Virtue Ethics

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Virtue Ethics

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Virtue EthicsFirst published Fri Jul 18, 2003; substantive revision Thu Mar 8, 2012

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normativeethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes thevirtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach which emphasizesduties or rules (deontology) or that which emphasizes the consequences ofactions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in needshould be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequencesof doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, indoing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such asDo unto others as you would be done by and a virtue ethicist to the factthat helping the person would be charitable or benevolent.

Three of virtue ethics' central concepts, virtue, practical wisdom andeudaimonia are often misunderstood. Once they are distinguished fromrelated but distinct concepts peculiar to modern philosophy, variousobjections to virtue ethics can be better assessed.

1. Preliminaries2. Virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimonia3. Objections to virtue ethics4. Future directionsBibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Preliminaries

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Virtue ethics' founding fathers are Plato and, more particularly Aristotle(its roots in Chinese philosophy are even more ancient) and it persisted asthe dominant approach in Western moral philosophy until at least theEnlightenment. It suffered a momentary eclipse during the nineteenthcentury but re-emerged in the late 1950's in Anglo-American philosophy.It was heralded by Anscombe's famous article Modern MoralPhilosophy (Anscombe 1958) which crystallized an increasingdissatisfaction with the forms of deontology and utilitarianism thenprevailing. Neither of them, at that time, paid attention to a number oftopics that had always figured in the virtue ethics' traditionthe virtuesthemselves, motives and moral character, moral education, moral wisdomor discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept ofhappiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life and thefundamentally important questions of what sort of person I should be andhow we should live.

Its re-emergence had an invigorating effect on the other two approaches,many of whose proponents then began to address these topics in the termsof their favoured theory. (The sole unfortunate consequence of this hasbeen that it is now necessary to distinguish virtue ethics (the thirdapproach) from virtue theory, a term which is reserved for an account ofvirtue within one of the other approaches.) Interest in Kant's virtue theoryhas redirected philosophers' attention to Kant's long neglected Doctrine ofVirtue, and utilitarians have developed consequentialist virtue theories(Driver 2001; Hurka 2001. It has also generated virtue ethical readings ofphilosophers other than Plato and Aristotle, such as Martineau, Hume andNietzsche, and thereby different forms of virtue ethics have developed(Slote 2001; Swanton 2003, 2011a).

But although modern virtue ethics does not have to take the form knownas neo-Aristotelian, almost any modern version still shows that its rootsare in ancient Greek philosophy by the employment of three concepts

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derived from it.These are arte (excellence or virtue) phronesis (practicalor moral wisdom) and eudaimonia (usually translated as happiness orflourishing). As modern virtue ethics has grown and more people havebecome familiar with its literature, the understanding of these terms hasincreased, but it is still the case that readers familiar only with modernphilosophy tend to misinterpret them. (See Annas 2011 for a short,luminously clear, but authoritative account of all three.)

2. Virtue, practical wisdom and eudaimoniaA virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what ishonest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a desirable ormorally valuable character trait. It is, indeed a character traitthat is, adisposition which is well entrenched in its possessor, something that, aswe say goes all the way down, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinkerbut the disposition in question, far from being a single trackdisposition to do honest actions, or even honest actions for certainreasons, is multi-track. It is concerned with many other actions as well,with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires,perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possessa virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset.(Hence the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of asingle action.)

The most significant aspect of this mindset is the wholeheartedacceptance of a certain range of considerations as reasons for action. Anhonest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example,practices honest dealing, and does not cheat. If such actions are donemerely because the agent thinks that honesty is the best policy, or becausethey fear being caught out, rather than through recognising To dootherwise would be dishonest as the relevant reason, they are not theactions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified simply

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as one who, for example, always tells the truth, nor even as one whoalways tells the truth because it is the truth, for one can have the virtue ofhonesty without being tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognisesThat would be a lie as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reasonfor not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due,but not overriding, weight to That would be the truth as a reason formaking them.

An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest anddishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truthbut of coursesuch views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and toemotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses,where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, tobring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deploresdishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pitiesthose who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they havebeen clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honestytriumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her dowhat is dishonest and so on.

Given that a virtue is such a multi-track disposition, it would obviously bereckless to attribute one to an agent on the basis of a single observedaction or even a series of similar actions, especially if you don't know theagent's reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002). Moreover, topossess, fully, such a disposition is to possess full or perfect virtue, whichis rare, and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal(Athanassoulis 2000). Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree, for mostpeople who can be truly described as fairly virtuous, and certainlymarkedly better than those who can be truly described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their blind spotslittle areas where they donot act for the reasons one would expect. So someone honest or kind inmost situations, and notably so in demanding ones may nevertheless be

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trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about theirforebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.

Further, it is not easy to get one's emotions in harmony with one's rationalrecognition of certain reasons for action. I may be honest enough torecognise that I must own up to a mistake because it would be dishonestnot to do so without my acceptance being so wholehearted that I can ownup easily, with no inner conflict. Following (and adapting) Aristotle,virtue ethicists draw a distinction between full or perfect virtue andcontinence, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do what they shouldwithout a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control adesire or temptation to do otherwise.

Describing the continent as falling short of perfect virtue appears to goagainst the intuition that there is something particularly admirable aboutpeople who manage to act well when it is especially hard for them to doso, but the plausibility of this depends on exactly what makes it hard(Foot 1978, 1114). If it is the circumstances in which the agent actssay that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full purse, or thatshe is in deep grief when someone visits seeking helpthen indeed it isparticularly admirable of her to restore the purse or give the help when itis hard for her to do so. But if what makes it hard is an imperfection inher characterthe temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callousindifference to the suffering of othersthen it is not.

Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is throughlacking phronesismoral or practical wisdom.

The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes itspossessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent oradmirable person who acts and feels well, rightly, as she should. Theseare commonly accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation toparticular (putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may

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say of someone that he is too generous or honest, generous or honest to afault. It is commonly asserted that someone's compassion might leadthem to act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example,in their desire to prevent someone else's hurt feelings. It is also said thatcourage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked things than hewould have been able to do if he were timid. So it would appear thatgenerosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite being virtues, aresometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest, compassionate, andcourageous might not be a morally good, admirable personor, if it isstill held to be a truism that they are, then morally good people may beled by what makes them morally good to act wrongly! How have wearrived at such an odd conclusion?

The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, whichpermits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms,combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the virtuousagent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational choice. If onethinks of generosity or honesty as the disposition to be moved to action bygenerous or honest impulses such as the desire to give or to speak thetruth, if one thinks of compassion as the disposition to be moved by thesufferings of others and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage asmerely fearlessness, or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeedseem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to theirpossessor's acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as it is stated,that these are dispositions that can be possessed by children, and althoughchildren thus endowed (bar the courageous disposition) wouldundoubtedly be very nice children, we would not say that they weremorally virtuous or admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the relianceon motivation by inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls naturalvirtuea proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection by phronesis orpractical wisdom.

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Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are thesubject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is bestunderstood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has thatnice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adultand the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more proneto mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know inorder to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallibleand may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lackof knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack ofknowledge is not culpable ignorance. So, for example, children andadolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they donot know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly,because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limitedand often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if everculpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults.Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless,insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that whatsuits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objectiveviewpoint. They are also, importantly, culpable if their understanding ofwhat is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdomto know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practicalwisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from theperson who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefitinghim.

Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well ordo the right thing, we may say that practical wisdom is the knowledgeor understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, todo just that, in any given situation. The detailed specification of what isinvolved in such knowledge or understanding has not yet appeared in theliterature, but some aspects of it are becoming well known. Even manydeontologists now stress the point that their action-guiding rules cannot,

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reliably, be applied correctly without practical wisdom, because correctapplication requires situational appreciationthe capacity to recognise, inany particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient. Thisbrings out two aspects of practical wisdom.

One is that it characteristically comes only with experience of life.Amongst the morally relevant features of a situation may be the likelyconsequences, for the people involved, of a certain action, and this issomething that adolescents are notoriously clueless about preciselybecause they are inexperienced. It is part of practical wisdom to be wiseabout human beings and human life. (It should go without saying that thevirtuous are mindful of the consequences of possible actions. How couldthey fail to be reckless, thoughtless and short-sighted if they were not?)

The aspect that is more usually stressed regarding situational appreciationis the practically wise agent's capacity to recognise some features of asituation as more important than others, or indeed, in that situation, as theonly relevant ones. The wise do not see things in the same way as thenice adolescents who, with their imperfect virtues, still tend to see thepersonally disadvantageous nature of a certain action as competing inimportance with its honesty or benevolence or justice.

These aspects coalesce in the description of the practically wise as thosewho understand what is truly worthwhile, truly important, and therebytruly advantageous in life, who know, in short, how to live well. In theAristotelian eudaimonist tradition, this is expressed in the claim thatthey have a true grasp of eudaimonia.

The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moralphilosophy, is central to any modern neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics andusually employed even by virtue ethicists who deliberately divorcethemselves from Aristotle. It is standardly translated as happiness orflourishing and occasionally as well-being.

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Each translation has its disadvantages. The trouble with flourishing isthat animals and even plants can flourish but eudaimonia is possibly onlyfor rational beings. The trouble with happiness, on any contemporaryunderstanding of it uninfluenced by classically trained writers, is that itconnotes something which is subjectively determined. It is for me, not foryou, to pronounce on whether I am happy, or on whether my life, as awhole, has been a happy one, for, barring, perhaps, advanced cases ofself-deception and the suppression of unconscious misery, if I think I amhappy then I amit is not something I can be wrong about. Contrast mybeing healthy or flourishing. Here we have no difficulty in recognizingthat I might think I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, orthink that I was flourishing and just be plain wrong. In this respect,flourishing is a better translation than happiness. It is all too easy forme to be mistaken about whether my life is eudaimon (the adjective fromeudaimonia) not simply because it is easy to deceive oneself, but becauseit is easy to have a mistaken conception of eudaimonia, or of what it is tolive well as a human being, believing it to consist largely in physicalpleasure or luxury for example.

The claim that this is, straightforwardly, a mistaken conception, revealsthe point that eudaimonia is, avowedly, a moralized, or value-ladenconcept of happiness, something like true or real happiness or thesort of happiness worth seeking or having. It is thereby the sort ofconcept about which there can be substantial disagreement betweenpeople with different views about human life that cannot be resolved byappeal to some external standard on which, despite their different views,the parties to the disagreement concur.

All usual versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordancewith virtue is necessary for eudaimonia. This supreme good is notconceived of as an independently defined state or life (made up of, say, a

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list of non-moral goods that does not include virtuous activity) whichpossession and exercise of the virtues might be thought to promote. It is,within virtue ethics, already conceived of as something of which virtue isat least partially constitutive. Thereby virtue ethicists claim that a humanlife devoted to physical pleasure or the acquisition of wealth is noteudaimon, but a wasted life, and also accept that they cannot produce aknock down argument for this claim proceeding from premises that thehappy hedonist would acknowledge.

But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on that conceptuallink between virtue and eudaimonia, further links are matters of disputeand generate different versions. For Aristotle, virtue is necessary but notsufficientwhat is also needed are external goods which are a matter ofluck. For Plato, and the Stoics, it is both (Annas 1993), and modernversions of virtue ethics disagree further about the link betweeneudaimonia and what gives a character trait the status of being a virtue.Given the shared virtue ethical premise that the good life is the virtuouslife we have so far three distinguishable views about what makes acharacter trait a virtue.

According to eudaimonism, the good life is the eudaimon life, and thevirtues are what enable a human being to be eudaimon because the virtuesjust are those character traits that benefit their possessor in that way,barring bad luck. So there is a link between eudaimonia and what confersvirtue status on a character trait. But according to pluralism, there is nosuch tight link. The good life is the morally meritorious life, the morallymeritorious life is one that is responsive to the demands of the world (ona suitably moralized understanding of the demands of the world and isthereby the virtuous life because the virtues just are those character traitsin virtue of which their possessor is thus responsive (Swanton 2003). Andaccording to naturalism, the good life is the life characteristically lived bysomeone who is good qua human being, and the virtues enable their

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(a)

(b)

possessor to live such a life because the virtues just are those charactertraits that make their possessor good qua human being (an excellentspecimen of her kind) (Foot 2001).

3. Objections to virtue ethics(i) The application problem. In the early days of virtue ethics' revival, theapproach was associated with an anti-codifiability thesis about ethics,directed against the prevailing pretensions of normative theory. At thetime, utilitarians and deontologists commonly (though not universally)held that the task of ethical theory was to come up with a code consistingof universal rules or principles (possibly only one, as in the case of act-utilitarianism) which would have two significant features:

the rule(s) would amount to a decision procedure for determiningwhat the right action was in any particular case;the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that any non-virtuousperson could understand and apply it (them) correctly.

Virtue ethicists maintained, contrary to these two claims, that it was quiteunrealistic to imagine that there could be such a code (see, in particular,McDowell 1979). The results of attempts to produce and employ such acode, in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, when medical and thenbioethics boomed and bloomed, tended to support the virtue ethicists'claim. More and more utilitarians and deontologists found themselvesagreed on their general rules but on opposite sides of the controversialmoral issues in contemporary discussion. It came to be recognised thatmoral sensitivity, perception,imagination, and judgement informed byexperiencephronesis in shortis needed to apply rules or principlescorrectly. Hence many (though by no means all) utilitarians anddeontologists have explicitly abandoned (b) and much less emphasis isplaced on (a).

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Nevertheless, the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce codifiableprinciples is still a commonly voiced criticism of the approach, expressedas the objection that it is, in principle, unable to provide action-guidance.

Initially, the objection was based on a misunderstanding. Blinkered byslogans that described virtue ethics as concerned with Being rather thenDoing, as addressing What sort of person should I be? but not Whatshould I do? as being agent-centred rather than act-centred, its criticsmaintained that it was unable to provide action-guidance and hence,rather than being a normative rival to utilitarian and deontological ethics,could claim to be no more than a valuable supplement to them. The ratherodd idea was that all virtue ethics could offer was Identify a moralexemplar and do what he would do as though the raped fifteen year oldtrying to decide whether or not to have an abortion was supposed to askherself Would Socrates have had an abortion if he were in mycircumstances?

But the objection failed to take note of Anscombe's hint that a great dealof specific action guidance could be found in rules employing the virtueand vice terms (v-rules) such as Do what is honest/charitable; do notdo what is dishonest/uncharitable (Hursthouse 1999). (It is a noteworthyfeature of our virtue and vice vocabulary that, although our list ofgenerally recognised virtue terms is comparatively short, our list of viceterms is remarkably, and usefully, long, far exceeding anything thatanyone who thinks in terms of standard deontological rules has ever comeup with. Much invaluable action guidance comes from avoiding coursesof action that would be irresponsible, feckless, lazy, inconsiderate,uncooperative, harsh, intolerant, selfish, mercenary, indiscreet, tactless,arrogant, unsympathetic, cold, incautious, unenterprising, pusillanimous,feeble, presumptuous, rude, hypocritical, self-indulgent, materialistic,grasping, short-sighted, vindictive, calculating, ungrateful, grudging,

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brutal, profligate, disloyal, and on and on.)

Different patterns of conceptual connexion between the concept of rightaction, and those of virtuous motive, virtuous person/agent, and virtueitself are now widespread in what is still recognizably virtue ethicalliterature. Some have arisen in response to Johnson's challengingemphasis on the obvious rightness of a non-virtuous agent's attemptingself-improvement (Johnson 2003; van Zyl 2009), some in response to theobvious relevance of motive to the moral worth of actions (Slote 2001),some aiming to distinguish action guidance from a theoretical account ofwhat makes actions right (Swanton 2003; Zagzebski 2004). Zagzebski, inparticular, regards action guidance as a secondary aim of moral theory;her theory places the moral exemplar centre stage of an abstract structure,but certainly not in the absurd position of the person the fifteen year oldis supposed to think about when contemplating abortion. Rather, the otherconcepts (right act, virtue etc.) are defined in terms of a moral exemplar,and we gain understanding of our moral practices by identifying peoplewe admire and thinking of the definitions in terms of them (Zagzebski2010).

Insofar as the different versions of virtue ethics all retain an emphasis onthe virtues, they are open to the familiar problem of (ii) the charge ofcultural relativity. Is it not the case that different cultures embodydifferent virtues, (MacIntyre 1985) and hence that the v-rules will pickout actions as right or wrong only relative to a particular culture?Different replies have been made to this charge. Onethe tu quoque, orpartners in crime responseexhibits a quite familiar pattern in virtueethicists' defensive strategy (Solomon 1988). They admit that, for them,cultural relativism is a challenge, but point out that it is just as much aproblem for the other two approaches. The (putative) cultural variation incharacter traits regarded as virtues is no greaterindeed markedly lessthan the cultural variation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have

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different ideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare. That culturalrelativity should be a problem common to all three approaches is hardlysurprising. It is related, after all, to the justification problem (see below)the quite general metaethical problem of justifying one's moral beliefs tothose who disagree, whether they be moral sceptics, pluralists or fromanother culture.

A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has less difficultywith cultural relativity than the other two approaches. Much culturaldisagreement arises, it may be claimed, from local understandings of thevirtues, but the virtues themselves are not relative to culture (Nussbaum1993).

Another objection to which the tu quoque response is partially appropriateis (iii) the conflict problem. What does virtue ethics have to say aboutdilemmascases in which, apparently, the requirements of differentvirtues conflict because they point in opposed directions? Charity promptsme to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it.Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion toremaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the same sortsof dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontological rules.Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem (and are happy totake it on board rather than follow some of the utilitarians in theirconsequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas) and in fact their strategiesfor responding to it are parallel. Both aim to resolve a number ofdilemmas by arguing that the conflict is merely apparent; a discriminatingunderstanding of the virtues or rules in question, possessed only by thosewith practical wisdom, will perceive that, in this particular case, thevirtues do not make opposing demands or that one rule outranks another,or has a certain exception clause built into it. Whether this is all there is toit depends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are,proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably that it

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could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is, ex hypothesi,irresolvable.

Another problem arguably shared by all three approaches is (iv), that ofbeing self-effacing. An ethical theory is self-effacing if, roughly,whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes it right, hadbetter not be the agent's motive for doing it. Michael Stocker (1976)originally introduced it as a problem for the other two approaches only.He pointed out that the agent who, rightly, visits a friend in hospital willrather lessen the impact of his visit on her if he tells her either that he isdoing it because it is his duty or because he thought it would maximizethe general happiness. However, as has been argued (Keller 2007), shewon't be any better pleased if he tells her that he is visiting her because itis what a virtuous agent would do, so virtue ethics has the problem too. Itsdefenders are currently arguing that, at the very least, virtue ethics is notseriously undermined by the problem, and are exploring different forms ofself-effacingness (Martinez 2011; Pettigrove 2011).

Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by both utilitarianismand deontology, is (v) the justification problem. Abstractly conceived,this is the problem of how we justify or ground our ethical beliefs, anissue that is hotly debated at the level of metaethics. In its particularversions, for deontology there is the question of how to justify its claimsthat certain moral rules are the correct ones, and for utilitarianism of howto justify its claim that the only thing that really matters morally isconsequences for happiness or well-being. For virtue ethics, the problemconcerns the question of which character traits are the virtues.

In the metaethical debate, there is widespread disagreement about thepossibility of providing an external foundation for ethicsexternal inthe sense of being external to ethical beliefsand the same disagreementis found amongst deontologists and utilitarians. Some believe that their

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normative ethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form ofscepticism, such as what anyone rationally desires, or would accept oragree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that it cannot.

Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics in anexternal foundation while continuing to maintain that their claims can bevalidated. Some follow a form of Rawls' coherentist approach (Slote2001; Swanton 2003); neo-Aristotelians a form of ethical naturalism.

A misunderstanding of eudaimonia as an unmoralized concept leads somecritics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians are attempting to ground theirclaims in a scientific account of human nature and what counts, for ahuman being, as flourishing. Others assume that, if this is not what theyare doing, they cannot be validating their claims that, for example, justice,charity, courage, and generosity are virtues. Either they are illegitimatelyhelping themselves to Aristotle's discredited natural teleology (Williams1985) or producing mere rationalizations of their own personal orculturally inculcated values. But McDowell, Foot, MacIntyre andHursthouse have all outlined versions of a third way between these twoextremes. Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, is indeed a moralized concept, butit is not only that. Claims about what constitutes flourishing for humanbeings no more float free of scientific facts about what human beings arelike than ethological claims about what constitutes flourishing forelephants. In both cases, the truth of the claims depends in part on whatkind of animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests thehumans or elephants have.

The best available science today (including evolutionary theory andpsychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greekassumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves andunlike polar bears. No rationalizing explanation in terms of anything likea social contract is needed to explain why we choose to live together,

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subjugating our egoistical desires in order to secure the advantages of co-operation. Like other social animals, our natural impulses are not solelydirected towards our own pleasures and preservation, but include altruisticand cooperative ones.

This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim thatthe virtues are at least partially constitutive of human flourishing and alsoundercut the objection that virtue ethics is, in some sense, egoistic.

(vi) The egoism objection has a number of sources. One is a simpleconfusion. Once it is understood that the fully virtuous agentcharacteristically does what she should without inner conflict, it istriumphantly asserted that she is only doing what she wants to do and ishence being selfish. So when the generous person gives gladly, as thegenerous are wont to do, it turns out she is not generous and unselfishafter all, or at least not as generous as the one who greedily wants to hangon to everything she has but forces herself to give because she thinks sheshould! A related version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent,unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she does because she believes thatacting thus on this occasion will help her to achieve eudaimonia. But thevirtuous agent is just the agent with the virtues and it is part of ourordinary understanding of the virtue terms that each carries with it its owntypical range of reasons for acting. The virtuous agent acts as she doesbecause she believes that someone's suffering will be averted, or someonebenefited, or the truth established, or a debt repaid, or ... thereby.

It is the exercise of the virtues during one's life that is held to be at leastpartially constitutive of eudaimonia, and this is consistent withrecognising that bad luck may land the virtuous agent in circumstancesthat require her to give up her life. Given the sorts of considerations thatcourageous, honest, loyal, charitable people wholeheartedly recognise asreasons for action, they may find themselves compelled to face danger for

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a worthwhile end, to speak out in someone's defence, or refuse to revealthe names of their comrades, even when they know that this willinevitably lead to their execution, to share their last crust and facestarvation. On the view that the exercise of the virtues is necessary but notsufficient for eudaimonia, such cases are described as those in which thevirtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out,eudaimonia is not possible for them (Foot 2001, 95). On the Stoical viewthat it is both necessary and sufficient, a eudaimon life is a life that hasbeen successfully lived (where success of course is not to be understoodin a materialistic way) and such people die knowing not only that theyhave made a success of their lives but that they have also brought theirlives to a markedly successful completion. Either way, such heroic actscan hardly be regarded as egoistic.

A lingering suggestion of egoism may be found in the misconceiveddistinction between so-called self-regarding and other-regardingvirtues. Those who have been insulated from the ancient tradition tend toregard justice and benevolence as real virtues, which benefit others butnot their possessor, and prudence, fortitude and providence (the virtuewhose opposite is improvidence or being a spendthrift) as not realvirtues at all because they benefit only their possessor. This is a mistakeon two counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefittheir possessors, since without them eudaimonia is not possible.Secondly, given that we live together, as social animals, the self-regarding virtues do benefit othersthose who lack them are a greatdrain on, and sometimes grief to, those who are close to them (as parentswith improvident or imprudent adult offspring know only too well).

The most recent objection (vii) to virtue ethics claims that work insituationist social psychology shows that there are no such things ascharacter traits and thereby no such things as virtues for virtue ethics to beabout (Doris 1998; Harman 1999). But virtue ethicists claim in response

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that the social psychologists' studies are irrelevant to the multi-trackdisposition (see above) that a virtue is supposed to be (Sreenivasan 2002).Mindful of just how multi-track it is, they agree that it would be recklessin the extreme to ascribe a demanding virtue such as charity to people ofwhom they know no more than that they have exhibited conventionaldecency; this would indeed be a fundamental attribution error. Therehave been other responses as well (summarized helpfully in Prinz 2009),notably that of Adams, echoing Merritt (Merritt 2000; Adams 2006).Adams steers a middle road between no character traits at all and theexacting standard of the Aristotelian conception of virtue which, becauseof its emphasis on phronesis, requires a high level of character integration.On his conception, character traits may be frail and fragmentary butstill virtues, and not uncommon. But giving up the idea that practicalwisdom is the heart of all the virtues, as Adams has to do, is a substantialsacrifice, as Kamtekar (2010) argues.

Even though the situationist challenge has left traditional virtueethicists unmoved, it has generated a healthy engagement with empiricalpsychological literature amongst them (Russell 2009 Part III; Annas2011), which has also been fuelled by the growing literature on Foot'sNatural Goodness and, quite independently, an upsurge of interest incharacter education (see below).

4. Future directionsAs noted under Preliminaries above, a few non-Aristotelian forms ofvirtue ethics have developed. The most radical departure from the ancientGreek tradition is found in Michael Slote's agent-based approach (Slote2001) inspired by Hutcheson, Hume, Martineau and the feminist ethics ofcare. Slote's version of virtue ethics is agent-based (as opposed to moreAristotelian forms which are said to be agent-focused) in the sense thatthe moral rightness of acts is based on the virtuous motives or characters

Rosalind Hursthouse


of the agent. However, the extent of the departure has been exaggerated.Although Slote discusses well-being rather than eudaimonia, andmaintains that this consists in certain objective goods, he argues thatvirtuous motives are not only necessary but also sufficient for well-being.And although he usually discusses (virtuous) motives rather than virtues,it is clear that his motives are not transitory inner states but admirablestates of character, such as compassion, benevolence and caring.Moreover, although he makes no mention of practical wisdom, such statesof character are not admirable, not virtuous motives, unless they take theworld into account and are balanced, in (we must suppose) a wise way.The growing interest in ancient Chinese ethics currently tends toemphasise its common ground with the ancient Greek tradition but, as itgains strength, it may well introduce a more radical departure.

Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty years,it isstill very much in the minority, particularly in the area of applied ethics.Many editors of big textbook collections on bioethics, or moralproblems or biomedical ethics now try to include articlesrepresentative of each of the three normative approaches but are oftenunable to find any virtue ethics article addressing a particular issue. Thisis sometimes, no doubt, because the issue has been set up as adeontologicial/utilitarian debate, but it is often simply because no virtueethicist has yet written on the topic. However, the last few years haveseen the first collection on applied virtue ethics (Walker and Ivanhoe2007) and increasing attention to the virtues in role ethics.This area cancertainly be expected to grow in the future, and it looks as thoughapplying virtue ethics in the field of environmental ethics may proveparticularly fruitful (Sandler 2007; Hursthouse 2007, 2011).

Whether virtue ethics can be expected to grow into virtue politicsi.e.to extend from moral philosophy into political philosophyis not soclear. Although Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far as the

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former is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractive sources ofinsight where politics is concerned. However, Nussbaum's most recentwork (Nussbaum 2006) suggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all,generate a satisfyingly liberal political philosophy. Moreover, as notedabove, virtue ethics does not have to be neo-Aristotelian. It may be thatthe virtue ethics of Hutcheson and Hume can be naturally extended into amodern political philosophy (Hursthouse 199091; Slote 1993).

Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has alwaysemphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcation ofrules but as the training of character. In 1982, Carol Gilligan wrote aninfluential attack (In a Different Voice) on the Kantian-inspired theory ofeducational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. Though primarily intendedto criticize Kohlberg's approach as exclusively masculinist, Gilligan'sbook unwittingly raised many points and issues that are reflected in virtueethics. Probably Gilligan has been more effective than the academicdebates of moral philosophers, but one way or another, there is now agrowing movement towards virtues education, amongst both academics(Carr 1999) and teachers in the classroom.

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Acknowledgments

Parts of the introductory material above repeat what I said in theIntroduction and first chapter of On Virtue Ethics, Oxford UniversityPress, 1999.

Copyright 2012 by the author Rosalind Hursthouse

Project (InPhO).Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers, with linksto its database.

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