The price of virtue

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 88, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 403-423

  Baxley, Anne Margaret ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 67749113497     PISSN: 02790750     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2007.00300.x     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. See McDowell, J. (1978), "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplemental Volume 52, pp. 26-29
2. (1980) McDowell, 1980, in A. O. Rorty (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 369-371
3. and (1979) "Virtue and Reason," The Monist 62, pp. 334-335 and 345
4. Ibid
5. See, especially, McDowell, 1978, pp. 26, 27, 28
6. For a related discussion, in which he draws the distinction differently, see Seidman, J. (2005) "Two Sides of 'Silencing,' " The Philosophical Quarterly 55 (218), pp. 68-77. Seidman thinks that McDowell's silencing thesis can be explained in two ways: a virtuous agent (a) will not be tempted to act otherwise than virtuously ('motivational silencing') or (b) will not believe that he has any reason to act otherwise than virtuously ("rational silencing'). Seidman's labels are somewhat misleading, though. Given that McDowell understands the requirements of virtue as requirements of reason, the silencing thesis (however we interpret it) will necessarily be a thesis about rational silencing. Further, Seidman's way of drawing the distinction fails to capture one important element of McDowell's proposal, where the claim is not merely that the virtuous person is not tempted by competing reasons, or does not believe that she has reason to act otherwise than virtuously, but that in fact there are no genuine reasons in competition with the requirements of virtue (irrespective of how the virtuous person feels or reasons about her options)
7. In "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?," "The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics," "Virtue and Reason," and (1998) "Some Issues in Aristotle's Moral Psychology" in Stephen Everson (ed.) Ethics: Companion to Ancient Thought 4: Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107-128
8. Aristotle (1999) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin, 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett
9. All references to Aristotle are to the second edition of Irwin's translation. Irwin, of course, uses the standard OCT Bywater [1890] text for his translation. Although the Hackett edition is as faithful to the original Bekker pagination as possible, the line numbers are sometimes not exactly the same. The line numbers in my citations sometimes show a touch of this inexactness, but this will not impede the reader seeking the cited texts. Aristotle introduces the distinction between virtue and continence in this general way in Nicomachean Ethics Book 1, where he explains the various relations that can obtain between the rational and non-rational parts of the soul. When Aristotle returns to the topic of incontinence in Book 7, however, he states that "continence and incontinence are about bodily appetites and pleasures" (EN 1149b25-8) and appears to contrast continence with the virtue of temperance in particular. I follow McDowell and other contemporary interpreters and ethical theorists in reading Aristotle's distinction between virtue and continence as one of broad scope, that is, as one identifying two different states or conditions of character. For a helpful discussion of some potential implications of construing the distinction more narrowly, as a contrast between temperance and continence with respect to bodily appetites, see Stohr, K. E. (2003) "Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue," The Journal of Ethics 7, pp. 339-363
10. The point I mean to emphasize here parallels one main line of emphasis in Susan Wolf's influential (1982) "Moral Saints," The Journal of Philosophy 79, pp. 419-439. There, Wolf argues that a form of moral perfection captured by the notion of moral saintliness fails to represent a model of personal well being toward which it would be rational or good or desirable to strive. So, too, I suggest, the silencing view fails to represent a model of good character toward which it would be rational or good or desirable to strive