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5 necessary for helpful citizens of whatever society we belong to. Friendship,
Virtue ethics
James F, Keenan
Renewed interest in virtue ethics arises from a dissatisfaction with the
way we do ethics today. Most discussions about ethics today consider
major controversial actions: abortion, gay marriages, nuclear war, gene
therapy, and so forth. These discussions basically dominate contemporary
ethics. Many writers in this volume, in fact, belong to a variety of different
schools of thought that measure whether a controversial human action is
right or wrong!
Virtue ethicists are different. We are not rimaril
particular actions. We do not ask 'Is this action right?'
circumstances around an action?' or 'What are th
action?' e aresim I interested in rsons,
We believe that the real discussion of ethics is not the question 'What
should I do?' but 'Who should I become?' In fact, virtue ethicists expand
that question into &ee key, related ones: 'Who am I?' 'Who ought I to
become?' 'How am I to get there?"
Who am I?
No question is more central for ethics than 'Who am I?' It is the
foundational question." When we know who we are, we know where we
need to improve. To the virtue ethicist, the question ethically, then, is the
same as 'How virtuous am I?' This is because, as' Thomas Aquinas writes,
every moral question can be reduced to the consideration of the virtues."
The answer is found by two major considerations. First, 'What standards
am I to measure myself against?' Second, 'How will I know whether I am
measuring fairly?' For the first question, two of the most important works
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in ethics attempt to assist us by naming the basic virtues. In the
Nicomacbean Ethics, Aristotle gives us eleven different virtues that are
magnanimity, practical wisdom are some of these. In Part II of the Summa
Tbeologiae, Thomas Aquinas takes from Plato, Cicero, Ambrose, Gregory
and Augustine the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance
and fortitude or bravery. Together with these he adds the three theological
virtues. He states that the first four we can acquire through deliberately
willed and enjoyed habitual right action; the latter three are gifts from
God.
If we follow Aquinas's outline then we can say that the fundamental
question is 'Am I just, temperate, brave and prudent?' For centuries we
have recommended that people ask themselves this. More recently, because
we equate ethics with particular major actions, we have forgotten this
question for self-examination. Nonetheless, even in recent times we have
had important writers reminding us of the centrality of these cardinal
virtues.'
But how can I know how virtuous I am? To answer that question
Aristotle suggests that we can know ourselves by considering how we act
in spontaneous situations: we reveal ourselves to ourselves when we act in
the unplanned world of ordinary life. We may believe that we are
particularly brave or cowardly , but that assessment is only correct if it
conforms to how, we actually behave in the unanticipated concrete
situation. Self-knowledge is key, therefore, but a self-knowledge that is
critical and honest, not one based on wishful thinking.
Who ought I to become?
The second question embodies a vision of the type of person we ought to
become. Though we use Thomas's four cardinal virtues to find out how
virtuous we actually are, we should use those same four virtues to
determine who we ought to become. For certainly, if we are honest in
answering the first question, then some virtues are not as fully acquired
by us as are others. In fact, for the honest person the virtues are not what
we acquire in life; they are what we pursue.
We use the virtues, therefore, to set the personal goals that we encourage
one another to seek. Thomas and others call this goal the end. That is, the
middle question sets an end that we should seek. That end is a type ot
l'erson with the cardinal vjrt!!es
Setting this end means that the fundamental task of the moral life is to
develop a vision and to strive to attain it. Inasmuch as that vision is who
we ought to become, then, the key insight is that we should always aim
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to grow. As a person-oriented ethics, virtue ethics insists that without
growth, we cannot become more moral.
Setting such an end describes, then, another way that virtue ethicists
are different from other ethicists. Rather than examining actions and
asking whether we should perform them or not, virtue ethicists say that
persons ought to set ends for the type of people they wish to become and
e!lrsus: them.
I have always thought that parents think this way. Parents are not
primarily concerned with what action Johnny is doing. Rather, they want
to understand how Johnny is growing. Certainly there are times when
with young children, parents talk like deonrologists: 'Don't ever talk to
strangers', 'Don't ever talk back to another person', 'Don't ever cross the
street unless the traffic light says so'. But behind all their judgements is a
more basic concern about how Johnny is turning out.
If Johnny needs to become more sensitive to other people, his parents
may pick one neighbourhood to live in with more children rather than
another with fewer; if Mary should become more srudious, her parents
will look for the school that successfully helps srudents to acquire right
study habits; if Tommy is insecure, his parents will try to find ways that
as a family they can help Tommy to grow in confidence. Generally,
parents' judgements about their children focus on what type of people
their children are becoming and whether they can help their child become
more fully integrated. That is, parents ask both 'Who is my child?' and
'How can he or she grow well?'
Likewise, we do well when we parent ourselves. When we begin to
examine ourselves, we see which weaknesses we can respond to and which
strengths we can develop. When we are pro-active and anticipate a variety
of situations where we can be more open-minded, more generous, more
forgiving, more assertive, we are trying to develop the virtues within
us."
As a matter of fact, we often act this way. For instance, if I were to ask
you to take a piece of paper and write down three ethical issues, what
would you write down? Poverty, war, sexual matters, gender equality, and
so forth. But if I asked you to tum the paper over and write down three
things about yourself that you woke up this morning thinking about, I
believe that you would write about bettering a relationship, learning to
work better, taking better care of your health, or becoming more conscious
of your neighbour. Virtue ethicists think of the second side of the paper
as the real issues of ethics. We believe that when we start thinking that
way, then we can address those big controversial issues on the first side
having promoted first a virtuous life for ourselves individually and
communally.
To the extent that we are examining our lives and seeking ways of
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Virtue ethics
improving ourselves for the betterment of ourselves and others, we are
engaging in virtue ethics.
How do I get to the end?
In order to et to the end, one needs rudence. For many years prudence
has had a terrible reputation, being thought 0 as caution or self-interest.
Be prudent meant: Don't get caught. Be extra careful. Watch out!
For Aristotle and Thomas prudence is not simply caution. Prudence is
rather the virtue of a person whose feet ace on the ground and who thinks
both practically and realisriCllJly Prudence belongs to the person who not
only sets realistic ends, but sets out to attain them. The prudent person is
precisely the person who knows how to grow. 7
Being prudent is no easy task. From the medieval period until today,
we believe that it is easier to get something wrong than to get it right.
For today we still assert that if only one component of an action is wrong,
the whole action is wrong. Think for instance of cooking. In order for
something to come out right, every ingredient has to be measured exactly,
prepared correctly and cooked properly. How many of us have had a
terrible meal because it was too salty, overcooked, too spicy or too bland?
Only when everything comes out right can we say that the meal tasted
well.
Prudence is even more complicated when we try to work out the
appropriate way of becoming more virtuous. It must be attentive to detail,
anticipate difficulties and measure rightly. Moreover, as anyone who has
watched children knows, we are not born with prudence. Actually we
acquir~rough a very long process.
The~sign of real prudence is finding the right person to give us
~ When I taught at Fordham University in the Bronx, I lived in the
student dorms and noted how often university students went to one
another for advice. These students, away from home for the first time,
were looking for advice no longer from their parents, but instead from
their peers. Often they looked to people like themselves for advice; in fact,
the groups with which they associated collectively were similar to
themselves individually. Studious students stayed together, as did hard
workers, athletes, snobs, shy people, excessive parry-goers, and so forth.
When they asked for advice they usually were not hearing anything new.
On occasion someone from outside the group might raise a question.
For instance, one might say to the excessive drinker that he was drinking
too much. Inevitably he sought out advice about the charge and went to
his alcoholic drinking buddy to ask if he was drinking too much and his
buddy would calm his friend's anxiety with denial. After a while, however,
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"-'
the drinker would ask someone else, usually someone from the exact
opposite group, someone who thought drinking was always wrong. What
the student was looking for was advice, but he went from one extreme to
the other.
Finding prudence is finding the middle point. Unlike the student here,
prudence guides us. to moderation, where we are not at either end of an
extreme. The student who drinks excessively will only get good advice
when he meets someone who is able to recognize the difference between
moderate and excessivedrinking.
As prudence looks for the moderating advisor, it does so because it
realizes that all of prudence is precisely getting to the middle point or the
mean between extremes. As Aquinas says, virtue is the mean.
Getting the mean is not always easy. I remember a friend who was
afraid of heights. In order to grow, he needed to face his fear, but he had
to do it prudentially. That is, he needed to set a realistic goal that he
could attain. But that goal had to be the mean between extremes for him.
For instance, if he went too high, say if he went to the observation deck
of the World Trade Center, he would feel no confidence at all, only
anxiety. But if he only went to the second-storey balcony of an apartment
building, he would not feel sufficient tension. Prudence helps then find
the mean where there is adequate tension for growth, neither too little nor
too much.
That mean is not fixed. For me to get over my fear of heights requires
me to go to the height where I feel sufficient tension, a height that may
not be the same as for another with a similar fear. The mean of virtue then
is not something set in stone: rather, it is the mean by which only a
specific person can grow. This is another reason why prudence is so
difficult: no two means are the same.
But parents again know this. Though their. children always cry 'Foul'
or That's unfair' whenever a parent treats one child differently from
another, still if a parent treated each child the same, then only one child
would grow adequately. Instead, parents appreciate the uniqueness of each
child and try to address each child as unique.
Finding the mean of the right tension depends on who the person is.
Just as in weight-lifting, one needs to determine what is the right tension
by considering the lifter's abilities, SO too in most matters that pertain to
a person's growth, we cannot give prudential advice unless we have a clear
idea of who the agent is. In a manner of speaking, a virtue ought to fit a
person the way a glove fits one's hand. There is a certain milor-made feel
to a virtue, which prompts Aquinas to call virtue one's second nature.
Virtue ethics is, therefore, a pro-active system of ethics. It invites all
people to see themselves as they really are, to assess themselves and see
who they can actually become. In order both to estimate oneself and to set
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, . -ue ethics
desired goals it proffers the virtues for both. Moreover, it invites all people
to see that they set the agenda not only of the end, but also of the means
to accomplish that end. Virtuous actions, like temperate drinking or
courageously facing one's fear of heights, are the prudential means for
achieving the end of becoming a more virtuous person. And we see those
means as moderate or prudential ones.
Virtue ethics encompasses one's entire life. It sees every moment as the
ossibilitv for acouirinz or develo .
A aid that eve human action is a moral action That is, any
action that I knowingly perform is a mor action because it affects me as
a moral person. Whatever I do makes me become what I do. If I drive to
work and use that time to reflect on the day that lies before me, over time
I can become a person with a developed sense of foresight. If I drive to
work both aggressively and speedily, I eventually arrive at my office with
the same manic personality that brought me there. If I correct everyone's
.mistakes at every opportunity, I am becoming more and more of a control
freak. And though my corrections may hurt a few around me, they are
basically making me progressively more and more trapped by this
disposition. While others may be affected by some of my actions, I am the
first person affected by all of my actions.
Thomas saw every human action as an exercise. The way I take
breakfast, the way I leave home, the way I drive to work, the way I greet
people in the morning are all exercises that affect me. My morning
exercises make me in part the person I will be for the rest of the day. They
make me become what I do. Though some of us go through life never
examining the habits we engage, Thomas suggests to us that we ought to
examine our ways of acting and ask ourselves 'Are these ways making us
more just, prudent, temperate and brave?' If they are, they are virtuous
exercises.
When we think of exercise we think of athletics. The person who I
exercises by running eventually becomes a runner JUSt as the one who
dances becomes a dancer. From that insight Thomas, like Aristotle before
him, sees that intended, habitual activity in the sportS arena is no different
from any other arena of life. If we can develop ourselves physically we can
develop ourselves morally by intended, habitual activity.
VjrtlJe ethics sees, therefore the ordinary as the terraio 00 which rhe
moral life moves. Thus, while most ethics make their considerations about
rather controversial material (genetics, abortion, war, and so forth), virtue
ethics often engages the commonplace. It is concerned with what we teach
out children and how; with the wa we relate with friends, families, and
neighbours; with the way we live our Ijyes Moreover, It IS concerne not
only with whether a physician maintains professional ethics, for instance,
whether she keeps professional secrets or observes informed consent with
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James F. Keenan
her patients. It is equally concerned with her private life, with whether
she knows how to respect her friends' confidences or whether she respects
her family members' privacy. In a word, before the physician is a physician
she is a person. It is her life as a person with which virtue ethics is
specifically concerned.
As opposed to dilemma-based ethics, virtue ethics is pro-active,
50ncerned with the ordinary and all-encompassing. Dilemma-based ethics,
which captures so much of our time, imagination and energy, presents
ethics as an emergency room in which suddenly a previously unknown
person arrives in a catastrophic state: needing an organ transplant, assisted
suicide or an abortion. In that made-for-TV ethics, the agent is little more
than a reactor to other people's dilemmas.
Virtue ethics looks ar the world from an entirely different vantage
point, moving ahead with less glamour and drama, but always seeing the
agent, not as reactor, but as actor: knowing oneself, setting the agenda of
personal ends and means in both the ordinary and the professional life.
Virtue ethics: yesterday, today and tomorrow
While we are retrieving virtue ethics today we realize that we cannot
return to the early Athens of Aristotle or the thirteenth-century Italy of
Thomas. Moreover, we recognize that there are some concerns about virtue
ethics being raised by a variety of people. First and foremost is the
argument that virtue erhig cannot deal with practical issues' Because
virtue is concerned with persons, some argue, it cannot adequately deal
with human action.? Though one can equally ask these objectors how
&c:ive their ethical systems have been," or more importantly, whether
their ethical systems for all their clarity have ever helped people to become
more ethical,!1 still virtue ethics must show how practical it can be. Here,
it is noteworthy that nursing ethics in particular is making great headway
in showing how a relationally-based concern for agents as persons is a
more constructive ethics than any present rule or code-based erhics." In
fact, the application of virtue to medical ethics has raised several issues
about the delivery of health care that other ethical systems never asked.13
While virtue ethics is at times introspective, the complaint that it needs
to be more extroverted and practical has prompted a variety of writers to
demonstrate that it can give specific advice, that it can improve our ability
to know the right and to do it, that it can give us new issues to address,
and above all that it can make us better and our actions morally right.
Two other issues prompt us to refine our understanding of virtue. In a
brillian~k, Owen Flanagan warns against preconceiving of a defini
V
tively person and imposing that image on others. He argues that
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James F. Keenan
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the just person. Temperance and bravery exist in order to help a person to
be just; they are effectively auxiliary. Likewise prudence functions to
determine the concrete mean for justice, temperance and courage. For
Thomas then the just person is the virtuous person. The other virtues help
the person to be just.
Today, however, the image of the just person is insufficient. Almost
everyone writing on the virtues today recognizes that whereas one must
be 'ust that is, that one must treat everyone uall still one must al;;"
attend to the imm late n s 0 riends, family and community. Writers
like Reinhold Niebuhr!8 Margaret Farley'? and Carol Gilligarr'? insist
that the moral person cannot only be just: the demands to care for a loved
one may conflict with the call to be fair to everyone.
Paul Ricoeur adds that it is important that justice is challenged by the
affection we have for another. Rather than reducing the two claims to one,
he places them in a 'tension between two distinct and sometimes opposed
claims';" This insight that the virtues are distinct and at times opposing
stands in contrast with Thomas' strategy of the cardinal virtues where
justice is supported by fortitude and temperance and none contradicts,
opposes, or challenges the claims of justice.
Furthermore we recognize another difference with Thomas. Thomas
argues that virtues perfect or make better our own dispositions; each
virtue perfects a particular power in us. Justice perfects our will, prudence
our reasoning, courage and temperance perfect particular emotions. But
today we think of the person as fundamentally relational. Virtues perfect
not individual powers, but rather the ways we relate with one another. 22
In this relational light let us call the two competitive demands'iliat we
have been discussing, justice and fidelity. If justice urges us to treat all
people equally, then fideliry makes different claims. Fidelity is the virtue
s: that nurtures and sustains the bonds of those special relationships that we
enjoy whether by blood, marriage, love or sacrarnj:nt. Fidelity requires
that we treat with special care those who are closer to US. 23 If justice rests
on impartiality and universality" fidelity rests on partiality and
particularity. 24
But these two are not enough; we also must perfect the unique
relationship that we have with ourselves. Thomas, through the order of
charity, demonstrates the virtuous love for selF' Following him, Stephen
POpe26 and Edward Vacek" argue that we have a primary task to take care
ur ves: affectivel ,mentally, physically, and spiritually.
For these reasons, then, I conclude y proposIng t at we conceive of
ourselves as relational in three ways: generally, specifically and uniquely,
and each of these relational ways of being demands a cardinal virtue: as a
relational being in general, we are called to justice and to treat all people
fairly; as a relational being specifically, we are called to fidelity and to
Virtue ethics
the possibilities for moral excellence are as unlimited both as the
individual is complex and as human experience is original. A discussion of
great saints and heroes helps make the point that no single portrait of a
moral saint or hero has ever provided a definitive expression of what a
human person ought to be; St Elizabeth was not Mahatma Gandhi, St
John the Baptizer was not the Little Flower. The Christian communiry
sustains this insight: the communion of saints demonstrates the enormous
variety of ways that the holy is incarnated or as Flanagan beautifully puts
it, 'the deep truth that persons find their good in many different ways'.14
He insists then that people can only become morally excellent persons by
being themselves. The saint has always been an original; never an
imitation.
Flanagan rightly warns us that in asking 'Who ought I to become' we
understand that we are not trying to become clones. Rather we are seeking
to understand how we as individuals can actually become virtuous. Thus,
though we may each believe that we should become just and prudent, we
must be sure that we preserve our own identities as we pursue the virtues.
Flanagan is not the only one who warns us that we cannot ask our three
questions in a vacuum. Alasdair MacIntyre reminds US U that our local
communities determine our understanding of the virtues. Justice in
Aristotle's Athens is not the same as it was in the seventeenth-century
pioneering Wild West or the late twentieth-century urban New York.
Maclnryre's claims concern not only history but also geography. Justice is
expressed differently in Congo, Malaysia, France or Brazil. Likewise, what
constitutes prudence in London, Birmingham, York or Liverpool is
different.
Both writers warn against any artificial designs for answering the
question of who we ought to become. We each ought to strive to become
the person that God made us to be and we each must recognize how our
societies have contributed to our own understanding of what it means to
be moral. But we should recognize that at least minimally there are some
virtues that each of us ought to have, regardless of where or when we live
or who we are.16 We should not say much about the content of each of
these virtues, for history, geography and the individual fill out their
practical meaning. But we can say to every child, adolescent and adult
there are ways of living about which every virtuous person is rightly
concerned. This was what Plato, Cicero, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory,
Thomas and others meant by the cardinal virtues.
We conclude our consideration of the virtues asking then a final
question: 'Are the four cardinal virtues that they offered in antiquity
adequate for today?' For several reasons, I think they are inadequate and
in their place I propose another set of cardinal virtues. 17
First Thomas's cardinal virtues basically describe one ry .f person:
V irtue ethics
sustain the specific relationships that we enjoy; as a relational being
uniquely, we are called to self-care that no one else can provide.
These three virtues are cardinal. Unlike Thomas's structure, none is
necessarily always more important than the other: they each have equally
urgent claims and they should be pursued as ends in themselves. Thus we
are not called to be faithful and self-caring in order to be just, nor are we
called to be self-caring and just in order to be faithful. None is auxiliary
to the others. They are distinctive virtues with none being a subset or
subcategory of the other. They are cardinal.
The fourth cardinal virtue is prudence, which determines what consti
tutes the illSr, fa;thfiJ! and self-caring way of life for an individual. It ai;o
negotiates how the cardinal virtues should interact and which 0;;" should
override the others in a particular situation, and when and to what degree.
Of course, this is no easy matter, but working this out requires another
essay.
Notes
1 James F. Keenan, 'Virtue ethics: making a case as it comes of age', Thought 67
(1992), pr 115-27; Joseph Korva, The ChriJtian Case for Virtue Ethia (Washing
ton,DC: Georgetown University Press, 1996); Gilbert Meilaender, The Theory and
Practiceof Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
2 These questions appear in Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral
Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
3 John Kekes, The Examined Life (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1988).
4 Summa Theologiae, Prologue, II-II, Sic igitur tota materia morali ad amsiderationem
virtutum redact,
5 See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
.Dame Press, 1966); Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue (Louisville, KY: Westmin
ster, 1990).
6 Along with essays on growth and ordinariness, see my 'Parenting and the virtue
of prudence' in Virtues for Ordinary Christians (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward,
1996).
7 Daniel Mark Nelson, The Priority of Prudence (University Park, PA: Pennysylvania
. State University, 1992).
8 See my 'Ten reasons why Thomas Aquinas is important for ethics today', New
Biack/riarJ 75(994), pp. 354-63.
9 See for instance, the essays by Tom Beauchamp and Robert Veatch in E. Shelp
(ed.), Virtue and Medicine (Boston: Reidel, 1984).
10 David Solomon, 'Internal objections to virtue ethics' in Peter A. French et al.
(eds), MidweIt Studies in PhiloJophy 13: Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 428-41.
11 See Leon Kass, 'Practicing ethics: where's the action?', Hastings Center Report 20.1
(990), pp. 5-12.
12 See Martin Benjamin and Joy Curtis, 'Virtue and the practice of nursing' in Virtue
and Medicine, pp. 257-74.