This talk will explore to what extent psychological research can shed light on the Aristotelian idea that virtuous people enjoy virtuous activity and experience a motivational harmony between reasons and desires, often referred to in contemporary virtue ethics as the ‘harmony-thesis’. Aristotle contrasts this to the continent, or self-controlled person, who acts according to their rational calculations but only after facing and overcoming conflicting desires. Because of this conflict, the continent person is morally inferior to the fully virtuous. The harmony-thesis can thus be divided into the following three claims:
a) Virtue involves a robust psychic harmony between reasons and desires we can call “motivational harmony”
b) This state is distinct from continence.
c) Virtue is superior to continence.
The harmony-thesis has been criticized for positing an unrealistic and unattainable moral ideal. This talk attempts to answer this challenge by arguing that we can find empirical grounding for the harmony-thesis in the psychological research on trait self-control (TSC). Recent studies on TSC reveal that possessing this trait is associated with fewer conflicting motivations and fewer cases of exercising self-control, which is explained because these people have developed beneficial habits and a high degree of autonomous or intrinsic motivation. Finally, TSC is associated with numerous benefits we should expect from virtues, such as better social relations, higher reports on well-being, better health and higher academic and work achievements. Together, these features of TSC provide support for the idea that it is psychologically possible for humans to attain motivational harmony.