WEEK 07: VIRTUE ETHICS
Until this point in the unit, the ethical theories we discussed focused
on the moral status of actions. Our question has been, “What makes a
given action performed by an agent morally right (or morally wrong)?”
It’s likely that we haven’t spoken much about the moral status of
agents or persons themselves. That is to say: we may have neglected
the question of what characteristic makes a person count as a good
person, or as a bad person.
If you are convinced that one of the theories we have already
studied is true, then there is a natural answer to this question. Let’s
assume we have all agreed that a given theory of morally right action is
true—maybe it’s AUh, maybe its FH, or DCT, or FUL, or CR. With
one of these theories in hand, a theory of the good or virtuous person
is not hard to come by. We think we know what makes an action
morally right. So we could just define a good person as a person who
never performs any actions that is not morally right. (This account will
be too crude as it stands—it will generate some implausible verdicts
about who is good or bad. However, with some refinement, we can
work it up into something that looks promising.)
Since the publication of Elizabeth Anscombe’s seminal article
“Modern Moral Philosophy” in 1958, there has been a growing
number of philosophers who suspect that the approach sketched in the
paragraph above is misguided. In their view, the foundational moral
concept is not the concept of a morally right action, with the concept
of a virtuous agent being derivative of (and defined in terms of) right
action. Rather, the foundational ethical concept is the concept of the
virtuous agent. Or, perhaps more precisely, the foundational ethical
concept is the concept of a virtue—i.e., a character trait that makes an
agent good. On this contrasting view, it is only after we have an
account of the good or virtuous agent, that we can we turn to
questions of what makes an action morally right. These theories, then,
are agent-focused, rather than act focused. They make the most basic
moral question, the question of what makes a character trait count as a
virtue.
SLACKER READING:
Rosalind Hursthouse: “Virtue Theory”
Hursthouse gives an overview of virtue ethics with a focus in particular
on the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. This is as
good of a short introduction to Aristotle’s ethical philosophy as I have
ever read. (I also highly recommend Hursthouse’s 1999 book On Virtue
Ethics.)
CONSCIENTIOUS READING:
Aristotle: Selections from Nicomachean Ethics
A careful read of Hursthouse will give you a pretty good idea of
Aristotle’s ethical philosophy. But it’s surely worth reading some of the
original. Most of these selections come from Book II of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics..
DEDICATED READING:
Kongzi (Confucius): Selections from The Analects.
Another ancient thinker who espoused a virtue approach to ethics is
Chinese philosopher Kongzi (often known under the name
‘Confucius’).