Virtue Ethics
What is Virtue Ethics?
• A virtue ethicist emphasises the virtues or moral character
• Virtue ethicists make judgements of actions based on whether they are what a virtuous person would char-
acteristically do in the circumstances
• Also the role of practical reasoning is important—a person is not virtuous just because they perform the
right action; they must perform it for the right reason and have come to this judgement on the basis of their
experience
• Also these types of thinkers maintain that the virtuous agent’s virtues result in their flourishing
• Virtue ethics is distinct because it puts emphasis on agents and doesn’t look at actions in isolation; this
seems to be quite powerful as we might well wonder whether in fact actions can ever be looked at them-
selves as divorced from the agents who perform them
• Hursthouse formula: an action is right iff it is what a virtuous person would characteristically do in the cir-
cumstances
Position of the virtues
• Annas—the ‘core’ of a virtue can be seen by differentiating it from a habit. A virtue is a disposition to act
for certain reasons; related to character and exercised through practical reasoning. Not just a decision to ac-
cord with certain actions but a deep-rooted commitment to some ethical value. A habit by contrast can be
an ill-though through commitment to a pattern of behaviour or thought.
• So by reference to these virtues the agent evaluated situations and chooses how to act
• Compare consequentialist thought—they may look at virtues as traits which yield good consequences;
means to other ends.
• Compare deontologist thought—may be defined as traits which are possessed by those who act in accor-
dance with a moral duty.
• In neither of these two types of thought is a virtue on its own a reason to act
• So in virtue ethics virtues are prior to all else when deciding how to act or how to evaluate a situation
Practical reasoning
• Think about how this might help us to construct ideas about certain virtues; imagine if we think that jus-
tice is ‘paying one’s debts and telling the truth’ (Cephalus R1); okay well clearly situations where doing
this we act wrongly. So practical reasoning might help us recognise features of certain situations and ac-
tions which are significant to certain virtues.
• How is it developed? In both experience and reflective individual thought.
• Consequences (Annas):
- Affective consequences—the virtuous agent can’t be defined just by performance or non-performance of a
certain action; being virtuous requires doing the right thing for the right reason
- Intellectual consequence—an agent becomes virtuous when he makes his judgement and practice ‘coher-
ent in terms of a wider understanding which enables him to unify, explain and justify the particular deci-
sions he makes’.
• So developing virtue requires some serious reflection
• If we downplay this aspect of virtue ethics we could see it as some type of deontology (Crisp); distinction
between virtuous action vs doing something virtuously would be collapsed
• What is required to act virtuously?
- the agent must know what she is doing
- she must act from rational choice of the action for its own sake
- she must act from a firm and unshakeable disposition
• Why should we value this disposition though other than instrumentally? Well think about what a virtue is.
Not just a tendency to perform certain actions / experience certain feelings. What is valuable is the categor-
ical base of the disposition to feel and act in the right way. This consists in a properly habituated set of
standing concerns desires and wishes along with the cognitive capacity to grasp what is morally salient in
the circumstances and what those circumstances require of one.
Fundamental attribution error
,• (Harman); Virtue ethics may rely on a chimerical notion of character and no such character in the sense
they require exists. Relies on results of Milgram’s electric shock experiment and Darley and Batson’s good
samaritan experiment. Conclusion—‘no basis for character traits’ in experiments but rather reactions to sit-
uations should be attributed to the relevant features of the situation. SO the error is to presume that per-
sonal dispositions are at fault in determining behaviour
• The problem posed is that in certain circumstances a certain person may act in a contrary way to a certain
‘character trait’
• Why is Harman wrong?
1. Trivially, even if we allow the conclusion; a set of empirical data like this doesn’t prove that people
aren’t capable of acting in accordance with ‘character traits’ rather than the demands of the situation just
because this is the way these people act.
2. He isn’t testing the type of character traits virtue ethicists are interested in. He assumes that Virtue Ethi-
cists think that dispositions can be elucidated by looking at how frequently someone does something. But
he doesn’t take account of agent’s reasons for acting. Just discussing responses to action misses one of
the key aspects of virtues in virtue ethics. Eg the person in Milgram might have some strong commit-
ment to obeying authority, however erroneously, developed over years of practical reasoning about
virtues. And so she acts because of this.
1. Character traits are also developed
2. And reasons in action can be really complicated; you can be willingly non-voluntary and unwillingly
voluntary. You can act for false reasons
It is hard to construct an experiment about action which is definitive bc an action is a complicated phenome-
non. The doing of an action and the way it is done in is not that easy to separate from one another. How can
we individuate actions? eg brushing teeth and brushing them violently. The experiments try to isolate actions
and see if they are done bc of a certain character trait but not certain they can be observed in a laboratory in
this way. For the virtuous agent, an action is the characteristic way of doing in the way a virtuous agent does
Results of VE
• Most versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordance with virtue is necessary for Eudaimo-
nia (some think it sufficient)
- Flourishing? Even plants can flourish
- Happiness? Objective or subjective
• Either way it is not a consequence but it is something which virtuous activity is partly constitutive of
• Virtue ethics starts from our embedded lives
Do we have such an end and if so are virtues necessary?
• Well firstly it is natural to consider to our lives in a ‘nested’ not just ‘linear’ way; at any point my actions
reflect and express the kind of person I am and the nature of my ends and priorities (Korsgaard)
- However note that different conceptions of actions yield different results; if we think of action as just mo-
tion then perhaps not but not under Hyman’s conception. Davidson thinks of actions as fully determinate
particulars (ie events) to which our talk of action refers. If this conception is true, it is not clear to what ex-
tent it is true that the action is a kind of thing that expresses the kind of person the agent is
• Second, Annas says that VE doesn’t think of flourishing as independent of the values; we do attach value
to being virtuous. The objection misses the point by presupposing an independent notion of flourishing.
Rankings of virtues
• For Aristotle they come together—to be truly virtuous you have to be virtuous on all accounts; but maybe
this is too naive, too utopian?
• He also has an idea about the golden mean—idea of an archer trying to hit a mark; every way of not hitting
it is a failure of some kind
• We agree to call certain things virtues—can understand what it is to be cowardly / foolhardy in light of our
understanding of bravery. Bravery has an epistemological priority—we understanding failures in terms of
what is right.
Function
There are doubts about the function argument—do humans really have a ‘function’; do humans really have
purposes which ground a requirement for them to act in a certain way
,Possible responses
1. theory of species norms—articulates norms for species
2. eschew foundation in independent account of human nature; instead virtue ethics starts from an idea of
flourishing—more like an exercise in self-understanding. This could generate concerns about relativism
though
Is it action guiding?
Hursthouse’s formula is not; responses
1. Hursthouse—expand the account of right action to include ‘virtue-rules’ eg ‘do the honest thing’ etc but
not great to someone ignorant about honest and what about conflict!? And doesn’t this collapse into de-
ontology (Crisp)
2. reject ‘technical manual’ model and offer a ‘developmental conception’ of ethics BUT maybe we do
want specific, detailed instructions in some areas; Annas emphasises need for autonomy BUT in some
senses perhaps we don’t want people exercising agential autonomy eg if they are considering if they are
going to pay you back etc. Though it is a v common moral claim that virtue ethics not about following
rules but it is habitual and this is the key to becoming virtuous
3. Note also that though perhaps our generally recognised virtue terms might be a small list, our list of vice
terms is actually very long
Can it provide an account of right action adequately?
• Either it is extensionally inadequate—can perform right action without being virtuous and virtuous person
can perform wrong action sometimes without calling virtue into question. So neither sufficient or neces-
sary for right action. OR we might think that even if you can produce a virtue ethical account which picks
out all and only right actions, at least in some cases virtue is not what explains rightness.
• Perhaps shouldn’t be in the business of providing an account of right action (eg Talbot Brewer); VE can
address questions of how to live, kind of person one should be without being committed to an account of
‘right action’. Maybe leave out deontic notions like right and wrong and duty and work with aretaic con-
cepts and axiological concepts (good bad better and worse).
• Alternatively retain this but note that currently lots of distinct qualities work in determining right action.
‘right action’ might identify the best action or a commendable one or one which isn’t blameworthy.
• All we need to do is not let virtue be reduced to another normative concept more fundamental and also al-
low for other normative concepts to be explained in terms of virtue and vice
How does it handle conflicts?
• Others face these problems too
• Can point out that the conflict is mostly apparent a discriminating understanding of the virtues or rules in
question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, will perceive that, in this particular case, the
virtues do not make opposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certain exception clause
built into it.
Societally bound?
• Well we need some kind of agreement or someone could say that what counts for me to flourish is murder;
a lot is down to the virtuous agent. Imagine a society in which you are only praised for killing someone
and given rewards etc. Someone could make the case that in that society then in order to flourish you have
to kill people. Bolder strategy is to say that VE has less difficulty with cultural relativity; there is disagree-
ment from local understandings but virtues themselves are not relative to culture.
• The arguments of VE become unclear when we bring in whole life and experience; hard to grasp because it
deals with a whole life and experience.
• Point out this is just as much of a challenge for the other approaches
Can the virtuous person exist?
• This is unclear in Aristotle NE—does he think the virtuous person exists or is it an ideal we should try
to approximate?
• If it is posited as an ideal, then maybe it transcends culture—not determined, can change but the entire so-
ciety exists
, • If it is the latter (ie there is only an idea of a virtuous person), where does it leave the intention of the virtu-
ous agent? In this case virtue ethics would just be a form of deontology
Egoism charge:
Focus purely on agent and agent’s own interest in happiness so it is egoistic
1. acting virtuously is incompatible with acting egoistically even though the reasons to act virtuously are
agent-focused
2. living a flourishing life isn’t a reason to act virtuously;
3. assumption that the goodness virtue ethics aims at is zero sum and might not include the goodness of
someone else’s life; No need to simplify something to altruism or egoism—not clear why there has to be
such a stark division; You can have two conceptions going on at once
Self effacement
• VE is self-effacing as whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes it right, had better not be the
agent’s motive for doing it; so eg the agent who, rightly, visits a friend in hospital will rather lessen the im-
pact of his visit on her if he tells her that it is what a virtuous agent would do
• ie the motive of the agent can’t explain what makes the action right!
• One response to this per Annas is to say well the person could think about manifesting a virtue or acting
like a full virtuous person eg if she was explaining her action to a beginner; and if she did, she would pro-
duce the right action!
• However, the problem with this is we are trying to explain not whether someone would perform the correct
act but the reasons from which they act.
• It is self-effacing because if the motive of the agent can’t explain what makes the action right, we then
need another theory to tell us what makes an action right!
• Counter: Swanton’s Target-centred view of virtue ethics
• What we need is for it to be the case that what makes an action good, serves as the agent’s action-guiding
thought.
- Begins with existing conceptions of the virtues; we already have a passable idea of which traits are virtues
and what they involved.
- A complete account of virtue will map out 1) its field, 2) its mode of responsiveness, 3) its basis of moral
acknowledgment, and 4) its target. Different virtues are concerned with different fields. Courage, for ex-
ample, is concerned with what might harm us, whereas generosity is concerned with the sharing of time,
talent, and property. The basis of acknowledgment of a virtue is the feature within the virtue’s field to
which it responds. To continue with our previous examples, generosity is attentive to the benefits that oth-
ers might enjoy through one’s agency, and courage responds to threats to value, status, or the bonds that
exist between oneself and particular others, and the fear such threats might generate. A virtue’s mode has
to do with how it responds to the bases of acknowledgment within its field. Generosity promotes a good,
namely, another’s benefit, whereas courage defends a value, bond, or status. Finally, a virtue’s target is
that at which it is aimed. Courage aims to control fear and handle danger, while generosity aims to share
time, talents, or possessions with others in ways that benefit them.
- A virtue, on a target-centered account, “is a disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its
field or fields in an excellent or good enough way” (Swanton 2003: 19). A virtuous act is an act that hits
the target of a virtue, which is to say that it succeeds in responding to items in its field in the specified
way. Acting from virtue means s an action which displays, expresses, or exhibits all (or a sufficient num-
ber of) the excellences comprising virtue in the above sense to a sufficient degree
- So go back to the hospital: the virtue is philia; the action will be good if it hits the target of philia; the tar-
get in the context of this friendship will be defined by certain facts about the relationship. So think ing
about the criterion of good action will involve thinking about the agents and their relationship.
• Objection: this is just a consequentialist account promoting certain ends make the action good
- Response: character is a necessary constituent of the target-centred theory ; compare the character conse-
quentialism of Driver—for her a moral trait is a character trait which produces good consequences for oth-
ers. So intentions are useless contra this theory — the objects of the agent’s care must be good and motive
is hugely important for assessment of good actions
• Second objection: if there is more than one virtuous act an agent can perform, we need a criterion of right
action; and so the problem of self-effacement will arise again if this is offered.
- Response: practical wisdom can help you!
