does not simply locate where proper fear resides; sometimes, he exceeds that place – taking outsized (albeit still hopefully conservative) risks and growing through these risks. Suitable fear rises to meet his growing capacities.

I used to think of moral development as straightforward improvement or upward ascent. But if the wood-warping strategy is apt, then character change is messy and can involve toggling between vices. This is a process marked not by increasing degrees of flourishing but by different types of unflourishing as we incline in the direction of an opposing vice. This lack of flourishing may continue until we get it right, assuming that we eventually do.

Now you have learned about overcorrection. The next time you want to improve your character, you might consider Aristotle’s advice. Identify the direction your lumber warps. Then cautiously attempt an opposing vice.