Can We Teach CharacterAn Aristotelian AnswerEDWIN M. HA.docx

Can We Teach Character?
An Aristotelian Answer
EDWIN M. HARTMAN
Rutgers University
Business ethics courses can help improve our students’ ethics
by teaching them about
character, as opposed to just principles, the application of which
creates difficulties. In
particular, we can help our students consider their values and
realize them in practice.
According to Aristotle, ethics is about virtue, which is a matter
of one’s own well-being
primarily, but as we are rational and social creatures, this state
of well-being entails
having what we would consider good moral values. Does good
character really serve the
agent’s interests? Yes, if the agent has the right interests, and
interests can be cultivated
to some degree. One’s values must be coherent, and one must be
able to discern the
salient moral features of the situations with which one deals.
These are marks of good
character, which the culture of one’s organization may nurture
or undermine. We arrive
at principles supportive of good character by reflective
equilibrium, a process like what
Aristotle calls dialectic. Case studies assist our students in
developing good character
and learning to bring it to bear in complex situations, as some
recent research has

suggested is possible. One way to protect one’s character, our
students may learn, is to
choose a workplace that does not undermine it.
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WHAT WE CAN TEACH
What Ethics is About
One might wonder whether business ethics
courses are of any value. We sometimes hear this:
If character is formed in childhood, how can a
course improve a student’s character? The ques-
tion whether good character is teachable, and if so
by whom, is as old as Socrates (see the Meno,
Plato/Bluck, 1961). The issue for us here is whether
character can be taught in business school. One is
tempted to add, “of all places.” I shall argue for an
affirmative answer.
The assumption that teaching business ethics
entails improving character is at odds with the
widespread view that ethics is not about character
primarily but about principles that an agent can
apply to situations in business or elsewhere to find
the right thing to do. But so-called virtue ethicists,
following Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (hereaf-
ter NE), argue that the moral principles on which
we can reach a consensus are usually vague, often
in conflict, seldom unexceptionable, hence not re-
liably action-guiding. MacIntyre (1981) is the best
known of these, though Anscombe (1997) and Foot
(1997) were pioneers. Williams (1981, 1985), Slote

(1983, 1992, 2001), McDowell (1997), and Hursthouse
(1999) have been influential as well. Solomon
(1992), Koehn (1998), Walton (1997, 2001, 2004) and
Moore (2002, 2003) emphasize virtues and character
in business ethics.
Even most of these virtue ethicists do not en-
tirely rule out principles, however. A generous
person acts according to principles derived from
the nature of generosity; so Hursthouse argues
concerning what she calls v-principles. For ex-
ample: a generous person happily lends money
to needy friends even if they may not be able to
pay it back. As generosity is a virtue, one ought
to act on the principle (among others) that one
should happily lend money to needy friends even
if they may not be able to pay it back. An ungen-
erous person can know the applicable principles
but be stingy anyway; so what good is mere
knowledge of the principles?
Thanks go to Katherina Glac, a most valuable research assis-
tant. Dennis Moberg, Amanda Anderson, and Dennis Patterson
offered helpful advice on different essays of mine on related
issues. Mikhail Valdman gave me good ideas on several topics.
James Bailey, Mark Seabright, Patricia Werhane, Geoff Moore,
and Robert Audi offered feedback useful to the readers of this
essay as well as its author. Thanks also to the Prudential
Business Ethics Center at Rutgers, which supported the re-
search on this work.
� Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2006, Vol.
5, No. 1, 68–81.
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68
Even if an ethical person is one who acts accord-
ing to certain principles, it does not follow that the
best way to teach Smith to be ethical is to give her
principles to follow. By analogy, we can show that
she is an excellent employee by stating her sales
figures, but a training professional will focus on
her knowledge and skills as a way of improving
her sales figures. The analogue in ethics is improv-
ing Smith’s character as a way of causing her to
act according to appropriate moral principles (see
Hartman, 1998: 547f.).
A virtuous person is a person of good character.
We may define character as one’s standard pattern
of thought and action with respect to one’s own
and others’ well-being and other major concerns
and commitments; so, approximately, Kupperman
(1991: 17). Character includes virtues and vices and
entails certain values, dispositions, and emotions
as well as actions. Aristotle suggests not only that
one’s character ought to be consistent over time
and coherent at all times, but also that character is
essential to personal identity. In a person of good
character, virtues and values are reinforced by ap-
propriate dispositions and emotions. And why is
character important? What could be more impor-
tant? Maintaining your character is tantamount
to continuing your life (see NE IX 4: 1066a13–29,
b7–14).
According to Aristotle, we have certain enduring

desires that can serve as premises of so-called
practical syllogisms—in effect, as good reasons to
act. These desires have to do with our well-being
and with our most important concerns and commit-
ments. So a person of generous character acts gen-
erously, wants to do so, and thinks it good to do so.
If you are generous, you are and want to be moti-
vated by thoughts like this: “Jones needs help, so I
want to help him,” although one need not be quite
so self-conscious. The next-best thing, short of a
generous character, is mere acceptance of one’s
moral obligation: “Jones needs help, so I suppose I
ought to help him, so all right, here I go.” To be a
person of truly generous character is to have and to
want to have a settled disposition to help a friend
in need, with emotions to match. It entails wanting
to be consistently motivated by a friend’s need. (A
desire to have a desire is what Frankfurt, 1981,
calls a second-order desire.) Some of our endur-
ing desires and dispositions, especially those
concerning the sort of person we want to be, we
call values.
Parents tell children not to lie, as employers tell
new employees not to be late for work. Beyond that,
however, many parents raise children to be hon-
est—that is, to be inclined not to lie, to feel some
repugnance when lying even in circumstances that
justify it. A v-principle that proscribes lying will be
fairly unresponsive to utilitarian considerations.
Employers, similarly, want employees to work well
out of genuine loyalty. Virtues involve certain dis-
positions and attitudes. Consider gratitude: When
you give me a generous gift, I ought not only to
thank you but also to be actually grateful. Ethicists

who rely just on principles have a hard time saying
why one ever has an obligation to be grateful, or to
care about one’s employer’s success. But those who
believe that one has an obligation to be grateful
must defend the view that one is morally respon-
sible for one’s feelings, which are not typically
voluntary. Aristotle suggests that while you cannot
make yourself feel grateful on a particular occa-
sion you can over time become the sort of person
who is grateful on appropriate occasions (see NE I
3: 1095a2–13). If he is right, it is not absurd to try to
help make a student a certain sort of person.
Teaching Ethics
Even if we cannot mold our students’ character,
business ethics courses have some value if they
help students who already want to be ethical busi-
nesspeople get better at it. Business ethics courses
can encourage morality by raising critical ques-
tions about the standard economist’s definitions of
morally significant concepts (utility, maximization,
and rationality, for example) and presuppositions
about behavior (facile egoism, for example). We
can also teach well-meaning students some tech-
niques for deciding what the right thing is. We can
teach them how to create organizations that en-
courage rather than punish doing the right thing.
All this is worthwhile, but recent corporate scan-
dals suggest the need for business ethics courses
that will improve the character even of those future
businesspeople that are not clearly predisposed to
work and play well with others. My claim is that a
business ethics course can improve students’ char-
acter by helping them think critically about their
values and realize them in practice. Those two

activities are essential to character development.
Still, no ethics course will much affect a student
who, after careful consideration, believes that the
one who dies with the most toys wins in the zero-
sum game that is business and that s/he wants to
be such a person. Nor can we do a great deal for
people incapable of developing any skill in deal-
ing with complex situations, or those incapable of
doing anything other than what nearly everyone
else is doing. Not every student is in such bad
moral condition, however, and we can reach the
ones that are not.
2006 69Hartman
Aristotle on Well-Being and Ethics
Character and Interests
In Aristotle’s view, every substance, including the
human being, has an essence and an associated
end or purpose. We are essentially social and rea-
soning creatures; our natural end is therefore to
live in communities and to think and act rationally.
If you reach your actuality as a person, you are
virtuous (or, on an alternative translation, excel-
lent). You are in a state of eudaimonia, a particu-
larly broad, deep, long-lasting form of well-being
characteristic of good character and psychological
health—health being a normative notion (see es-
pecially Prior, 2001). Aristotle would find asking
what reason I have to be virtuous as odd as asking
what reason I have to be healthy.

Aristotle holds that your character is a matter of
what you enjoy doing (NE II 3: 1104b5ff.): good
things if you are a good person, bad things if you
are a bad one. Good character is therefore a matter
not only of doing the right thing but also of having
the right desires and emotions (NE X 8: 1178a9–24,
etc.). You should be grateful for kindnesses, angry
if and only if you are seriously wronged, sympa-
thetic toward the wretched. If you do the right thing
while gritting your teeth, you are not really a per-
son of good character, and virtuous action is not in
your best interests. The person of good character
has an enjoyable life, acting rationally and doing
good things, unless misfortune intervenes.
Elster (1998), who acknowledges a debt to Frank
(1988), argues that certain emotions supplement
rationality. His view is similar to that of Aristotle,
who believes that desires may be rational or irra-
tional, whereas Hume and those that he has influ-
enced believe that rationality is a characteristic
only of the way in which we choose means when
the desired ends are given. In any case, there is
broad support for the view that appropriate emo-
tion is required to support moral behavior. Psycho-
paths typically know what is right, but their knowl-
edge has no emotional support; so say Cleckley
(1976) and Hare (1993). The brain-damaged Phineas
Gage, described by Damasio (1994: 3–33), is an ex-
cellent and appalling example.1
Aristotle’s view raises an obvious question for
us, who think of ethics as encompassing others’
interests, not just one’s own. What reason is there
to believe that being a person of good character in

Aristotle’s sense is good not only for that person
but for others too? To put it another way, why is a
virtue like generosity, for example, good for the
agent? Aristotle’s answer is that, since human be-
ings are social creatures, the good life, hence good
character, involves living satisfactorily in a conge-
nial community. So your virtues cause you to ben-
efit your family and friends and people in your
community. We can think of an organization as a
community—arguably the emerging preeminent
kind of community. Virtue ethics in the Aristotelian
tradition takes status in the community seriously,
does not presuppose equality as a good, and de-
emphasizes rights. So it fits well with how most
people view organizations and their employees. As
Walton (2001, 2004) notes, in NE III Aristotle de-
scribes a good polis—not unmanageably large,
united in purpose, with distributed but not neces-
sarily democratic decision-making authority—
much as we would a good organization.
Aristotle’s form of egoism is useful in dealing
with business students, who want to know how
studying ethics can add value to a career in busi-
ness. Kantians would argue that morality needs no
support from self-interest, but Aristotle’s claim that
psychological health and good character coincide
speaks to our students’ self-regarding concerns.
Aristotle argues that if you behave stingily, you
will become a stingy person. But what if you want
to be a stingy person? Won’t you enjoy your stin-
giness? Why then should our students try to be
people of good character? Getting to Aristotle’s
answer requires considering his moral psychol-
ogy. In doing so I largely agree with Irwin (1988),

but Nussbaum’s (1990) and Sherman’s (1994) ac-
counts are useful as well.
Values and Strength of Character
We say that people of good character have good
values. That formulation does not distinguish be-
tween values in the moral sense—the usual mean-
ing of the term values—and what one considers
good for oneself. From the point of view of Aristo-
tle’s brand of egoism, however, it makes sense to
say that the two are identical. This is not absurd.
Many people who give values any thought would
prefer to be driven by morally good ones (Jones &
Ryan, 2001). We have enough self-respect that we
like to think of ourselves as wise, mature, rational,
and courageous. I perform a vindictive act and tell
myself that it is just. I lose my nerve in confronting
the boss and tell myself that I am being diplomatic.
So we provide students with motivation as well as
information when we teach them that, for example,
courage requires not acting impulsively in a ma-
cho culture.
1 Haidt (2001, esp. 824) discusses these works in an article on
emotion and reason. Walton (1997) notes similarities between
Aristotle’s views and Damasio’s.
70 MarchAcademy of Management Learning & Education
Wise and mature people have desires largely
determined by their values. In fact some philoso-
phers (e.g., Watson, 1982) regard this determination
as definitive of autonomy. Ideally we would want

to be so strong in character that we can choose to
be a person with emotions, values, and desires
that are consistent and good for us. That degree of
autonomy is rare, like being able to decide to crave
salads more than doughnuts. Aristotle claims that
the right upbringing in a good community and long
practice are necessary, though not sufficient, to
make us value and choose the right things. So one
way to choose to be a certain sort of person is to
choose to be in a certain sort of community.
Most of us have limited strength of character. We
cannot choose to enjoy courage and generosity at
all times; we find them occasionally burdensome.
And while one can habituate oneself to like doing
the right sort of thing, there are limits: No normal
person can learn to like root canal surgery. Good
people will not suffer the discomfort of pretending
to be, say, congenial, but virtues sometimes im-
pose costs. Courage would not be courage if the
courageous person did not sometimes pay a price
for it. Honesty entails opportunity costs. But de-
spite whether doing the honest thing always pays,
if you are a virtuous person you think yourself
better off on the whole for being the sort of person
who is inclined to do the honest thing.
What Is Good About Good Character: Choosing
One’s Interests
But why, a business student might ask, is it in my
interest to be a person of good character rather
than a stingy person? How do I know I’ll enjoy it
more? On the Aristotelian view, those are wrong-
headed questions. Here is a better one: Given that
you want to serve your own interests, what do you

want your interests to be? Do you want to be the
sort of person who enjoys only overwhelming fi-
nancial success? Or the sort of person who enjoys
a life in which work plays an important but not
dominant role and in which that work offers chal-
lenge, variety, growth, association with interesting
people, and compensation that lets you live com-
fortably? The question is not which one our stu-
dents prefer. It is a higher-order question about
which one they would choose to prefer if they could
choose. That question cannot be readily answered
by reference to self-interest, since it is hard to see
what would count as a straightforwardly self-inter-
ested answer to the question, “What do you want
your interests to be?” (see Hartman, 1996: 80–83
and 134f. and Elster, 1985: 109–140 on what the
latter calls adaptive preference formation).
There is a wise answer to that question if, as is
probable, most MBA students who give the second
answer are happier in the end than those who give
the first. Huge wealth is hard to come by, and many
people who achieve it enjoy it less than they ex-
pected to. Many who have retired from a successful
career say that if they had it to do over again they
would spend more time with their families. Why
didn’t they? Perhaps they were committed to a
conception of the good life based on peer pressure
rather than reflection.
Students need to understand that things can go
wrong because they can have mistaken beliefs
about the benefits of what they want. Most people
are not very good at “affective forecasting,” as it is
called. Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, and
Wheatley (1998), Loewenstein and Adler (2000), and

others offer evidence that we cannot accurately
estimate how happy or unhappy some future
event, or our future success, will make us. Hence it
is not easy to know what sort of life you can enjoy.
We can begin to teach our students the necessary
self-knowledge and self-control by encouraging
them to reflect on their assumptions about what
will make them happy.
What should their reflection tell them about
choosing a conception of the good life if it cannot
be done just on the basis of self-interest? The Ar-
istotelian view is that a wise person will choose to
be rational and social because that is the nature of
the human being. Indeed, we would probably re-
ject the life of an animal or a happy idiot as being
unworthy of a human being, and would probably
not choose a life so barren that the smallest gains
make us feel wealthy and the most humdrum ac-
tivities excite us (see Sen, 1987: 45f). Aristotle sees
no necessary connection between desire fulfill-
ment and happiness, and he would invite us to
infer that we are better off consulting human na-
ture, rather than our own unreliable expectations
and desires, on the question of what will make us
happy. In any case, a life empty of what is charac-
teristically human falls short of Aristotle’s concep-
tion of happiness—and ours too, since few of us
envy happy idiots.
Even if we can never agree on an appropriate
conception of the good life, our consideration of the
issue shows how facile is the usual talk about
one’s interests and one’s pursuit of them, and helps
undermine students’ unreflective assumptions
about them. Perhaps under the influence of econ-

omists, we tend to believe that interests are fixed
and easily identified. We also tend to believe that
ethics is opposed to self-interest—that if Jones is
an ethical person, he characteristically puts oth-
ers’ interests ahead of his own. (And if Smith does
2006 71Hartman
the same, how will she and Jones deal with each
other?) These tendencies make it easy for our stu-
dents to assume that success is a matter of satis-
fying one’s greed and that it has little to do with
ethics.
Coherence and Integrity as Reasons for
Good Character
Whatever life you choose, Aristotle believes, it
should have a certain wholeness, as he suggests
in saying that the continuation of character is the
continuation of one’s life. Just as a substance is not
a mere pile of stuff but has a certain form and
purpose, as Aristotle argues in the Metaphysics, so
a life is more than just a succession of experiences.
Part of his message is that happiness requires
desires that are consistent with one another and
with one’s values, and actions that are consistent
with one’s desires (so he says at NE IX 4: 1066b7–
11). In this he is echoed by psychologists like Fest-
inger (1957), who argues that people desire coher-
ence in their views. Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, and
Chen (1996: 557) argue, similarly, that one wants all
of one’s attitudes and beliefs to be “congruent with
existing self-definitional attitudes and beliefs.”

If you are in that state of coherence, we would
say, you have integrity. If not, you will sometimes
desire, and may get, what you do not value. Valu-
ing courage, you wish that you looked forward to
making the crucial presentation or did not dread
giving the boss negative feedback, but you are less
courageous than you would like to be. You are
better off as well as more virtuous if your values
and desires are consistent throughout. Most of us,
alas, are not like that. Valuing good health and
attractiveness, we wish the doughnut were not so
tempting. Valuing success, we envy those who look
forward to the required challenges. Or worse, as
Luban (2003, esp. 281–283) has argued, we may re-
arrange our desires and even restate our values to
rationalize our actions. That is the kind of coher-
ence that Luban finds in Festinger. What is re-
quired, and difficult, is choosing values rationally
and with some detachment from what is immedi-
ately attractive and then acting on them—or at
least, when we have not acted on them, accepting
that we have not.
Integrity in this sense is probably not sufficient
for good character or for happiness, but it goes
some distance in the right direction. It is not pos-
sible to be both stupid and wise, or both irratio-
nally risk-averse and courageous. On causal
rather than logical grounds, there are difficulties
in prizing both idleness and personal achieve-
ment, or heavy drinking and fitness, or feeling free
to be offensive and having many friends. But can’t
you do well if you hide your hostility or rapacity?
Aristotle says no. If you do it for strategic reasons,

as when people are watching, you will be doing
something that you don’t enjoy (NE IX 4: 1066b7–14).
In any case, like it or not, you are a communal
being, and your happiness depends in part on your
being a productive and congenial member of the
community. So you have good reason to be virtu-
ous, and not merely to act sometimes as though
you were.
Most of us would recognize a greater variety of
possibly satisfying lives than does Aristotle. In
fact, most of us think that the room for choice
among possible lives is itself a good thing. At the
same time we respect the limits on that variety that
are implied by the requirements of our nature. As
our students plan their lives, we should encourage
them to consider their strengths and limitations,
their opportunities, and what they can and cannot
learn to enjoy. Some of them really will turn out to
enjoy a life of intense competition and high risk,
but we should not let them thoughtlessly assume
ahead of time either that whatever they happen to
want is possible or that they will enjoy it if they get
it or that it would be a good thing if they did.
Community and Culture
Organizations Affecting Character
We are essentially social creatures, and our char-
acter is malleable and vulnerable to some degree,
for organizations exert a powerful socializing and
sometimes corrupting influence. Sennett (1998) ar-
gues that this influence is usually inhospitable to
good character, but it need not always be. We can
teach our students how corporate culture, as well

as structures and systems, can be deployed to en-
courage and accommodate good character. Aristo-
tle argues in NE I 2 that politics is the culmination
of ethics insofar as it creates a state that teaches
and supports good characters (see Walton, 2001,
2004, and Moore, 2003, against Koehn, 1998, on this
point). A community goes a long way toward de-
termining its citizens’ values—what they count as
success, for example—for better or worse. By pro-
viding role models and in other ways, the culture of
a community may make a citizen want to be a
certain kind of person, motivated by certain con-
siderations and not others. We can say the same of
corporate communities, and perhaps infer that
management rather than politics is today the cul-
mination of ethics.
There is voluminous evidence that organizations
support or oppose ethical behavior. Fritzsche (1991)
argues that organizational forces may drive deci-
sions more than personal values do and (2000) that
organizational climate can raise or lower the prob-
ability of ethical decisions. Jones and Hiltebeitel
(1995) find evidence of the effects of organizational
expectations on ethical choices. Sims and Keon
(1999) argue that the organizational characteristics
that most influence employees are situationally
determined, so the organization can foster both
ethical and unethical decision making. Trevino,
Butterfield, and McCabe (2001) offer a detailed and
complex account of the effects of ethical climate. I

have argued (1994, 1996) that corporate culture can
affect an employee’s second-order as well as first-
order desires: People in the grip of a powerful
culture adopt the local values and definition of
success and want to be motivated by what moti-
vates their colleagues.
So great is the influence of the organizational
setting on employee behavior that Harman (2003)
and Doris (2002) argue that character does not mat-
ter. They base their conclusion in part on the argu-
ments of social psychologists such as Nisbet and
Ross (1991) and invoke the familiar works of Mil-
gram (1974) and Haney, Zimbardo, and Banks
(1973). But as Solomon (2003) points out, even in the
Milgram experiment there were a number of peo-
ple who walked away. Trevino (1986) seems judi-
cious in arguing that both organizational and per-
sonal attributes affect behavior. Many of the
arguments of those who dismiss character as an
independent variable would work equally well
against the concept of rationality, which Aristotle
takes to be a great part of good character (see
Rabin, 1998, and especially Haidt, 2001: 827f.). That
people act irrationally in ways not emphasized by
most economists is a familiar truth with a huge
literature attached (Kahneman & Tversky, 2000, are
preeminent on this issue) but not one that leads us
to discount it in all explanations.
We teach our students about organizational cul-
ture because we believe that as employees they
will be able to respond to it by recognizing it and
taking its possible effects into account. Few people
who know of the Milgram experiment would be so
obedient if they were subjects in a rerun of it.

Former students who have learned about the ex-
periment in a business ethics course testify that
they do sometimes think of it when they are in
similar situations, and act accordingly. Beaman,
Barnes, Klentz, and McQuirk (1978) show that peo-
ple can be inoculated against crowd-induced cul-
pable indifference by being taught to recognize the
crowd’s influence and to act appropriately despite
it (see Slater, 2004: 109f.).
One might object that the available evidence
shows only that one’s behavior and immediate de-
sires are affected by the ambient culture; one’s
character is a different matter, a harder thing to
change and hard to measure as well. But what
Aristotle means by character encompasses not
only values but also the readiness to act on them
and the ability to see how to do so in a particular
situation, however complex or difficult it may be.
Some people sincerely espouse a certain value—
say, the importance of courage—but do not act on it
because they do not recognize that speaking one’s
mind in this situation is what courage requires.
They are sincere, but they are not courageous. An
organization can do that to you. On the basis of a
number of studies of the impact of corporate cul-
ture, Chen, Sawyers, and Williams (1997) con-
clude that ethical behavior depends on the em-
ployee’s ability to recognize ethical issues and
that this ability appears to be a function of cor-
porate culture more than of individual employ-
ees’ attributes.
Ethical behavior depends on the
employee’s ability to recognize ethical

issues and this ability appears to be a
function of corporate culture more than
of individual employees’ attributes.
This is an important finding about culture and
character. According to Aristotle, understanding
morally complex situations under salient descrip-
tions and having the appropriate emotional reac-
tions to them are central to character.
Character and Its Development
Ethical Knowledge and How It Fails
Aristotle says that having a virtue entails knowing
(though not necessarily being able to state) a prin-
ciple of the form “It is a good thing for a person to
act in a certain way.” For example, “It is a good
thing for a person to eat dry food.” This is not to say
that Aristotle believes that dry food is appropriate
for all human beings in all circumstances, or that
in general his first premises are foundational or
unexceptionable principles of either nutrition or
morality. Specifications of principles of that sort
typically function as first premises of practical syl-
logisms. So you may start your deliberation with
this thought: “Eating dry food is good (i.e., nourish-
ing) for a human being.” Since Aristotle assimi-
lates the prudent and the ethical, he would also
accept as a first premise “Respecting other peo-
2006 73Hartman
ple’s property is good (i.e., just) for a human being.”

But Aristotle wants to explain a phenomenon that
we may regard as a mystery: We can claim with
apparent sincerity to value something—to know
that it is good—but intentionally act against our
value.
Imagine a person well informed about nutrition
having breakfast. The choices are granola and a
doughnut. The breakfaster knows that granola is
better for human beings than are doughnuts, but
eats the doughnut because it is delicious. Simi-
larly, the person who knows that it is good to re-
spect others’ property may dump some garbage in
the neighbor’s field even though s/he knows that
that is no way to achieve long-term psychic satis-
faction, just as eating doughnuts is no way to
achieve long-term health. In both cases the agent
acts against his or her values.
What has gone wrong? According to Aristotle,
one can intentionally do what one does not value
because there is something to be said for, as well
as against, eating doughnuts and running from the
enemy. One common form of weakness of the will
is a matter of acting on the wrong one of conflicting
principles. Indeed, in ethics, multiple consider-
ations push us in conflicting directions, and there
is no algorithm for choosing the right principle
every time. That is a problem about ethics based
on principles. If you are a loyal employee of a
generally good company in which people whom
you respect decide to do something that you con-
sider sleazy, how do you apply appropriate moral
principles as you decide what you should do about
it? That one should be loyal to one’s generally
good employer and that one should be courageous

in confronting immoral behavior are two good
moral principles, good v-principles in Hursthouse’s
sense. According to Aristotle, in many such cases
the best we can do is to rely on the intuitions of an
experienced person with a good moral track
record—that is, a person of practical wisdom (phro-
nesis; the word is sometimes translated as pru-
dence). If s/he says, “I’m just not comfortable with
that,” Aristotle takes the discomfort seriously, for
that emotion has cognitive weight.
One can act on a wrong principle as a result of
choosing an action under a description that, al-
though accurate as far as it goes, is inappropriate,
often because it focuses on the short term and the
narrow gauge. If I had practical wisdom in Aristo-
tle’s sense, I would not crave the doughnut so
much, because I would not focus so much on its
positive properties; hence, I would not act on the
principle, “If something will taste delicious, one
should eat it.” In the same way, Arthur Andersen’s
auditors might have described their misdeeds in
the Enron case as “good client service” or “aggres-
sive accounting” or even “billing a lot of hours.”
Those characterizations were accurate, but less
salient than “misrepresenting the financial posi-
tion of the firm.” It is common enough: Darley (1996)
describes the phenomenon of ethical rationaliza-
tion, which Jones and Ryan (2001) attribute to a
desire to be, and be considered, moral. Auditors
with higher professional standards would act on
the ethically salient description of the action. Most
auditors could not have offered a coherent argu-
ment from their own values that the short-term
gain made by giving good client service justified

misrepresenting the financial position of the firm.
So why did the Arthur Andersen auditors do it?
Because they were ignoring the salient descrip-
tions and focusing on the ethically inessential
ones, as one might wolf down a delicious, satisfy-
ing doughnut without giving adequate attention to
one’s need to lose weight.
Perceiving Correctly
It is Aristotle’s view that the person of good char-
acter perceives a situation rightly—that is, takes
proper account of the salient features of a situa-
tion. As you perceive that a particular figure is a
triangle, so you perceive that a particular act is a
betrayal, though the latter is harder to do with
assurance. According to Aristotle, perception in-
volves imagination (the standard translation of the
Greek phantasia): The faculty of imagination is
operating when you understand what a perceived
object is, or when you grasp the moral quality of an
act; in either case you grasp the essence of the
item. You are morally responsible for understand-
ing the act correctly. If you get it wrong—that is,
fail to apprehend the morally salient features of
the situation—then you have a character flaw (NE
III 5: 1114a32–b3). A person of good character will
perceive that a certain act is courageous rather
than foolhardy, generous rather than vainglorious,
right rather than wrong, and will act accordingly.
An irascible or phlegmatic person will take of-
fense, or not, inappropriately. Moral imagination is
the faculty that correctly “frames” morally signifi-
cant states and events. Johnson (1993) has an influ-
ential book on the subject. Werhane (1999), Moberg
and Seabright (2000), and Hartman (2001) assess its

importance for business ethics. Vidaver-Cohen
(1997) considers how organizations can encourage
moral imagination. Chen, Sawyers, and Williams
(1997), noted earlier, show how they can do the
opposite.
One advantage that persons of good character
have in assessing a complex situation is that they
have certain fairly inflexible v-principles to apply.
For example, a consultant may be honest and
therefore have a personal rule against ever lying
to a client. When a situation arises in which failing
to lie would damage the consultant’s relationship
with the client and lead to avoidable bad conse-
quences for the client, the consultant must take
“lying to the client” to be a salient description of
any action of which it is true. “Preserving the rela-
tionship” or “preventing consequences A, B, and C”
cannot be salient for such a person. This inflexi-
bility may not give the best result in every case,
but it is best in the long run for the agent’s char-
acter, and it is a barrier to rationalization (see
Luban, 2003: 307f.).
Moral imagination involves intelligence and ra-
tionality, although it is not a matter of finding an
algorithm for deciding among moral consider-
ations. That is all right with Aristotle, who, though
he distinguishes intellectual virtues from moral
ones, understands how closely they are related.
Practical wisdom shows up in both moral and pru-

dential guises. He does not give points merely for
meaning well. The Aristotelian position gets sup-
port from Haidt (2001), who relies on the findings of
Blasi (1980) and Kohlberg (1969) to argue that intel-
ligence is a causal factor in good moral reasoning
and behavior.
Ethical Vocabulary and Perception
Vocabulary is one of the prime vehicles of culture,
as Schein (1985) and others have argued. In an
organization in which people are called decisive
and risk accepting with approval, the culture may
create peer pressure that encourages shortsighted
disregard of possible costs. One who acts on im-
pulse will be called strong. One who prefers mod-
eration or consideration of alternatives will be
known as a wimp. A European at Salomon Brothers
who goes home at the end of the afternoon rather
than stay and be seen working late is a Eurofaggot
(Lewis, 1989: 71).
A person of good character in Aristotle’s sense
knows genuine strength and cowardice when s/he
sees it. The ethical manager cannot readily
change an employee’s character, but s/he can help
that person to consider the difference between
(say) courage and the readiness to succumb to
macho peer pressure. A business ethics course can
begin that educational process. One of its most
important functions is to help students become
more fluent in the language of right and wrong, of
virtues and vices, without which their moral imag-
ination will be impoverished, and there is little
chance that they will give salient descriptions of

morally significant situations.
The vocabulary of character is not a foreign lan-
guage to businesspeople, despite what they have
been taught in economics courses about utility and
rationality and other such concepts. Most busi-
nesspeople do regard honor, courage, and respect
for fellow workers and competitors as virtues. Most
would say that it is the legitimate purpose of fi-
nancial statements to give a clear picture of the
financial condition of a firm. But some people in
Enron who might have objected on ethical grounds
if a secretary had taken some office paper home
did not see anything wrong with creating special
purpose entities whose special purpose was to
hide losses.
A good business ethics course can give students
practice in seeing and describing states and
events in ethical terms, as a first step toward un-
derstanding their morally salient features. Ques-
tions like “Would I want my act to be publicly
known?” invite students to consider how others
might describe the action. But such questions, like
the principles that they presuppose, must be ac-
companied by a mature sense of right and wrong
and of what is salient in a particular case. That
sense needs to be exercised and developed, given
a language, and sharpened by critical analysis.
Even then it may be overridden by social pressure
or inattention or anything that causes people to
perceive and describe their actions inadequately,
particularly if the corporate vocabulary and emo-
tional reaction become their own. The Milgram
experiment shows how readily people deal with
conflicts between their values and some immedi-

ate pressure. So if their moral language is impov-
erished or insufficiently exercised, they may latch
on to some other, nonsalient description of the sit-
uation: “I am helping Dr. Milgram, who knows
what he’s doing,” rather than “I am torturing inno-
cent people.” They may ignore their emotional re-
action, and in due course it will go away.
Virtues and Principles: Dialectic and
Reflective Equilibrium
This may leave us still wondering how, exactly, a
virtuous person is supposed to act. Telling some-
one to be honest sounds like good advice, but in
the absence of quite specific principles there
may be a question about what an honest person
should do in this or that difficult case, such as
whistle-blowing.
To begin with, as I have stated, Aristotle does not
reject principles, which in his case are typically
essential descriptions of virtues. So, for example,
2006 75Hartman
to act courageously entails acting because one
understands that a certain act needs to be done in
spite of the risks involved, although the principle
identifying this act as courageous may not come
explicitly to mind at the moment of action. Our
account thus far suggests that Aristotle believes
that one ought to act on principles consistently,
that the principles themselves should remain in
force over time, and that a good person’s principles

form a coherent body. He does not, however, be-
lieve that their application is always straightfor-
ward. He takes them seriously as a carpenter or a
navigator (NE III 3: 1112a5–7) or a physician or a
comedian (NE IV 8: 1028a23–34) must take seriously
the principles of carpentry or navigation or medi-
cine or comedy, but not as the geometer takes
seriously the principles of geometry (NE I 7:
1098a29–34). The difference is important: We know
just how to apply the principles of geometry to a
geometry problem, even a problem in actual space
and time. But although ethics is not geometry, Ar-
istotle believes that principles have something to
do with sound moral judgments. Many present-day
virtue ethicists agree. Nussbaum (1990), Hurst-
house (1999), Foot (1997), and others argue that we
can apply principles but must be wise about it.
McDowell (1997) dismisses principles, but his is a
minority view.
Aristotle holds that one arrives at acceptable
principles—necessary but not sufficient conditions
of acting out of good character—by the process of
dialectic. This process usually starts with common
opinions, with the intention of finding as moral
premises principles that are consistent with those
opinions and explain them, or improve on them
insofar as they can be proved wrong (see NE VII 1:
1145b4–8, for example).
One wants to reach a state in which one’s begin-
nings (archai) form a coherent whole. When Aris-
totle speaks of beginnings, he sometimes has in
mind what we would consider moral principles,
while at other times he is thinking of particular
moral judgments. The ambiguity is confusing, but

he explicitly claims that a starting point of an
argument that leads to a principle is called a be-
ginning while the principle itself is a beginning in
a different sense: It is the starting point of the
justification of a particular judgment (see NE I 4:
1095b6 and I 7: 1098b2, for example). Here we may
think of Rawls’s (1971: 48–51) reflective equilibri-
um: One compares one’s principles and one’s con-
sidered judgments about particular cases and ad-
justs both in an effort to make them consistent.
Neither the principles nor the judgments are prior;
each is subject to adjustment by reference to the
other. If our principles are nothing more than the
result of rationalizing the intuitions on which we
act, as Luban (2003) is led by Festinger (1957) and
others to think may often be the case, then our
intuitions are prior in an impermissible way, and
likely not very good. In the case of wide reflective
equilibrium, so called by Daniels (1979), we bring
in pertinent science, settled beliefs about human
nature, and other facts as background.2 Wide equi-
librium seems to represent Aristotle’s views pretty
well. At our moral best we have a set of back-
ground beliefs, intuitions, and principles that co-
here, with emotions to match.
Hursthouse (1999) and Irwin (1988) take an ap-
proach similar to reflective equilibrium as a way of
thinking about virtues. We might say, in the spirit
of Aristotle, that a person is virtuous when s/he has
intuitions and perceptions and emotions and prin-
ciples that cohere, and acts in a way that ex-
presses them. Rawls has in mind logical rather
than psychological coherence, whereas Aristotle
seems to be thinking of both, although he does not

sharply distinguish them. When Aristotle says that
understanding should be part of our perception, he
implies that the intuitions of a moral person will
incorporate the right principles into a particular
judgment. Arras (1991) makes a similar point in
discussing the advantages of casuistry in medical
ethics. Among business ethicists Nielsen (2001)
sounds similar to Aristotle here, as does Van Hooft
(2001).
We do not make sound moral judgments by be-
ginning with a certain notion of, say, fairness and
then applying it to business or politics or any other
area of life. The notion of fairness has little sub-
stantive content if separated from all these areas.
Suppose we say that it is unfair to treat talented
people differently from the way we treat untal-
ented ones. So those whose talent lets them con-
tribute more to the economy do not deserve more
votes. But many of us do think that employees
should be paid according to what they contribute
to the bottom line—a principle that is utilitarian in
that it creates an incentive to do what they can to
contribute. Whether they deserve better medical
care is not immediately obvious. In fact, philoso-
phers have always struggled with the notion of
desert. If we ever do reach a consensus, it will be
hard-won from experience.
Reflective equilibrium should have some appeal
for both principle and virtue ethicists. While the
former emphasize principles, the latter have an
interest in judgments—in Aristotle’s case, those of
2 See Calkins (2004: 34f.) for an application to wide
equilibrium

to virtue ethics.
wise and experienced people—about particular
situations. Aristotle holds that virtuous people
must trust their intuitions where principles com-
pete or are hard to apply. People of inferior char-
acter often do the wrong thing not because they
have bad principles, though many do, but because
their intuitions do not lead them to apprehend the
situation under the right principle. They may act
on a principle that social pressure forces on them,
or one that rationalizes their previous behavior.
Experience and Its Wisdom: Learning and Living
Aristotle does not claim that dialectic is either
necessary or sufficient for good character. The
usual process of moral growth is a gradual one,
part of a life lived in a good community. Experi-
ence of that sort is the best teacher. There were
some wise old heads at Arthur Andersen who did
grasp the salient descriptions of the sleazy actions
of their auditors and others at Enron (see Chicago
Tribune, 2002) and no doubt had emotional reac-
tions that supported their view. Unfortunately in
the Enron case the winning intuitions were those of
people of bad character, who acted on the princi-
ples that were not morally salient.
If Aristotle is right, business ethicists should
have great respect for the opinions of intelligent
people of good character who are experienced in

business. The moral philosophers’ contribution
will be to compare these intuitions to one another
and to moral principles with a view to sharpening
both. We want our students to have values that are
coherent and achievable without catastrophic cost.
We want them to have principles and intuitions
that form a fairly coherent set, and to learn how to
apply the principles appropriately with the help of
the right emotional reactions. We also want them
to have desires that are consistent with their val-
ues insofar as possible. An accountant of good
character will value both good client service and
transparency for the benefit of the public, but will
normally give the second consideration priority
when they conflict.
How does one come to apprehend courage? One
is told as a child that this or that act is courageous,
or not courageous but cowardly. Over a period of
time one comes to have a pretty good sense of what
courage looks like, and then through dialectic—
that is, roughly, philosophical conversation about
the concept—one acquires a real understanding of
courage and its contraries, cowardice and foolhar-
diness, and reliably identifies instances of them. In
the best case, the moral intuitions are consistent
with the principles— for example, definitive state-
ments about courage and cowardice—although
one’s understanding of courage will never lead
one to a principle that gives the precise necessary
and sufficient conditions of courage, since that
kind of precision cannot be expected in ethics (NE
I 3: 1094b23–27). So Aristotle says (NE VI 11:
1143a35–b5) that the correct perception (aisthesis)
of a particular act as being the sort of act that it

is—say, perceiving that a certain act is cow-
ardly, hence not to be done—involves the faculty
of understanding (nous). In the ethical case it
also involves emotion, which entails cognition:
The emotions of a person of good character are
an indicator of the moral quality of an actual or
possible act. So, for example, an unjust injury to
a courageous person provokes his or her indig-
nation, which leads to a response that is appro-
priate given the risks involved.
From this we might infer, as Aristotle does, that
a long life in a good community is a necessary
condition of becoming a person of good character.
So what does a course in business ethics do to help
in developing the kind of character that generates
morally salient descriptions of complex situations
with emotions and motivations to match? It plays
the part that dialectic plays in Aristotle’s under-
standing of moral education. First, we offer stu-
dents case studies that sharpen their moral per-
ception much as experience does, and we offer
analysis of them based on wide reflective equilib-
rium, and we thereby enhance moral maturation.
Second, we encourage students to engage in criti-
cal analysis of their values with an eye to what is
coherent and sustainable. As a result of this
analysis, our students will be better equipped to
choose courses of action, and even a career path,
that will support rather than undermine or alter
their values.
Ethics and Strategy: The Value of Case Studies
We already have at hand a way of teaching busi-
ness ethics so that our students begin to learn to

see business issues as moral issues and grasp
their salient features. The case study method suits
business ethics as it suits strategy, both of which
require practical wisdom in Aristotle’s sense. In a
typical strategy course the students read a text and
then consider case studies that challenge them to
apply the principles in the text to a real situation.
This is the beginning of the process of developing
their intuitions about strategy. In real-life corpo-
rate strategy, as I learned as a management con-
sultant, there is much to be said for trusting the
intuitions of an intelligent and experienced person
with a good track record. When a manager makes
decisions about the strategies to be undertaken by
2006 77Hartman
certain strategic business units, there will be some
easy cases. Where the market is teeming with op-
portunity and the SBU is stronger than any of its
competitors in all important respects, the strategy
of reinvesting for growth is obvious. But there are
nonobvious cases, as when a group of weak SBUs
can together achieve economies of scale or use
slack resources. Even if there were an algorithm
permitting the strategist to infer the correct strat-
egy from the available numbers, it is not clear that
the value of finding the algorithm would justify its
cost. At a certain point the experienced and wise
manager must satisfice and make an intuitive de-
cision.3 Some managers are consistently better
than others at knowing which of the many accurate
descriptions of a strategic situation is the salient
one, although they often cannot say in any detail

how they do it. Their track record is evidence of
their practical wisdom.
By using case studies we give students experi-
ence that supports the development of their moral
imagination. We teach them the warning signs of
rationalization and ethical anesthesia. We show
them cases in which machismo and courage are
opposites. When one of our former students goes
on to join an organization that is an ongoing Mil-
gram experiment, we hope that there will be a
spark of recognition. Complex case studies exer-
cise their moral judgment about particulars, as
when justice and economic efficiency conflict. In
looking at a case and considering what its salient
features are, we are helping students develop
moral imagination and thus practical wisdom and
thus good character.
When one of our former students goes on
to join an organization that is an ongoing
Milgram experiment, we hope that there
will be a spark of recognition.
Authors of textbooks do not usually alter the
principles that they espouse to accommodate the
complexities of business. A business with high
entry barriers is not always more profitable than
one in which growth quickly attracts new compet-
itors, but we do not expect Porter (1980) to try to list
all of the possible exceptions to his general prin-
ciples. Most virtue ethicists acknowledge that
there are situations in which (say) lying would be a
useful move for all concerned, but most of them
would say that one should not lie even then, be-

cause it is bad to be a liar. An analogue in strategy
would be the advice that an organization should
usually stick to doing what it does best even when
the organization does business in a suboptimal
way but change would be disorienting.
Our objective is to help our students get better at
answering the question, “What shall I do?” The
moral imagination required to put one’s values
into practice is a necessary but not sufficient con-
dition of an adequate answer to the question. The
students need a critical understanding of their ac-
tual and possible values.
An Aristotelian would take the view that in busi-
ness, as anywhere else, a life of integrity is a
fulfilling life on which one will be able to look back
with satisfaction. In spite of the advantages of
good character, however, choosing one’s character
is no easy task under any circumstances. One can-
not readily choose which desires to have: Many
people are tempted by doughnuts; some are
tempted by dishonesty. We can, however, ask stu-
dents to reflect on what is most important to them
and how to protect it. Reading Michael Lewis’s
Liar’s Poker (1989), for example, provides an oppor-
tunity for this. Does Dash Riprock lead a good life?
Is the Human Piranha’s approval a good thing? Is
selling equities in Dallas inappropriate for anyone
with any self-respect? Why? How does Salomon
Brothers of that era differ from the Milgram exper-
iment? Knowing about Salomon or Milgram may
enable one later to stop and reflect on one’s situa-
tion, and to do a little moral reasoning rather than
rationalization.

There is some encouraging evidence about the
possibility of doing that. Beaman et al. (1978) show
that people who are taught certain effects of social
pressure will act better thereafter. Nickerson (1994)
argues that little of the moral reasoning that is
taught in the classroom is transferred, but Lieber-
man (2000) claims that continued discussion in an
appropriate environment—what Aristotle would
call dialectic in a good polis—can make a positive
difference. At least we can disabuse the students
of the notion that ethics is by its nature opposed to
their interests, show how certain virtues are com-
patible with a good life, and argue that integrity is
a necessary condition of it. If, as I suggested ear-
lier, students tend to have some good values al-
ready, that should not be impossible.
Fairly Hopeful Conclusion: Choosing a Job and
Choosing a Character
Even for those who remember Milgram, corporate
culture may be very powerful. By holding out a
certain notion of success, a bad culture can thwart
3 Simon (1954) invented the concept of satisficing; Winter
(1971)
argued that we must satisfice in deciding when to satisfice.
people’s ability to reflect on their values and to
identify salient characteristics, as it can thwart the
strategist’s attempt to maintain a long-term per-
spective and see events from that perspective. But

if a strong organizational culture can affect one’s
character in that way, then the choice of an em-
ployer is a most important one. Having been in a
certain organization for a while, I may like being
the sort of person who enjoys acting ruthlessly, or
perhaps the sort of person who takes satisfaction
in maintaining a professional attitude. If Aristotle
is right, by acting ruthlessly or professionally I can
become that kind of person. For some of our stu-
dents, choosing an employer (or a career; that is a
different essay) will in effect be choosing which
desires to cultivate, hence choosing a character.
The least that we can do is help students under-
stand the importance of that choice and not make it
thoughtlessly. If Harman and Doris are right, ad-
vocating that form of adaptive preference forma-
tion may also be the most that we can do. Aristotle
would not accept that choosing the right polis is
a sufficient condition of developing a good char-
acter, but he does believe that it is a necessary
condition.
We can intervene here. We can help students
examine what their values really are at the mo-
ment of choice of a job. We can raise questions
about why someone would want to pursue a cer-
tain sort of career or join a certain sort of firm, and
about whether getting a certain job will be as
satisfying as one has anticipated. In so doing, we
may help expose the reasons given as incoherent
or based on self-ignorance or peer pressure.
Think of Smith, who is considering entry-level
positions as she completes her MBA. She has two
options: a job in finance at a large manufacturing
firm known for good ethics, or a job in an invest-

ment banking house known for its competitive en-
vironment and its contempt for its customers. Call
them Johnson and Johnson and Salomon Brothers.
Maybe she is already the sort of person who will be
happy in one of those environments but not the
other. Maybe, on the other hand, Smith is wrong in
thinking that she could not be happy if she were
not making a lot of money as the biggest swinging
dick in the house. Maybe she has bought into the
pecking order in her second-year MBA cohort with-
out considering what sort of life in business would
satisfy her. She might indeed go with the invest-
ment house and come to feel contempt for those
who settle for equities in Dallas, or she might take
a job in a high-ethics company and come to enjoy
it and be quite happy that she did not go with the
investment house. But if Lewis is right about life at
Salomon Brothers and the researchers on affective
forecasting are right in general, she might achieve
success at Salomon Brothers but never find it quite
satisfying. Like Dash Riprock, she might always
be looking for the next fix. But by the time she
learns this about herself, she may not be the sort
of person who could enjoy life at Johnson and
Johnson, either.
We cannot choose her job for her, but we can
help her think about whether a prospective career
and even a prospective life can be compatible with
values that will sustain her happiness. After she
has made the choice, we hope that she maintains
the values appropriate to good character and the
moral imagination to put them into practice.
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2006 81Hartman
THE
SPIRIT OF YOUTH

AND THE CITY STREETS
By
JANE ADDAMS
HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO
Author of Democracy and Social Ethics
Newer Ideals of Peace, etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1930
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909
Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUSE OF DREAMS
To the preoccupied adult who is prone to use the city
street as a mere
passageway from one hurried duty to another, nothing is more
touching than
his encounter with a group of children and young people who

are emerging
from a theater with the magic of the play still thick upon them.
They look up
and down the familiar street scarcely recognizing it and
quite unable to
determine the direction of home. From a tangle of "make
believe" they gravely
scrutinize the real world which they are so reluctant to reënter,
reminding one
of the absorbed gaze of a child who is groping his way back
from fairy-land
whither the story has completely transported him.
"Going to the show" for thousands of young people in every
industrial city is
the only possible road to the realms of mystery and romance;
the theater is the
only place where they can satisfy that craving for a conception
of life higher
than that which the actual world offers them. In a very real
sense the drama and
the drama alone performs for them the office of art as is clearly
revealed in
their blundering demand stated in many forms for "a play unlike
life." The
theater becomes to them a "veritable house of dreams" infinitely
more real than
the noisy streets and the crowded factories.
This first simple demand upon the theater for romance is closely
allied to one
more complex which might be described as a search for solace
and distraction
in those moments of first awakening from the glamour of
a youth's
interpretation of life to the sterner realities which are

thrust upon his
consciousness. These perceptions which inevitably "close
around" and imprison
the spirit of youth are perhaps never so grim as in the case of
the wage-earning
child. We can all recall our own moments of revolt against life's
actualities, our
reluctance to admit that all life was to be as unheroic and
uneventful as that
which we saw about us, it was too unbearable that "this was all
there was" and
we tried every possible avenue of escape. As we made an effort
to believe, in
spite of what we saw, that life was noble and harmonious, as we
stubbornly
clung to poesy in contradiction to the testimony of our
senses, so we see
thousands of young people thronging the theaters bent in their
turn upon the
same quest. The drama provides a transition between the
romantic conceptions
which they vainly struggle to keep intact and life's cruelties
and trivialities
which they refuse to admit. A child whose imagination has been
cultivated is
able to do this for himself through reading and reverie, but for
the overworked
city youth of meager education, perhaps nothing but the
theater is able to
perform this important office.
The theater also has a strange power to forecast life for the
youth. Each boy

comes from our ancestral past not "in entire forgetfulness,"
and quite as he
unconsciously uses ancient war-cries in his street play, so he
longs to reproduce
and to see set before him the valors and vengeances of a society
embodying a
much more primitive state of morality than that in which he
finds himself. Mr.
Patten has pointed out that the elemental action which the stage
presents, the
old emotions of love and jealousy, of revenge and daring take
the thoughts of
the spectator back into deep and well worn channels in which
his mind runs
with a sense of rest afforded by nothing else. The cheap drama
brings cause and
effect, will power and action, once more into relation and
gives a man the
thrilling conviction that he may yet be master of his fate. The
youth of course,
quite unconscious of this psychology, views the deeds of the
hero simply as a
forecast of his own future and it is this fascinating view of his
own career
which draws the boy to "shows" of all sorts. They can
scarcely be too
improbable for him, portraying, as they do, his belief in his own
prowess. A
series of slides which has lately been very popular in the five-
cent theaters of
Chicago, portrayed five masked men breaking into a humble
dwelling, killing
the father of the family and carrying away the family treasure.
The golden-
haired son of the house, aged seven, vows eternal vengeance on
the spot, and

follows one villain after another to his doom. The execution of
each is shown in
lurid detail, and the last slide of the series depicts the hero,
aged ten, kneeling
upon his father's grave counting on the fingers of one hand the
number of men
that he has killed, and thanking God that he has been
permitted to be an
instrument of vengeance.
In another series of slides, a poor woman is wearily bending
over some sewing,
a baby is crying in the cradle, and two little boys of nine and
ten are asking for
food. In despair the mother sends them out into the street to
beg, but instead
they steal a revolver from a pawn shop and with it kill a
Chinese laundry-man,
robbing him of $200. They rush home with the treasure which is
found by the
mother in the baby's cradle, whereupon she and her sons fall
upon their knees
and send up a prayer of thankfulness for this timely and heaven-
sent assistance.
Is it not astounding that a city allows thousands of its
youth to fill their
impressionable minds with these absurdities which certainly
will become the
foundation for their working moral codes and the data from
which they will
judge the proprieties of life?
It is as if a child, starved at home, should be forced to go out

and search for
food, selecting, quite naturally, not that which is nourishing but
that which is
exciting and appealing to his outward sense, often in his
ignorance and
foolishness blundering into substances which are filthy and
poisonous.
Out of my twenty years' experience at Hull-House I can
recall all sorts of
pilferings, petty larcenies, and even burglaries, due to that
never ceasing effort
on the part of boys to procure theater tickets. I can also recall
indirect efforts
towards the same end which are most pitiful. I remember the
remorse of a
young girl of fifteen who was brought into the Juvenile Court
after a night
spent weeping in the cellar of her home because she had
stolen a mass of
artificial flowers with which to trim a hat. She stated that she
had taken the
flowers because she was afraid of losing the attention of a
young man whom
she had heard say that "a girl has to be dressy if she expects to
be seen." This
young man was the only one who had ever taken her to the
theater and if he
failed her, she was sure that she would never go again, and she
sobbed out
incoherently that she "couldn't live at all without it."
Apparently the blankness
and grayness of life itself had been broken for her only by the
portrayal of a
different world.

One boy whom I had known from babyhood began to take
money from his
mother from the time he was seven years old, and after he was
ten she regularly
gave him money for the play Saturday evening. However,
the Saturday
performance, "starting him off like," he always went twice
again on Sunday,
procuring the money in all sorts of illicit ways. Practically all
of his earnings
after he was fourteen were spent in this way to satisfy the
insatiable desire to
know of the great adventures of the wide world which the more
fortunate boy
takes out in reading Homer and Stevenson.
In talking with his mother, I was reminded of my
experience one Sunday
afternoon in Russia when the employees of a large factory were
seated in an
open-air theater, watching with breathless interest the
presentation of folk
stories. I was told that troupes of actors went from one
manufacturing
establishment to another presenting the simple elements of
history and
literature to the illiterate employees. This tendency to
slake the thirst for
adventure by viewing the drama is, of course, but a blind and
primitive effort in
the direction of culture, for "he who makes himself its
vessel and bearer
thereby acquires a freedom from the blindness and soul
poverty of daily
existence."

It is partly in response to this need that more sophisticated
young people often
go to the theater, hoping to find a clue to life's perplexities.
Many times the
bewildered hero reminds one of Emerson's description of
Margaret Fuller, "I
don't know where I am going, follow me"; nevertheless, the
stage is dealing
with the moral themes in which the public is most interested.
And while many young people go to the theater if only to see
represented, and
to hear discussed, the themes which seem to them so tragically
important, there
is no doubt that what they hear there, flimsy and poor as it
often is, easily
becomes their actual moral guide. In moments of moral crisis
they turn to the
sayings of the hero who found himself in a similar plight. The
sayings may not
be profound, but at least they are applicable to conduct. In the
last few years
scores of plays have been put upon the stage whose titles
might be easily
translated into proper headings for sociological lectures or
sermons, without
including the plays of Ibsen, Shaw and Hauptmann, which deal
so directly with
moral issues that the moralists themselves wince under
their teachings and
declare them brutal. But it is this very brutality which the
over-refined and
complicated city dwellers often crave. Moral teaching has

become so intricate,
creeds so metaphysical, that in a state of absolute reaction they
demand definite
instruction for daily living. Their whole-hearted acceptance
of the teaching
corroborates the statement recently made by an English
playwright that "The
theater is literally making the minds of our urban populations
to-day. It is a
huge factory of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of
conceptions of
conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny
of a nation. The
theater is not only a place of amusement, it is a place of culture,
a place where
people learn how to think, act, and feel." Seldom, however, do
we associate the
theater with our plans for civic righteousness, although it
has become so
important a factor in city life.
One Sunday evening last winter an investigation was made of
four hundred and
sixty six theaters in the city of Chicago, and it was
discovered that in the
majority of them the leading theme was revenge; the lover
following his rival;
the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour; or the wiping
out by death
of a blot on a hitherto unstained honor. It was estimated that
one sixth of the
entire population of the city had attended the theaters on that
day. At that same
moment the churches throughout the city were preaching the
gospel of good
will. Is not this a striking commentary upon the contradictory

influences to
which the city youth is constantly subjected?
This discrepancy between the church and the stage is at
times apparently
recognized by the five-cent theater itself, and a blundering
attempt is made to
suffuse the songs and moving pictures with piety. Nothing could
more absurdly
demonstrate this attempt than a song, illustrated by pictures,
describing the
adventures of a young man who follows a pretty girl through
street after street
in the hope of "snatching a kiss from her ruby lips." The
young man is
overjoyed when a sudden wind storm drives the girl to
shelter under an
archway, and he is about to succeed in his attempt when the
good Lord, "ever
watchful over innocence," makes the same wind "blow a cloud
of dust into the
eyes of the rubberneck," and "his foul purpose is foiled." This
attempt at piety
is also shown in a series of films depicting Bible stories and the
Passion Play at
Oberammergau, forecasting the time when the moving film will
be viewed as a
mere mechanical device for the use of the church, the school
and the library, as
well as for the theater.
At present, however, most improbable tales hold the attention of
the youth of

the city night after night, and feed his starved imagination
as nothing else
succeeds in doing. In addition to these fascinations, the five-
cent theater is also
fast becoming the general social center and club house in
many crowded
neighborhoods. It is easy of access from the street the entire
family of parents
and children can attend for a comparatively small sum of
money and the
performance lasts for at least an hour; and, in some of the
humbler theaters, the
spectators are not disturbed for a second hour.
The room which contains the mimic stage is small and cozy, and
less formal
than the regular theater, and there is much more gossip and
social life as if the
foyer and pit were mingled. The very darkness of the room,
necessary for an
exhibition of the films, is an added attraction to many young
people, for whom
the space is filled with the glamour of love making.
Hundreds of young people attend these five-cent theaters every
evening in the
week, including Sunday, and what is seen and heard there
becomes the sole
topic of conversation, forming the ground pattern of their
social life. That
mutual understanding which in another social circle is
provided by books,
travel and all the arts, is here compressed into the topics
suggested by the play.
The young people attend the five-cent theaters in groups, with

something of the
"gang" instinct, boasting of the films and stunts in "our
theater." They find a
certain advantage in attending one theater regularly, for the
habitués are often
invited to come upon the stage on "amateur nights," which
occur at least once a
week in all the theaters. This is, of course, a most exciting
experience. If the
"stunt" does not meet with the approval of the audience,
the performer is
greeted with jeers and a long hook pulls him off the stage; if, on
the other hand,
he succeeds in pleasing the audience, he may be paid for his
performance and
later register with a booking agency, the address of which is
supplied by the
obliging manager, and thus he fancies that a lucrative and
exciting career is
opening before him. Almost every night at six o'clock a long
line of children
may be seen waiting at the entrance of these booking agencies,
of which there
are fifteen that are well known in Chicago.
Thus, the only art which is constantly placed before the
eyes of "the
temperamental youth" is a debased form of dramatic art, and a
vulgar type of
music, for the success of a song in these theaters depends not so
much upon its
musical rendition as upon the vulgarity of its appeal. In a song
which held the
stage of a cheap theater in Chicago for weeks, the young singer

was helped out
by a bit of mirror from which she threw a flash of light
into the faces of
successive boys whom she selected from the audience as she
sang the refrain,
"You are my Affinity." Many popular songs relate the vulgar
experiences of a
city man wandering from amusement park to bathing beach
in search of
flirtations. It may be that these "stunts" and recitals of city
adventure contain
the nucleus of coming poesy and romance, as the songs and
recitals of the early
minstrels sprang directly from the life of the people, but all the
more does the
effort need help and direction, both in the development of its
technique and the
material of its themes.
The few attempts which have been made in this direction are
astonishingly
rewarding to those who regard the power of self-expression as
one of the most
precious boons of education. The Children's Theater in New
York is the most
successful example, but every settlement in which
dramatics have been
systematically fostered can also testify to a surprisingly quick
response to this
form of art on the part of young people. The Hull-House Theater
is constantly
besieged by children clamoring to "take part" in the plays
of Schiller,
Shakespeare, and Molière, although they know it means weeks
of rehearsal and
the complete memorizing of "stiff" lines. The audiences sit

enthralled by the
final rendition and other children whose tastes have supposedly
been debased
by constant vaudeville, are pathetically eager to come again and
again. Even
when still more is required from the young actors, research into
the special
historic period, copying costumes from old plates, hours of
labor that the "th"
may be restored to its proper place in English speech,
their enthusiasm is
unquenched. But quite aside from its educational possibilities
one never ceases
to marvel at the power of even a mimic stage to afford to the
young a magic
space in which life may be lived in efflorescence, where
manners may be
courtly and elaborate without exciting ridicule, where the
sequence of events is
impressive and comprehensible. Order and beauty of life is what
the adolescent
youth craves above all else as the younger child indefatigably
demands his
story. "Is this where the most beautiful princess in the world
lives?" asks a little
girl peering into the door of the Hull-House Theater, or
"Does Alice in
Wonderland always stay here?" It is much easier for her to put
her feeling into
words than it is for the youth who has enchantingly rendered the
gentle poetry
of Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd," or for him who has walked the
boards as
Southey's Wat Tyler. His association, however, is quite as
clinging and magical
as is the child's although he can only say, "Gee, I wish I could

always feel the
way I did that night. Something would be doing then." Nothing
of the artist's
pleasure, nor of the revelation of that larger world which
surrounds and
completes our own, is lost to him because a careful technique
has been exacted,
—on the contrary this has only dignified and enhanced it. It
would also be easy
to illustrate youth's eagerness for artistic expression from the
recitals given by
the pupils of the New York Music School Settlement, or by
those of the Hull-
House Music School. These attempts also combine social life
with the training
of the artistic sense and in this approximate the fascinations of
the five-cent
theater.
This spring a group of young girls accustomed to the life of a
five-cent theater,
reluctantly refused an invitation to go to the country for a day's
outing because
the return on a late train would compel them to miss one
evening's
performance. They found it impossible to tear themselves away
not only from
the excitements of the theater itself but from the gaiety of the
crowd of young
men and girls invariably gathered outside discussing the
sensational posters.
A steady English shopkeeper lately complained that unless he

provided his
four, daughters with the money for the five-cent theaters every
evening they
would steal it from his till, and he feared that they might be
driven to procure it
in even more illicit ways. Because his entire family life had
been thus disrupted
he gloomily asserted that "this cheap show had ruined his 'ome
and was the
curse of America." This father was able to formulate the
anxiety of many
immigrant parents who are absolutely bewildered by the keen
absorption of
their children in the cheap theater. This anxiety is not,
indeed, without
foundation. An eminent alienist of Chicago states that he has
had a number of
patients among neurotic children whose emotional natures have
been so over-
wrought by the crude appeal to which they had been so
constantly subjected in
the theaters, that they have become victims of
hallucination and mental
disorder. The statement of this physician may be the first note
of alarm which
will awaken the city to its duty in regard to the theater, so that
it shall at least be
made safe and sane for the city child whose senses are already
so abnormally
developed.
This testimony of a physician that the conditions are actually
pathological, may
at last induce us to bestir ourselves in regard to procuring a
more wholesome
form of public recreation. Many efforts in social

amelioration have been
undertaken only after such exposures; in the meantime, while
the occasional
child is driven distraught, a hundred children permanently
injure their eyes
watching the moving films, and hundreds more seriously model
their conduct
upon the standards set before them on this mimic stage.
Three boys, aged nine, eleven and thirteen years, who had
recently seen
depicted the adventures of frontier life including the
holding up of a stage
coach and the lassoing of the driver, spent weeks planning to
lasso, murder, and
rob a neighborhood milkman, who started on his route at four
o'clock in the
morning. They made their headquarters in a barn and saved
enough money to
buy a revolver, adopting as their watchword the phrase "Dead
Men Tell no
Tales." One spring morning the conspirators, with their
faces covered with
black cloth, lay "in ambush" for the milkman. Fortunately for
him, as the lariat
was thrown the horse shied, and, although the shot was
appropriately fired, the
milkman's life was saved. Such a direct influence of the theater
is by no means
rare, even among older boys. Thirteen young lads were
brought into the
Municipal Court in Chicago during the first week that "Raffles,
the Amateur
Cracksman" was upon the stage, each one with an outfit of

burglar's tools in his
possession, and each one shamefacedly admitting that the
gentlemanly burglar
in the play had suggested to him a career of similar adventure.
In so far as the illusions of the theater succeed in giving youth
the rest and
recreation which comes from following a more primitive code
of morality, it
has a close relation to the function performed by public games.
It is, of course,
less valuable because the sense of participation is largely
confined to the
emotions and the imagination, and does not involve the entire
nature.
We might illustrate by the "Wild West Show" in which the
onlooking boy
imagines himself an active participant. The scouts, the
Indians, the bucking
ponies, are his real intimate companions and occupy his entire
mind. In contrast
with this we have the omnipresent game of tag which is,
doubtless, also
founded upon the chase. It gives the boy exercise and
momentary echoes of the
old excitement, but it is barren of suggestion and quickly
degenerates into
horse-play.
Well considered public games easily carried out in a park or
athletic field,
might both fill the mind with the imaginative material
constantly supplied by
the theater, and also afford the activity which the cramped
muscles of the town

dweller so sorely need. Even the unquestioned ability
which the theater
possesses to bring men together into a common mood and to
afford them a
mutual topic of conversation, is better accomplished with the
one national game
which we already possess, and might be infinitely
extended through the
organization of other public games.
The theater even now by no means competes with the baseball
league games
which are attended by thousands of men and boys who,
during the entire
summer, discuss the respective standing of each nine and the
relative merits of
every player. During the noon hour all the employees of a city
factory gather in
the nearest vacant lot to cheer their own home team in its
practice for the next
game with the nine of a neighboring manufacturing
establishment and on a
Saturday afternoon the entire male population of the city
betakes itself to the
baseball field; the ordinary means of transportation are
supplemented by gay
stage-coaches and huge automobiles, noisy with blowing
horns and decked
with gay pennants. The enormous crowd of cheering men
and boys are
talkative, good-natured, full of the holiday spirit, and absolutely
released from
the grind of life. They are lifted out of their individual affairs

and so fused
together that a man cannot tell whether it is his own shout or
another's that fills
his ears; whether it is his own coat or another's that he is wildly
waving to
celebrate a victory. He does not call the stranger who sits
next to him his
"brother" but he unconsciously embraces him in an
overwhelming outburst of
kindly feeling when the favorite player makes a home run.
Does not this
contain a suggestion of the undoubted power of public
recreation to bring
together all classes of a community in the modern city
unhappily so full of
devices for keeping men apart?
Already some American cities are making a beginning toward
more adequate
public recreation. Boston has its municipal gymnasiums, cricket
fields, and golf
grounds. Chicago has seventeen parks with playing fields,
gymnasiums and
baths, which at present enroll thousands of young people. These
same parks are
provided with beautiful halls which are used for many purposes,
rent free, and
are given over to any group of young people who wish to
conduct dancing
parties subject to city supervision and chaperonage. Many
social clubs have
deserted neighboring saloon halls for these municipal
drawing rooms
beautifully decorated with growing plants supplied by the park
greenhouses,
and flooded with electric lights supplied by the park power

house. In the saloon
halls the young people were obliged to "pass money freely over
the bar," and in
order to make the most of the occasion they usually stayed until
morning. At
such times the economic necessity itself would override the
counsels of the
more temperate, and the thrifty door keeper would not insist
upon invitations
but would take in any one who had the "price of a ticket." The
free rent in the
park hall, the good food in the park restaurant, supplied at cost,
have made
three parties closing at eleven o'clock no more expensive
than one party
breaking up at daylight, too often in disorder.
Is not this an argument that the drinking, the late hours, the lack
of decorum,
are directly traceable to the commercial enterprise which
ministers to pleasure
in order to drag it into excess because excess is more
profitable? To thus
commercialize pleasure is as monstrous as it is to
commercialize art. It is
intolerable that the city does not take over this function of
making provision for
pleasure, as wise communities in Sweden and South Carolina
have taken the
sale of alcohol out of the hands of enterprising publicans.
We are only beginning to understand what might be done
through the festival,

the street procession, the band of marching musicians,
orchestral music in
public squares or parks, with the magic power they all possess
to formulate the
sense of companionship and solidarity. The experiments which
are being made
in public schools to celebrate the national holidays, the
changing seasons, the
birthdays of heroes, the planting of trees, are slowly
developing little
ceremonials which may in time work out into pageants of
genuine beauty and
significance. No other nation has so unparalleled an
opportunity to do this
through its schools as we have, for no other nation has so wide-
spreading a
school system, while the enthusiasm of children and their
natural ability to
express their emotions through symbols, gives the securest
possible foundation
to this growing effort.
The city schools of New York have effected the organization of
high school
girls into groups for folk dancing. These old forms of dancing
which have been
worked out in many lands and through long experiences,
safeguard unwary and
dangerous expression and yet afford a vehicle through
which the gaiety of
youth may flow. Their forms are indeed those which lie at the
basis of all good
breeding, forms which at once express and restrain, urge
forward and set limits.
One may also see another center of growth for public

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