Virtue Ethics and the Ethics of Duty
1. It is important to be virtuous, as “virtues” refer to the qualities that provide, on the virtue ethical account, the mental and physical resources for autonomy, success and fruitful interaction with others. These are essential aspects of an inherently good life.
2. “Character” may be conceived as partially the balance of virtues in the individual, the skills and abilities cultivated thus far, and the quirks, neuroses and idiosyncrasies that constitute the totality of their dispositions towards publicly observable events.
3. It is important to create a role model of “the good person”, as this person will exemplify the ideal balance of virtuous traits and the particular way in which those traits are combined. An affirmative answer suggests itself to the question of the possibility of coming to an agreement on what constitutes a good life on the basis of biology and widespread cross-cultural agreement, at least in broad terms.
4. “Particularism”: the idea that moral situations heavily rely upon ad hoc judgement, and that there exists no code that will provide clear-cut answers in response to general aspects of a situation.
5. The risks in moral judgement include causing unnecessary pain and suffering and contributing to negative character traits. Applying to moral principles can vitiate this risk as certain principles ensure that less pain results from actions. A system such as utilitarianism would generally avoid the risk of causing distress to people if consistently followed, though there are internal problems with this system.
6. Carol Gilligan’s “justice perspective” is based on looking to abstract principles and codified contingency plans to solve moral disputes. The “care perspective” looks to compromise to seek satisfaction by co-ordinating desires between disputant parties. Her research led to the notable conclusion that boys in schoolyards preferred the former, girls the latter.
7. “Externalism” and “Internalism” in reasons refers to how agents are said to relate to the justification or explanation of moral behaviour. The former claims that an objective code or aim exists such that an agent may have a moral reason to do something which is independent of the knowledge or desires of the agent in question. The latter seeks to refer only to the conscious state of the agent, meaning their goals, beliefs and desires and the connection between these and the objective aspects of the situation in determining what it is the agent is supposed to do. Virtue ethics prefers the latter as it places great importance on the voluntary cultivation of attitudes and activities on the part of moral subjects in response to moral situations.
8. The difference between “foundationalism” and “hermeneutics” is partially an epistemological one, but one which pertains to moral psychology. The former refers to undeniable, almost axiomatic aspects of a system. Descartes famously located such foundations in his own existence and the existence of God. The latter refers to the activity of continuous re-adjustment and interpretation of data in the context of larger wholes of which this data is a part. The interpretation of an act by somebody we know illustrates this point intimately: disagreement on the hidden intentions of, say, an act of generosity is an example of hermeneutics. The importance of hermeneutic reasoning may outweigh that of foundations in private moral judgement but this is not to suggest that the broader socio-political problem won’t require an answer of a different sort.
9. Given the disdain for foundations, virtue ethics tends to vitiate the problem of relativism (that of how to attack seemingly evil activities which are consciously justified morally by the parties who commit them) by claiming that some virtues are relative, and some are universal. It is by no means a problem that some cultures may radically differ in their approach to different circumstances or as a result of differing pasts but the more severe the difference (and the greater moral evil perceived by those who do not share the customs of the culture under scrutiny) the less likely they actually are to differ. This is somewhat similar to the contractualist account, which disbars the possibility of certain rules being broken on the basis of the fact that no functional society could accept such transgressions.
10. The ethics of duty tends to employ a dualistic moral psychology as it posits that the individual stands as detached, ontologically and epistemically, from the moral law. It requires that a recognition of and obedience to the moral law derives from a faculty of judgement wholly distinct from those that assist judgement of amoral information. By contrast, virtue ethics is holistic as it relies on a total synthesis of emotion, reason and intuition.
11. Further to this, the ethics of duty focuses on the concept of the “social atom”: that is, an isolated, individual moral decision-maker that confronts the moral law without recourse to the beliefs of other members of the community. Virtue ethics evidently rejects this concept as misguided.
12. Supererogatory action, in being an activity that lies beyond the call of duty, is problematic for the ethics of duty as it seems to operate in a vacuum: it is bereft of any meaning without a way of relating it to the moral law. Virtue ethics, on the other hand, is highly respectful of supererogatory actions as they represent a commitment to personal excellence.
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