How Should One Live?: Essays on the Virtues

270 Pages·1998·2.54 MB·English

by  Roger Crisp

Crisp, Roger (Editor), Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, St Anne's College, Oxford
How Should One Live?
Essays on the Virtues
Publication date 1998 (this edition)
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-875234-9
doi:10.1093/0198752342.001.0001

Abstract: Contains 14 specially commissioned papers on aspects of virtue ethics, and a
substantial introduction that also serves as an introduction to virtue ethics. Topics
covered include the practical application of the theory, ancient views, partiality, Kant,
utilitarianism, human nature, natural and artificial virtues, virtues and the good, vices,
emotions, politics, feminism and moral education, and community.

Keywords: ancient ethics, community, emotions, feminism, human nature, Kantian
ethics, moral education, moral theory, partiality, utilitarianism, virtue, virtue ethics, well-
being
Table of Contents
1. Modern Moral Philosophy and the Virtues
Introduces a collection of specially commissioned articles on central topics in virtue
ethics. Also provides an introduction to virtue ethics. The following topics are discussed:
the ancient roots of virtue ethics; the nature of virtue ethics; the good of the virtuous
agent; the demandingness of morality; universality tradition, and practice; community
and gender; practical reason, moral knowledge, and moral education.

2. Normative Virtue Ethics
Shows that virtue ethics can specify right action and defends the view that the sort of
practical guidance it provides accommodates several conditions of adequacy that any
normative ethics should meet. It is argued that (1) it generates an account of moral
education, (2) it incorporates the view that moral wisdom cannot simply be acquired from
textbooks, and (3) it can resolve resolvable dilemmas or moral conflicts but is not
committed in advance to there being no such things as irresolvable dilemmas.

3. The Virtues: Theory and Common Sense in Greek Philosophy
Begins by setting out several common-sense claims about the virtues—e.g. that they are
separable or not good for the agent. Then proceeds to show how the main tendency of
Greek ethics was to reject many of them. Focuses primarily on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
and the Stoics.

4. Partiality and the Virtues
Argues that the ethical excellences unfolded in the classical Aristotelian conception of the
virtuous life presupposes a pre-existing network of partialistic preferences, and that its
resulting rootedness in the real world gives virtue theory a decisive edge over its more
abstract competitors. The ‘autocentric’ perspective of virtue ethics need not, however,
imply a complacent and unfeeling social conservatism. Finally, charts the shift between
such autocentric conceptions of ethics and more universalist accounts of morality, with
special reference to Cartesian ethics, where we find an uneasy blend of traditional ‘aretic’
and proto-Kantian elements.

5. Kant's Virtues
Kant's ethics is often but wrongly criticized for neglecting the virtues or offering a poor
account of them. He in fact offers a rich and careful account, and a plausible reading of
his theory of action shows that it is neither too inward nor too individualistic. In
particular, maxims of virtue are ‘not objects of introspection’ (Kant denies that we have
adequate self-knowledge) and ‘not constructed by ascription’ (their relation to action is
too indeterminate). Rather, Kant sees maxims of virtue as ‘prescriptions’, which can be
used to guide virtuous action, but may provide no way of showing whether virtue has
been achieved.

6. Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Symmetry
Unlike Kantian and common-sense morality, both utilitarianism and our common-sense
thinking about the virtues place ultimate normative weight on benefiting both oneself and
others. But for utilitarianism the self counts equally with each and every other person,
whereas in our thought about how it is admirable to behave the interests of the self are
roughly balanced against those of others ‘as a class’. This then yields, from the standpoint
of common-sense virtue ethics, a distinctive general injunction to act from balanced
concern for self and others (considered as a class). Understood in this way, virtue ethics
is a distinctive approach to the question ‘how should one live’?

7. The Virtues and Human Nature
The concept of human nature has entered into virtue theory at two levels. The first is
psychological: what are human beings like? This paper argues that it is a mistake to
define virtue in terms of particular types of intentional psychological states. The second
level concerns human flourishing. Here, the paper argues that one can develop a theory of
virtue independently of the notion of flourishing.

8. Natural and Artificial Virtues
Hume's distinction of natural virtues and artificial virtues grows out of his explanatory
scheme. But the distinction seems well founded and shows a puzzle in Aristotle's account
of the virtues. Hume's account of the artificial virtues is in outline convincing and has the
effect of qualifying his title to be a straightforward ‘virtue theorist’.

9. Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?
Theories of individual well-being fall into three main categories: hedonism, the desire-
fulfilment theory, and the list theory (which maintains that there are some things that can
benefit a person without increasing the person's pleasure or desire-fulfilment). The paper
briefly explains the answers that hedonism and the desire-fulfilment theory give to the
question of whether being virtuous constitutes a benefit to the agent. Most of the paper is
about the list theory's answer.

10. Deadly Vices?
The overall thesis is that there is a set of vices (the so-called deadly sins) that are
corruptive of the self and the possession of which thus prevents an agent from leading a
flourishing life. While it does not follow that therefore the virtues are needed for
flourishing, it offers some support for this claim of traditional virtue theory by arguing
that absence of such vices is at any rate a necessary condition for leading a good life. The
nature of the harm done to the self is illustrated by a detailed discussion of the vice of
sloth.

11. How Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical
Theories
Many modern ethical theories are schizophrenic, allowing a split between value and
motivation. These theories do not make room for goods in which motivation and value
must come together, such as love and friendship. This paper argues that, since the
emotions do not allow for this schizophrenia, their place within virtue ethics allows that
tradition to provide an important corrective to schizophrenic theory.

12. MacIntyre on Modernity and How It Has Marginalized the Virtues
Political philosophers have again become concerned with the role of the virtues in
justifying social, political, and economic arrangements, and have explored the issue of
which institutions can provide space for the virtues to flourish. In After Virtue, MacIntyre
launched an attack on liberalism, arguing that the institutions it defends undermine the
virtues. This paper examines MacIntyre's account and the responses it has provoked. It
argues that MacIntyre makes an important criticism of liberalism that liberals have not
yet fully answered, but which also creates problems for his own account.

13. Feminism, Moral Development, and the Virtues
Focuses on the virtue ethics of Aristotle and of MacIntyre, and suggests three problems
within virtue ethics for a feminist. Firstly, accounts of the virtues in themselves may not
meet an expectation of equal concern and respect. Secondly, it may be assumed that
women are incapable of truly ‘human’ virtue. Finally, there are problems with the claim
that there is in virtue ethics something especially feminine.

14. Community and Virtue
Distinguishes several different kinds of connection between community and virtue—
sustaining, content providing, agency constituting, worth defining, and others—using as a
reference point MacIntyre's Is Patriotism a Virtue?A detailed exploration of the example
of Le Chambon, a French Protestant village that sheltered many Jews during the Nazi
occupation, illustrates these connections. The concept of ‘supererogation’ masks how
communities can sustain virtue in its members.

Bibliography

Index
How Should One Live?
Essays on the Virtues
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
How should one live? : essays on the virtues / edited by Roger Crisp.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Virtue 2. Ethics. I. Crisp, Roger, 1961–.
BJ1521.H83 1996 179′.9—dc20 95–25349
ISBN 0–19–824058–9
end p.iv
Contents
N otes on Contributors vii
1. M odern Moral Philosophy and the Virtues
Roger Crisp
1
2. N ormative Virtue Ethics
Rosalind Hursthouse
19
3. T he Virtues: Theory and Common Sense in Greek Philosophy
T. H. Irwin
37
4. P artiality and the Virtues
John Cottingham
57
5. K ant's Virtues
Onora O'Neill
77
6. V irtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Symmetry
Michael Slote
99
7. T he Virtues and Human Nature
Julia Driver
111
8. N atural and Artificial Virtues: A Vindication of Hume's Scheme
David Wiggins
131
9. D oes Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?
Brad Hooker
141
10.D eadly Vices?
G abriele Taylor
157
N otes on Contributors vii
11.H ow Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical
T heories
Michael Stocker
173
12.M acIntyre on Modernity and How It Has Marginalized the Virtues
A ndrew Mason
191
13.F eminism, Moral Development, and the Virtues
S usan Moller Okin
211
end p.v
14. C ommunity and Virtue
Lawrence Blum
231
F urther Reading 251
I ndex 255
end p.vi
Notes on Contributors
Lawrence Blum is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
He is the author of Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and
Marxism, and Moral Perception and Particularity.
John Cottingham is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and editor of
the journal Ratio. He is author of Rationalism, Descartes, The Rationalists, and A
Descartes Dictionary. He is a co-translator of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Descartes.
Roger Crisp is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. He is an
associate editor of Utilitas and a member of the Analysis Committee. He is currently
working on a book on J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism.
Julia Driver is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. She is currently working on a book titled
Uneasy Virtue, which presents a consequentialist account of the virtues.
Brad Hooker teaches in the Philosophy Department at the University of Reading. He is an
associate editor of Ratio and Utilitas, and is currently writing a book on rule-
consequentialism.
Rosalind Hursthouse is Head of the Philosophy Department at the Open University. She
is the author of Beginning Lives and recently wrote ‘Applying Virtue Ethics’ for Virtues
and Reasons, a book edited by her, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn.
Terence Irwin is Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University. He is the
author of Aristotle's First Principles, Classical Thought, and Plato's Ethics, and has
translated and edited Plato's Gorgias and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Andrew Mason is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading. He is the author
of Explaining Political Disagreement, and is currently working on a book on the notion
of community.
end p.vii
Susan Moller Okin is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. She is author
of Women in Western Political Thought and Justice, Gender, and the Family.
Onora O'Neill is Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. She writes mainly on ethics,
political philosophy, and in particular conceptions of practical reason. She is the author of
Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Development and Justice, and Constructions of
Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy.
Michael Slote is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. He is the author
of From Morality to Virtue, and is currently collaborating with Marcia Baron and Philip
Pettit on a book debating the merits of Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue
ethics.
Michael Stocker is Guttag Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at Syracuse
University. He is the author of Plural and Conflicting Values and Valuing Emotions.
Gabriele Taylor was formerly Fellow in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is
author of Pride, Shame, and Guilt.
David Wiggins is Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford. He is author of
Sameness and Substance and Needs, Values, Truth.
end p.viii
1 Modern Moral Philosophy and the Virtues
Roger Crisp
Abstract: Introduces a collection of specially commissioned articles on
central topics in virtue ethics. Also provides an introduction to virtue
ethics. The following topics are discussed: the ancient roots of virtue
ethics; the nature of virtue ethics; the good of the virtuous agent; the
demandingness of morality; universality tradition, and practice;
community and gender; practical reason, moral knowledge, and moral
education.
Keywords: ancient ethics, demandingness, moral knowledge,
practical reason, virtue, virtue ethics
1. An Ancient Question
Should I go into business or into politics? Should I live the
contemplative life, or seek after pleasure? Should I be just? These
were among the questions Aristotle tried to answer over two thousand
years ago in his lectures on ethics in Athens. Aristotle was working
through an agenda already laid down by Socrates and Plato; in one of
Plato's dialogues, Socrates asks, ‗What would even a person of little
intelligence be more concerned about than this: how should one
1
live?‘
1 c
Plato, Gorgias 500 2–4.
Our question, then, is an ancient one; but, on one view of the history
of moral philosophy, it has in the modern era faded into the
background. Our morality is heavily influenced by the Judaeo-Christian
tradition, and has its roots in conceptions of divine law. This has had
two results. First, the primary question has been not ‗How should I
live?‘, but ‗How should I act?‘ Secondly, answers to the question about
how to act have been put in terms of obligations. Morality is seen as a
lawlike set of principles which binds us to perform or not to perform
certain actions.
The two moral traditions which have come to dominate modern
philosophy certainly fit this description. One tradition begins with the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), according to whom
the right action is the one performed out of respect for the moral law.
The other tradition, utilitarianism, has also focused almost without
exception on the act which one is required to perform by morality (the
act, in this case, that will produce the greatest overall good).
This view of the legalistic turn in ethics was stated first in one of the
most influential philosophy articles of the twentieth century, Elizabeth
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2
Anscombe's ‗Modern Moral Philosophy‘, published in 1958.
2
G. E. M. Anscombe, ‗Modern Moral Philosophy‘, Philosophy 33 (1958), 1–19.
Anscombe charged all contemporary moral philosophers with seeking
foundations for pseudo-legalistic moralities of obligation that make
little sense in the context of disbelief in the authority of a divine
lawgiver.
Anscombe's remedy for the modern malaise was that moral philosophy
be put aside until an adequate philosophy of psychology, including
analyses of notions such as action, intention, and pleasure, became
available. ‗Eventually,‘ she claimed, ‗it might be possible to advance to
considering the concept ―virtue‖; with which, I suppose, we should be
3
beginning some sort of a study of ethics.‘
3
Ibid. 15.
Anscombe believed that a return to an Aristotelian view of ethics, in
which norms are founded not legalistically but on a conception of
human flourishing with virtue at its centre, provided for moral
philosophy the only hope of its retaining any significance.
Why did utilitarianism and Kantianism dominate moral philosophy for
so long? Anscombe's reference to the attraction of legalism
undoubtedly has something in it, as do many of the alternative
explanations that have been offered: the need for a rapprochement
between various points of view facilitated by the notion of natural
rights, the fact that it was Kant's earlier ethics that came to dominate
discussion, the increasing complexity of society and the consequent
need for rules, diminishing personal relations and increasing
commercial and individualist relations, the simplicity and unity of some
versions of utilitarianism and Kantianism, the modern emphasis on the
4
voluntary, and so on.
4
See J. Schneewind, ‗The Misfortunes of Virtue‘, Ethics 101 (1991), 42–63; E.
Pincoffs, ‗Quandary Ethics‘, Mind 80 (1971), 552–71; M. Stocker, ‗The Schizophrenia
of Modern Ethical Theories‘, Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 453–66; A. MacIntyre,
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London, 1981); A. Flemming, ‗Reviving the
Virtues‘, Ethics 90 (1980), 587–95; H. Alderman, ‗By Virtue of a Virtue‘, Review of
Metaphysics 36 (1982), 127–53; G. Hartz, ‗Desire and Emotion in the Virtue
Tradition‘, Philosophia 20 (1990), 145–65.
But whatever the reasons, it is hard to deny that the predominance of
utilitarianism and Kantian ethics is at least under threat, and possibly
already over. For Anscombe's challenge has been taken up by many
philosophers, most of them intent on developing or meeting it. One
effect of this work has been the emergence, or perhaps re-emergence,
of what is now called ‗virtue ethics‘ or ‗virtue theory‘.
Although virtue theory does have ancient roots, it is far from mere
revivalism. Modern writers on the virtues, however keen they are on
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bridge-building, are not unaware of the vastness of the gulf that lies
between us and the ancient Greeks. One of the central contrasts
between ancient and modern virtue ethics is brought out nicely in
Chapter 3 by Terence Irwin. Having noted that any Greek answer to
the question of how one should live would most naturally be couched
in the language of virtue (or aretē, ‗excellence‘), Irwin goes on to show
how Greek philosophers rejected many common-sense views of the
virtues: that they are concerned primarily with action, that different
social roles require different virtues, that one can possess one virtue
while lacking others, that they may be bad for the person who
possesses them, and that they require not knowledge but the correct
intuitive response. There is an interesting contrast here with the
modern move in the direction of the virtues, which can be seen partly
as an attempt to close a yawning gap between common sense and
moral theory opened up by the ethical theory of the last few centuries.
2. About This Book
Comparisons between ancient and modern treatments of the virtues,
then, must be treated with care. But so must all generalizations about
virtue theory. The idea for this book came to me while trying to teach
Oxford undergraduates, who have less than a week to work on any
one topic, about virtue ethics. So many philosophers have become
involved, so many issues have been discussed from so many points of
view, that I found myself unable to recommend a set of readings
which would allow the students to see the main lines of argument,
their subtlety and importance. This book, then, is in part an attempt to
fill the gap in my reading list. Each contributor was commissioned to
write on a specified topic central to virtue theory. The result is that the
main strands in virtue theory have been teased out and woven
together in such a way that even a reader without a philosophical
background will be enabled to grasp them.
Much of the writing in virtue theory has been negative, and the wide-
ranging critique of Kantianism and utilitarianism will be further
developed in this book (see especially the papers by Michael Slote,
John Cottingham, Michael Stocker, and David Wiggins). But the second
main aim of the book is positive: to suggest a broad agenda for future
thought. This aim is achieved largely because the contributors
themselves
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have played an important part in the debates which they clarify and
continue in this volume.
In this introduction, I shall offer my own account of virtue ethics and
virtue theory, providing an overview of the main areas under debate
and placing each paper in the volume on the philosophical map that
emerges. But let me first briefly describe the structure of the book.
In Chapter 2, Rosalind Hursthouse characterizes virtue ethics, and
demonstrates how it can offer practical guidance. Terence Irwin in
Chapter 3 puts virtue ethics into historical perspective, and in Chapter
4 John Cottingham brings out the importance of Aristotelian partiality
in contrast to modern impartialist accounts of ethics.
Focus then shifts to modern history, and the relationships between
virtue ethics and its two main rivals, Kantianism and utilitarianism, are
covered by Onora O'Neill and Michael Slote in Chapters 5 and 6
respectively. Aristotle grounded his virtue ethics in a conception of
human nature, and in Chapter 7 Julia Driver discusses this idea, linking
it to a utilitarian or consequentialist theory of the virtues (hence her
place in the volume after Slote). Human nature was also appealed to
by David Hume (1711–1776) as the foundation for the ‗natural‘
virtues, and David Wiggins provides in Chapter 8 an authoritative
account of how these virtues are to be distinguished from others.
Human nature and the human good are closely linked. In Chapter 9,
Brad Hooker considers the claim, central to Greek ethics, that a
flourishing human life will involve the virtues. Gabriele Taylor in turn
shows in Chapter 10 how certain vices are incompatible with living a
good life.
In their accounts of the place of virtue in the good life, both Plato and
Aristotle put a great deal of emphasis on reason. But both were also
concerned with the emotions, and many modern writers have claimed