Virtues for the Imperfect

See Robert N. Johnson, “Virtue and Right,” Ethics 113(4) (2003): 810–834; Gilbert Harman, Virtue Ethics without Character Traits (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001); and Bernard Williams, “Replies,” in J. E. J. Altham and R. Harrison (eds.), World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 185–224.

See Johnson, op. cit. Johnson’s targets are primarily Hursthouse, McDowell, and—with minor adjustments—also Swanton and Slote.

Claim V is formulated in terms of what the fully virtuous agent would characteristically do in order to allow for the fact that even a completely virtuous person might do the wrong thing if, due to special circumstances, her actions don’t flow from her virtues.

See Johnson, op. cit., pp. 816–818.

We are here formulating the argument as attacking the left-to-right reading of V. The right-to-left direction is also under attack. A fully virtuous person might do things in our situation that would be wrong for us—such as the famous irascible squash player, who shouldn’t shake hands with his opponent because he couldn’t control his anger. See Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” The Journal of Philosophy 72(8) (1975): 205–220, p. 210.

See Nicholas R. Smith, “Right Action as Virtuous Action,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96(2) (2018): 241–254; Linda Zagzebski, Exemplarist Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); Julia Annas, “Why Virtue Ethics Does Not Have a Problem with Right Action,” in M. Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (Vol. 4) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 13–33; Julia Annas, “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 78(2) (2004): 61–75; Liezl van Zyl, “Virtue Ethics and Right Action,” in D. C. Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 172–196; Liezl van Zyl, “Right Action and the Non-Virtuous Agent,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 28(1) (2011): 80–92; Sean McAleer, “Four Solutions to the Alleged Incompleteness of Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4(3) (2010): 1–20; Daniel C. Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Daniel C. Russell, “That ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Right’: Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 46(2) (2008): 299–315; and Valerie Tiberius, “How to Think About Virtue and Right,” Philosophical Papers 35(2) (2006): 247–265.

Some neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists think that Anscombe’s criticism of the “moral ought” implies that virtue ethics is better off without an account of right action (see John Hacker-Wright, “Virtue Ethics without Right Action: Anscombe, Foot, and Contemporary Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Value Inquiry 44(2) (2010): 209–224). We disagree, and we take ourselves to be spelling out one aspect of Anscombe’s following remark (made on behalf of Aristotle): “[T]hat is ‘illicit’ which, whether it is a thought or a consented-to passion or an action or an omission in thought or action, is something contrary to one of the virtues the lack of which shows a man to be bad qua man” (G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern moral philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958): 1–19, p. 6).

Johnson has discussed some other responses in his “Virtue and Right Revisited” on the website PEA Soup (http://​peasoup.​typepad.​com/​peasoup/​2015/​04/​virtue-and-right-revisted-by-featured-philosopher-robert-n-johnson.​html, accessed on June 4th, 2017).We agree with a lot of his criticism of these responses.

See Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Anselm W. Müller, “Acting Well,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 54 (2004): 15–46; and Hursthouse, “Practical Ethics: Normative Virtue Ethics” op. cit.

See van Zyl, “Right Action and the Non-Virtuous Agent” op. cit.

See Russell, “That ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Right’: Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics” op. cit., p. 309.

See Zagzebski, op. cit., p. 198.

See Swanton, op. cit., p. 121.

See Russell, “That ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Right’: Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics” op. cit., pp. 308 seqq.; and van Zyl, “Right Action and the Non-Virtuous Agent” op. cit., pp. 89–90, respectively.

See McAleer, op. cit., pp. 4–5.

See van Zyl, “Right Action and the Non-Virtuous Agent” op. cit., p. 87.

See Christine Swanton, “Cultivating Virtue: Two Problems for Virtue Ethics,” in N. E. Snow (ed.), Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 111–134; and Christine Swanton, “A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action,” Ethics 112(1) (2001): 32–52.

To realize how radical the break is, consider that we are now faced with questions like the following: Are there radically different kinds of good lives for different human agents? Or: What provides the unity of the targets across each such life? Some of these problems exist in a metaphysical as well as an epistemic variant. For instance, it seems unclear what determines Ulysses’ target in any concrete situation, but also how he himself would know his specific targets. Hursthouse notices the latter problem, when she asks how one is to know which v-rule wins out in cases of conflict. But her general remarks about the non-codifiability of moral reasoning are insufficient to address it, as are Swanton’s remarks on indeterminacy (see Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics op. cit., p.53; and Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View op. cit., Ch. 13).

We talk about situations and not possible worlds because we don’t want to assume that situations are maximal. We talk about some and not all situations because we want to leave room for the view that fully virtuous agents may do different things in different counterfactual situations that are tied in closeness, and that any of these actions is right. We are reluctant to capture this with “might” because it seems to us that “might” is naturally understood as not requiring maximal closeness.

Recently, Bob Johnson and Rusty Jones have explicitly endorsed such a de dicto reading in their talk “What Good’s a Good Example? A New Objection to Counterfactual Exemplar-Based Virtue Theories” at the 2017 Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress (see https://​www.​colorado.​edu/​philosophy/​center/​rome/​papers/​BobJohnson_​Rustyones_​What%20​Good%27s%20​a%20​Good%20​Example_​AnewobjectiontoC​ounterfactual_​exemplarbased_​virtue.​pdf). They do not consider the de re alternative, which would undermine their criticism of virtue ethics.

We will assume a conditional analysis of dispositions. The reader may add qualifiers about masks and finks to our conditionals where she thinks that this is necessary. None of this affects the point we want to make. If need be, we would translate everything (including V and V*) into disposition talk, as this is suggested by the Aristotelian claim that a virtue is a disposition (hexis).

Johnson, op. cit., p. 833.

See Foot, op. cit. A defense of Foot’s version of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics is beyond the scope of this paper. We are using this view as the version of virtue ethics we want to defend against the right-but-not-virtuous objection.

See Smith, “Right Action as Virtuous Action” op. cit.; and Swanton, “Cultivating Virtue: Two Problems for Virtue Ethics” op. cit.

See Foot, op. cit. In key aspects, the view presented here is close to those of Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Michael Thompson, Anselm Müller, and, to a lesser degree, to those of Aquinas and Aristotle. If you find that such an account shouldn’t be labeled “virtue ethics” because its central concept is ‘flourishing’ rather than ‘virtue’, we have no objection to dropping this label.

See Aristotle, op. cit., EN 1106b36.

See Aristotle, op. cit., EN 1113a4.

We are ignoring some complex issues here, such as actions done for no particular reasons, cases in which acting well consists primarily in not doing something, and cases in which right actions must issue from quasi-automatic responses in order to get things done in time. See Kieran Setiya, “What is a Reason to Act?,” Philosophical Studies 167(2) (2014): 221–235; Julia Markovits, “Saints, Heroes, Sages, and Villains,” Philosophical Studies 158(2) (2012): 289–311; and Müller, “Acting Well” op. cit. for discussion of these.

See Markovits, “Acting for the Right Reasons” op. cit.

See Way, “Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning” op. cit.; Silverstein, “Ethics and Practical Reasoning” op. cit.; Matthew Silverstein, “Reducing Reasons,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10(1) (2016): 1–22; Samuel Asarnow, “The Reasoning View and Defeasible Practical Reasoning,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95(3) (2017): 614–636; and Setiya, “What is a Reason to Act?” op. cit.

Claims such as “Do A because the fully virtuous agent would do A” or “Do A because A will generate the best overall consequences” usually give the wrong reason for doing A. This problem comes up in various forms and has hence been discussed under various headings in metaethics, including: the charge that certain ethical theories are “self-effacing” (see Michael Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” Journal of Philosophy 73(14) (1976): 453–466; Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 23–24; Glen Pettigrove, “Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?,” The Journal of Ethics 15(3) (2010): 191–207), the “wrong reason objection” against “practice views” (see Thomas Scanlon, “Promises and Practices,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19(3) (1990): 199–226; Katharina Nieswandt, “What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2018), https://​doi.​org/​10.​1080/​00048402.​2018.​1425306), and Williams’ famous “one thought too many” (Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality,” in B. Williams (ed.), Moral Luck, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1–19, pp. 17–18).

See Way, “Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning” op. cit.; and Setiya, “What is a Reason to Act?” op. cit.

See Garry Watson, “On the Primacy of Character,” in O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (eds.), Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 449–472; John Hacker-Wright, “What is Natural About Foot's Ethical Naturalism?,” Ratio 22(3) (2009): 308–321; Müller, op. cit.; and Foot, op. cit.

We are not going to talk here about the difficult issues concerning the balancing of the interests of different members of society, potential conflicts between individual flourishing and that of society, and the like. Such issues must wait for another occasion. We see no reason to think, however, that they are intractable; they are just difficult.

Johnson, op. cit., p. 833.