A virtue ethical account of right action

Ethics

Volumn 112, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 32-52

  Swanton, Christine ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0038974500     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/322742     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Most self-consciously, Rosalind Hursthouse in On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. I thank Linda Zagzebski for this terminological suggestion.
3. Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 (1991): 223-46. An earlier 'qualified judge' account of rightness was offered by Yves R. Simon in The Definition of Moral Virtue, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986): "We say that an action will be the right action under the circumstances if the judgment about what to do is determined, is rendered, by a person of virtuous disposition" (p. 112). Compare also the qualified agent account of rightness proposed by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski in Virtues of Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): "A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. . . . A moral duty is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would do in like circumstances" (p. 135).
4. Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 (1991): 223-46. An earlier 'qualified judge' account of rightness was offered by Yves R. Simon in The Definition of Moral Virtue, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986): "We say that an action will be the right action under the circumstances if the judgment about what to do is determined, is rendered, by a person of virtuous disposition" (p. 112). Compare also the qualified agent account of rightness proposed by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski in Virtues of Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): "A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. . . . A moral duty is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would do in like circumstances" (p. 135).
5. Rosalind Hursthouse, "Virtue Theory and Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 (1991): 223-46. An earlier 'qualified judge' account of rightness was offered by Yves R. Simon in The Definition of Moral Virtue, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986): "We say that an action will be the right action under the circumstances if the judgment about what to do is determined, is rendered, by a person of virtuous disposition" (p. 112). Compare also the qualified agent account of rightness proposed by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski in Virtues of Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): "A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. . . . A moral duty is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular situation that a virtuous person would have, would do in like circumstances" (p. 135).
6. Rosalind Hursthouse, "Normative Virtue Ethics," in How Should One Live? Essays in the Philosophy of Virtue, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
7. Michael Slote, "Agent-Based Virtue Ethics," in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 20, Moral Concepts, ed. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), pp. 83-101.
8. Janna Thompson, Discourse and Knowledge: A Defence of Collectivist Ethics (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 73.
9. Slote, "Agent-Based Virtue Ethics," and "The Justice of Caring," Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (1998): 171-95.
10. For further criticism of Slote's failure to incorporate notions of successful relation to the external world in his criterion of rightness, see Julia Driver, "Monkeying with Motives: Agent-Basing Virtue Ethics," Utilitas 7 (1995): 281-88.
11. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 2.
12. Indeed, I agree with Stephen Sverdlik's view that sometimes the quality of a motive can change the deontic status of an action from right to wrong. See his "Motive and Rightness," Ethics 106 (1996): 327-49.
13. Henceforth, 'virtuous act'.
14. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (New York: Penguin Classics, 1976), p. 97, sec. 2 iv.
15. Robert Audi, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 180.
16. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1122b1-21.
17. The idea of honoring value is introduced by Philip Pettit in "Consequentialism," in A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 230-40.
18. See Sverdlik.
19. Audi, p. 180.
20. Julia Driver, "The Virtues and Human Nature," in How Should One Live? Essays m the Philosophy of Virtue, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 111-29.
21. Julia Driver, "Modesty and Ignorance," Ethics 109 (1999): 827-34, p. 828.
22. Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
23. Ibid., p. 60. Dancy does not mean to imply that we cannot make reasonable estimates on the basis of characteristic (as opposed to universal) properties of things, e.g., the characteristic badness of pain.
24. Tom Sorrell, Moral Theory and Capital Punishment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), p. 3.
25. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong thinks that such principles can be turned into universal form provided they are formulated thus: do (or don't do) thus and so provided there are no underminers, reversers, exclusions, and overriders. See his "Some Varieties of Particularism," Metaphilosophy 30 (1999): 1-12, p. 6. For Dancy, however, an 'underminer' is the absence of a background ('enabling') condition and not a reason (a fact accepted by Sinnott-Armstrong). Since moral principles state reasons and not all enabling conditions, the above cannot be a principle (even if a defender of universalizability can appeal to it [as Sinnott-Armstrong claims]). This is made clear in Jonathan Dancy, "Defending Particularism," Metaphilosophy 30 (1999): 25-32, p. 26.
26. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong thinks that such principles can be turned into universal form provided they are formulated thus: do (or don't do) thus and so provided there are no underminers, reversers, exclusions, and overriders. See his "Some Varieties of Particularism," Metaphilosophy 30 (1999): 1-12, p. 6. For Dancy, however, an 'underminer' is the absence of a background ('enabling') condition and not a reason (a fact accepted by Sinnott-Armstrong). Since moral principles state reasons and not all enabling conditions, the above cannot be a principle (even if a defender of universalizability can appeal to it [as Sinnott-Armstrong claims]). This is made clear in Jonathan Dancy, "Defending Particularism," Metaphilosophy 30 (1999): 25-32, p. 26.
27. Dancy, Moral Reasons, p. 60.
28. An example suggested to me in conversation by Jonathan Dancy.
29. Justin Oakley, "Varieties of Virtue Ethics," Ratio 9 (1996): 128-52.
30. Ibid., p. 136.
31. Soran Reader, "Principle Ethics, Particularism and Another Possibility," Philosophy 72 (1997): 269-96, p. 275.
32. For more on a virtue ethical understanding of "irresolvable dilemmas," see Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics.
33. William Styron, Sophie's Choice (New York: Random House, 1979).
34. It will have been noticed that I admit a large range of virtues, including efficiency. I cannot argue here for this view, but if we can think of a dithering, muddling, vacillating, pusillanimous person as having those features as part of character, we can surely think of efficiency as a virtue. For example, see a claim concerning the notoriously inefficient Tallis in Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), p. 13: "I do think a reasonable amount of efficiency is an aspect of morals. There's a sort of ordered completeness of life and an intelligent use of one's talents which is the mark of a man." For more on the rule-based aspect of virtue ethics, see Hursthouse, "Normative Virtue Ethics," pp. 19-36.
35. It will have been noticed that I admit a large range of virtues, including efficiency. I cannot argue here for this view, but if we can think of a dithering, muddling, vacillating, pusillanimous person as having those features as part of character, we can surely think of efficiency as a virtue. For example, see a claim concerning the notoriously inefficient Tallis in Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), p. 13: "I do think a reasonable amount of efficiency is an aspect of morals. There's a sort of ordered completeness of life and an intelligent use of one's talents which is the mark of a man." For more on the rule-based aspect of virtue ethics, see Hursthouse, "Normative Virtue Ethics," pp. 19-36.