VIRTUE ETHICS ARE HARMFUL

VIRTUE ETHICS ARE HARMFUL

1. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE NON-DEMOCRATIC

Roger Crisp, Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and Michael Slote, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 24

Clearly, virtue ethics needs to expand its recent moral horizons so as to take in larger questions of political morality. Otherwise, contemporary virtue ethics will fail to meet Schneewind's criticism that virtue ethics, while acceptable in and for the relatively homogeneous and peaceful soci­eties that typified the ancient world, is unsuitable to the more diverse and conflict‑ridden conditions of modern and contemporary life, conditions that require political thought and political principles that can help to reduce tensions and allow us to live with one another. There is danger for virtue ethics in the attempt to meet this challenge not merely because it may be unable to produce a political philosophy, but because the political philosophy it manages to produce may be of the wrong kind. The political ideals associated with virtue ethics in the ancient world were by and large anti or non-democratic. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, for example, thought democracy an ideal form of government, and it is difficult to see how a plausibly democratic social ideal could be developed, say, out of Aristotle's ethical views.

Jerome B. Schneewind, Johns Hopkins University, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 199

To what extent is virtue itself involved in creating this misfortune? Here, I think, the history I have been tracing offers us a clue. If we ask why the project of the Grotians was to establish a law‑like code of morals, the answer must be that they took the central difficulties of life to be those arising from disagreement‑disagreement involving nations, religious sects, parties to legal disputes, and ordinary people trying to make a living in busy commercial societies. It is not an accident that the very first word in the body of Grotius's text is 'controversiae. I have tried to show that the natural lawyers did not think this the only morally pertinent problem area. They saw that there is an important part of our lives in which the problem arises not from disagreement but from the scarcity of resources for helping others. No single person, perhaps not even any society, can help everyone who is suffering or in need. But some can be helped even if not all can. The theory of imperfect duties provides one way of thinking about how we are to distribute resources in situations where only some can be helped. The serious issues involved here seemed less urgent to the natural lawyers than the problems arising from disagreement about strict justice, which they took to pose threats to the very existence of society. They therefore gave first priority to what they thought might assist with those controversies. In tackling these problems, classical virtue theory is of little or no use. Aristotle does not tell us what a virtuous agent (phronimos) is to do to convince someone who is not virtuous to agree with him, other than to educate him all over again. He does not suggest criteria which anyone and everyone can use to determine who is a virtuous agent and who is not. He does not discuss the situation in which two virtuous agents disagree seriously with one another. And consequently he does not notice what seems to be an implication of his view: that if two allegedly virtuous agents strongly disagree, one of them (at least) must be morally defective.
3. THE DOCTRINE OF THE MEAN FAILS TO ACHIEVE JUSTICE

Jerome B. Schneewind, Johns Hopkins University, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 183

His criticisms are brief. He points out the implausibility of the doctrine of the mean with respect to virtues such as truthfulness (said to be a mean between boastfulness and dissimulation), but his main fire is reserved for justice. Aristotle himself, says Grotius, could not make the doctrine work when it came to this virtue. For he could not point to a mean in any appropriate passion, or any action coming from the passions, which could plausibly be said to constitute justice. So he resorted to making claims about the things justice is concerned with‑possessions, honours, security‑because only about these would it be reasonable to say that there could be a too much or a too little. And even here, Grotius continues, the doctrine of the mean fails. A single example shows this. It may be a fault not to take what is my own property‑for example, if I need it in order to support my child‑but it is surely not doing an injustice to another to claim less than is mine. Justice consists wholly in 'abstaining from that which is another's'. And Grotius adds that 'it does not matter whether injustice arises from avarice, from lust, from anger, or from ill‑advised compassion'.

VIRTUE ETHICS ARE PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED

1. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE UNCLEAR

Robert B. Louden, Professor of Philosophy at University of Southern Maine, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 202

But what about virtue ethics? What are the hallmarks of this approach to normative ethics? One problem confronting anyone who sets out to analyse the new virtue ethics in any detail is that we presently lack fully developed examples of it in the contemporary literature. Most of the work done in this genre has a negative rather than positive thrust‑its primary aim is more to criticize the traditions and research programmes to which it is opposed rather than to state positively and precisely what its own altern­ative is. A second hindrance is that the literature often has a somewhat misty antiquarian air. It is frequently said, for instance, that the Greeks advocated a virtue ethics, though what precisely it is that they were advo­cating is not always spelled out. In describing contemporary virtue ethics, it is therefore necessary, in my opinion, to do some detective work con­cerning its conceptual shape, making inferences based on the unfortu­nately small number of remarks that are available.

Robert B. Louden, Professor of Philosophy at University of Southern Maine, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 204

So for virtue ethics, the primary object of moral evaluation is not the act or its consequences, but rather the agent. And the respective conceptual starting‑points of agent‑ and act‑centred ethics result in other basic differ­ences as well, which may be briefly summarized as follows. First of all, the two camps are likely to employ different models of practical reasoning. Act theorists, because they focus on discrete acts and moral quandaries, are naturally very interested in formulating decision procedures for mak­ing practical choices. The agent, in their conceptual scheme, needs a guide‑hopefully a determinate decision procedure‑for finding a way out of the quandary. Agent‑centered ethics, on the other hand, focuses on long‑term characteristic patterns of action, intentionally down‑playing atomic acts and particular choice situations in the process. They are not as concerned with portraying practical reason as a rule‑governed enterprise which can be applied on a case‑by‑case basis.
3. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE EPISTEMOLOGICALLY UNSOUND

Robert B. Louden, Professor of Philosophy at University of Southern Maine, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 210

There is also an epistemological issue which becomes troublesome when one focuses on qualities of persons rather than on qualities of acts. Baldly put, the difficulty is that we do not seem to be able to know with any degree of certainty who really is virtuous and who vicious. For how is one to go about establishing an agent's true moral character? The standard strategy is what might be called the 'externalist' one: we try to infer character by observing conduct. While not denying the existence of some connection between character and conduct, I believe that the connection between the two is not nearly as tight as externalists have assumed. The relationship is not a necessary one, but merely contingent. Virtue theorists themselves are committed to this claim, though they have not always realized it. For one central issue behind the 'Being vs. Doing' debate is the virtue theorist's contention that the moral value of Being is not reducible to or dependent on Doing; that the measure of an agent's character is not exhausted by or even dependent on the values of the actions which he may perform. On this view, the most important moral traits are what may be called 'spiritual' rather than 'actional'.