DOCSLIB.ORG

Learning to Live and Love Virtuously Henry Deruff

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Learning to Live and Love Virtuously Henry Deruff Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2018 Learning to Live and Love Virtuously Henry DeRuff Recommended Citation DeRuff, Henry, "Learning to Live and Love Virtuously" (2018). CMC Senior Theses. 1880. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1880 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Claremont McKenna College Learning to Live and Love Virtuously submitted to Professor Paul Hurley by Henry DeRuff for Senior Thesis Spring 2018 April 23rd, 2018 Abstract John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant authored two of the most famous pieces of work in ethical theory (Utilitarianism and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, respectively), yet both fail for various reasons to give us direction by way of living good lives. This thesis begins by outlining those shortcomings, before offering Aristotelian virtue ethics as the solution. Virtue ethics, as conceived by Aristotle, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Julia Annas, delineates a process – grounded in our real lives – by which we may improve as people and therefore flourish, or live good, moral lives: the habituation of the virtues. Importantly, virtue ethics is a process, (not a set of outcomes) and is teachable, which distinguishes it from the other two theories. In developing the virtues, we are able to discover goods internal to the practices that define our lives, whether those are our work, our school, our relationships, or something else entirely. Furthermore, the virtue-ethical approach helps us learn from and grow in our emotional lives, as opposed to casting emotions aside as a skewing force contrary to morality. Virtue, as I will show, lays the groundwork for love, and therefore for flourishing relationships across our lives. In the final chapter, I examine a place where virtue and virtuous love are effectively taught and embraced: Camp Lanakila, in Fairlee, VT. I conclude by offering some takeaways from Lanakila that we may incorporate in our schools, our places of work and worship, our families, and our lives. Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank for helping me and supporting me in the process of writing this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to thank Paul Hurley, my reader, for so much: thank you for being patient, understanding, and honest with me when I missed deadlines, and for giving me straightforward feedback when my ideas were headed in the wrong direction. Thank you for being my philosophical sounding board – I enjoyed every one of our meetings throughout the year, and always came away with a better grasp of the concepts with which I was grappling. Finally, thank you for being an inspiring professor – your classes, ultimately, were the reason I wrote a thesis in ethical theory. Next, I would like to thank the community of Camp Lanakila, for helping me to grow every day that I spent there, and every day since. The values and structure of Camp, as well as the people who work tirelessly to uphold and improve them, form a large part of the basis of my character, as well as my reasons for writing this thesis. Thank you to Jenn for access to the camp photos. Thank you to Stu for your friendship. Thank you especially to Ridge for providing me with the materials upon which the fourth chapter is largely based, as well as for introducing me to success counseling for the first time when I was ten years old and badly needed a change of picture. Lanakila will always be home. Thank you to all of my friends at CMC (particularly the Fish Houses, the Yoodli Squad, Phillips, the Murty track, OI, Vamos Chicos, and the REC) for your care, good humor, and patience with me and my various quirks. I love you all, and I hope you know how much you have helped me grow as a person and an intellectual over the past four years, whether we met this year, in 2014, or somewhere along the way. I hope I have helped in some small way for you, too. Thank you especially to Evelyn and Eli, for supporting me through every bump in the road in the creation of this thesis and in our senior year, for pushing me on my ideas, and for helping me learn firsthand about the work involved in virtuous love and the abundance of internal goods that spring from it. I admire and love you both dearly. Finally, I would like to thank my family. Thank you to my uncle, Rob, for your thoughtful comments and offer to read my thesis. Thank you to my siblings, John and Katherine, for being wonderful human beings, whom I look up to so very much. I aspire to your dedication to hard work, your goofiness, and your thoughtful love. Most of all, thank you to my mother and father, Elizabeth and David. Since the beginning, you have been my biggest role models and best teachers. Dad, thank you for always being curious about my thesis, for pushing me along, for showing me what respectful debate can be, and for giving me the excellent advice to not be afraid to totally rework a section. Mom, thank you for not taking my ideas at face value, for asking questions, offering alternative (and usually better) interpretations, and helping me talk through nuances that I did not understand. Thank you for always pushing me to always think more deeply, holistically, and compassionately, and for your unending support. I love you all and am so very fortunate to be a part of this family. I have learned and will learn so much from you all, every day of my life. Thank you. Table of Contents Introduction 8 Chapter 1: Why Mill and Kant Can’t Help Us Flourish 15 I. How Can We Learn to Live Good Lives? 15 II. In the Pursuit of Utility, but Whose? 16 III. Acting from Duty: Possible on the Playground? 25 IV. Beyond Alienation: Finding Reasons to Build Virtuous, Loving Character 35 Chapter 2: Learning to Flourish 40 I. An Ethical Theory not at Odds with Emotions 40 II. How We Flourish: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and Our Lives 41 III. How We Improve: MacIntyre’s Practices, Narrative Unity, and Traditions 54 IV. Putting it All Together: Annas’ Skill-Building Analogy and Human Flourishing 67 Chapter 3: Virtuous Love and Human Flourishing 79 I. Laying the Groundwork for Love 79 II. Pathological Emotion, Master of Reason, or Neither? 81 III. Connection, Meaning, and the Loving Principle of Charity 85 IV. Loving and Flourishing 95 V. Learning to Love 101 Chapter 4: The School of Virtuous Love 110 I. Making Time for Growth: A Daily Schedule Designed for It 110 II. “We Help Create Fine People”: Setting a Virtuous Course 116 III. Success Counseling: Teaching Virtue through Practices 119 IV. A Culture of Virtuous Love 128 Conclusion: Taking Camp into the World 133 I. A Call to Action 133 II. What Makes Camp Effective? 134 III. Challenging Convenience: A Second Call to Action 138 Appendix 144 Bibliography 147 Introduction Convenience pervades our modern lives. When we want a book or a pair of noise- cancelling headphones, we can order them on Amazon, and they will arrive within days at our doorstep. If we want to get somewhere but do not have a car, we can call a Lyft or an Uber, and one will be there to whisk us wherever we please. If we are hungry but do not want to cook, and also do not want to go to a restaurant, DoorDash and UberEats promise essentially whatever food we want, delivered to our door as quickly as possible. Almost any song in the world is available via a quick search of whichever music streaming service we prefer, and more and more, we don’t even have to use our hands to do this, as our technology understands voice commands. Other forms of entertainment, like television shows and video games, can be accessed more easily online than ever before. More and more employers offer remote jobs, where we need never leave our houses or apartments to go to work. Perhaps most notably, our social lives have been made considerably more convenient by the advent of social media. When we want to interact, all of our friends are instantaneously available by way of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. We do not even need to speak to another person – we can text or dictate and have our phones transcribe for us what we want to say. If we do not want to interact with other people, we almost never Introduction 9 have to. In so many words, convenience has entered into our lives further than ever before, and as a result, those lives are so much easier. What is more, leisure is much more widely accessible than it has ever been. “What makes today different [from the past, when there was a distinct leisure class] is the fact that so much high-quality leisure activity can be accessed by all at low average cost and near- zero marginal cost.”1 So, there may also be equity benefits to the increase of convenience, in that it allows people all over the socioeconomic spectrum to access entertainment and socializing at the touch of a button, or the sound of their voice. More people can add their voice to political debates, organize for social justice, and meet likeminded people than ever before. The benefits of convenience are many, and perhaps more equitable than previous advances have been.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • I-Ii, Question 55, Article 4
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-16578-6 — Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics J. Budziszewski Excerpt More Information i-ii, question 55, article 4 Whether Virtue Is Suitably Dei ned? TEXT PARAPHRASE [1] Whether virtue is suitably dei ned? Is the traditional dei nition of virtue i tting? “Virtue is a good quality of the mind that enables us to live in an upright way and cannot be employed badly – one which God brings about in us, with- out us.” St. Thomas respectfully begins with this widely accepted dei nition because it would be arrogant to dismiss the result of generations of inquiry without examination. The ultimate source of the view which it encapsulates is St. Augustine of Hippo, but Augustine did not use precisely this wording. His more diffuse remarks had been condensed into a formula by Peter Lombard, 2 and the formula was then further sharpened by the Lombard’s disciples. Although St. Thomas begins with the tradition, he does not rest with it – he goes on to consider whether the received dei nition is actually correct. The i rst two Objections protest calling virtue a good quality. The third protests calling it a quality of the mind . The fourth objects to the phrase that it enables us to live rightly and the i fth to the phrase that it cannot be employed badly . Finally, the sixth protests the statement that God brings it about in us, without us . Although, in the end, St. Thomas accepts the dei nition, he does not accept it quite in the sense in which some of his predecessors did.
    [Show full text]
  • Rosalind Hursthouse, on Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
    Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 275. Reviewed by Gilbert Harman, Department of Philosophy, Princeton Univer- sity Virtue ethics is atype of ethicaltheory in which the notion of virtue or good character plays a central role. This splendid new book describes a “program” for the development of a particular (“Aristotelian”) form of virtue ethics. The book is intended to be used as a textbook, but should be read by anyone interested in moral philosophy. Hursthouse has been a major contributor to the development of virtue ethics and the program she describes, while making use of the many contributions of others, is very much her program, with numerous new ideas and insights. The book has three parts. The first dispels common misunderstandings and explains how virtue ethics applies to complex moral issues. The sec- ond discusses moral motivation, especially the motivation involved in doing something because it is right. The third explains how questions about the objectivity of ethics are to be approached within virtue ethics. Structure Hursthouse’s virtue ethics takes as central the conception of a human be- ing who possesses all ethical virtues of character and no vices or defects of character—”human being” rather than “person” because the relevant char- acter traits are “natural” to the species. To a first approximation, virtue ethics says that a right action is an action among those available that a perfectly virtuous human being would charac- teristically do under the circumstances. This is only a first approximation because of complications required in order accurately to describe certain moral dilemmas.
    [Show full text]
  • Augustine's Ethics
    15 BONNIE KENT Augustine’s ethics Augustine regards ethics as an enquiry into the Summum Bonum: the supreme good, which provides the happiness all human beings seek. In this respect his moral thought comes closer to the eudaimonistic virtue ethics of the classical Western tradition than to the ethics of duty and law associated with Christianity in the modern period. But even though Augustine addresses many of the same problems that pagan philosophers do, he often defends very different answers. For him, happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, a reward granted in the afterlife for virtue in this life. Virtue itself is a gift of God, and founded on love, not on the wisdom prized by philosophers. The art of living In Book 8 of De civitate Dei Augustine describes “moral philosophy” (a Latin expression), or “ethics” (the Greek equivalent), as an enquiry into the supreme good and how we can attain it. The supreme good is that which we seek for its own sake, not as a means to some other end, and which makes us happy. Augustine adds, as if this were an uncontroversial point, that happiness is the aim of philosophy in general.1 Book 19 opens with a similar discussion. In his summary of Varro’s treatise De philosophia, Augustine reports that no school of philosophy deserves to be considered a distinct school unless it differs from others on the supreme good. For the supreme good is that which makes us happy, and the only purpose of philosophizing is the attainment of happiness.2 Both of these discussions cast philosophy as a fundamentally practical discipline, so that ethics appears to overshadow logic, metaphysics, and other comparatively abstract areas as a philosopher’s chief concern.
    [Show full text]
  • A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2011 The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care Frederick Joseph Bennett University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Bennett, Frederick Joseph, "The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care" (2011). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3007 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care by Frederick J. Bennett A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Thomas Williams, Ph.D. Joanne B. Waugh, Ph.D. Brook J. Sadler, Ph.D. Deni Elliott, Ed.D. Date of Approval: March 28, 2011 Keywords: Aristotle, Aquinas, Noddings, Charity, Unity © Copyright 2011, Frederick J. Bennett Table of Contents Abstract ii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Ethics 4 Virtue Ethics 7 Chapter 3: Aristotle’s Virtue 15 Borrowing from Aristotle 32 Modern Challenges to Virtue Ethics Theory from Aristotle’s Work 41 Aquinas and Aristotle 44 Chapter 4: Charity 48 Chapter 5: Care-Based Virtue Ethics Theory 56 The Problem 57 Hypothesis 59 First Principle 63 Care as a Foundation 64 The Virtue of Care 72 Care and Charity 78 Chapter 6: Framework for Care-Based Virtue Ethics 87 Care and the Virtues 87 The Good 89 The Virtuoso Human 91 Practical Wisdom 94 Chapter 7: Conclusion 97 References 101 i Abstract The goal of this thesis is to develop the foundation and structure for a virtue ethics theory grounded in a specific notion of care.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtue Ethics As Moral Formation for Ignatian Education in Chile Juan Pablo Valenzuela
    Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations Student Scholarship 5-2018 Virtue Ethics as Moral Formation for Ignatian Education in Chile Juan Pablo Valenzuela Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Valenzuela, Juan Pablo, "Virtue Ethics as Moral Formation for Ignatian Education in Chile" (2018). Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations. 32. https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations/32 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VIRTUE ETHICS AS MORAL FORMATION FOR IGNATIAN EDUCATION IN CHILE A thesis by Juan Pablo Valenzuela, S.J. presented to The Faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Licentiate in Sacred Theology Berkeley, California May 2018 Committee Signatures _________________________________________ Lisa Fullam, Director May 9, 2018 _________________________________________ Eduardo Fernández, S.J. Reader May 9, 2018 Virtue Ethics as Moral Formation for Ignatian Education in Chile A thesis by Juan Pablo Valenzuela, S.J ABSTRACT The Catholic Church in Chile is in a state of moral perplexity. On one side, the hierarchy of the Church, moral theologians, and teachers propose and teach a morality based on rules and principles that does not take account of the context of the country and creates a distance from the moral perspective of the majority of the Chilean people.
    [Show full text]
  • Doing the Right Thing: Business Ethics, Moral Indeterminancy & Existentialism
    DOING THE RIGHT THING: BUSINESS ETHICS, MORAL INDETERMINANCY & EXISTENTIALISM Charles Sherwood London School of Economics Tutor: Susanne Burri Winner: Postgraduate Category Institute of Business Ethics Student Essay Competition 2017 Introduction Business ethics is a subject of growing interest to academics and practitioners alike. But can moral theory really guide business decision-making? And, can it do so when it matters? i.e. when those decisions get difficult. Difficult managerial decisions have many characteristics. They are important, often hurried, sometimes contentious. But, perhaps above all, they are ambiguous. We are unsure what is the right choice. Imagine the following… Arlette, an executive in a foreign-aid charity, needs to get vital supplies across a frontier to refugee families with children nearing starvation. Her agent on the ground is asked by border guards for a $5,000 bribe, some of which they will pocket personally and the rest of which will help fund a terror campaign. False, dishonest and illegal accounting will be required to disguise the use of the funds from donors and regulators. Arlette is coming up for promotion. She tries to explain the problem to her superior. He is impatient and just tells her to get the job done. Should Arlette allow the agent to pay the bribe? Moral theories struggle to resolve this kind of ambiguity, because they prove indeterminate in one of two ways: either they advocate a single, ‘monolithic’ principle that is all but impossible to apply in complex situations like the above; or they offer an array of principles that individually are more easily applied, yet conflict with each other.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtue Ethics and Education from Late Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century
    KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES Hellerstedt (ed.) Hellerstedt Eighteenth Century the to Antiquity Late from Virtue Ethics and Education Edited by Andreas Hellerstedt Virtue Ethics and Education from Late Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century Virtue Ethics and Education from Late Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century Knowledge Communities This series focuses on innovative scholarship in the areas of intellectual history and the history of ideas, particularly as they relate to the communication of knowledge within and among diverse scholarly, literary, religious, and social communities across Western Europe. Interdisciplinary in nature, the series especially encourages new methodological outlooks that draw on the disciplines of philosophy, theology, musicology, anthropology, paleography, and codicology. Knowledge Communities addresses the myriad ways in which knowledge was expressed and inculcated, not only focusing upon scholarly texts from the period but also emphasizing the importance of emotions, ritual, performance, images, and gestures as modalities that communicate and acculturate ideas. The series publishes cutting-edge work that explores the nexus between ideas, communities and individuals in medieval and early modern Europe. Series Editor Clare Monagle, Macquarie University Editorial Board Mette Bruun, University of Copenhagen Babette Hellemans, University of Groningen Severin Kitanov, Salem State University Alex Novikofff, Fordham University Willemien Otten, University of Chicago Divinity School Virtue Ethics and Education from Late Antiquity
    [Show full text]
  • Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics
    Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics RAJA HALWANI The paper argues that care ethics should be subsumed under virtue ethics by constru- ing care as an important virtue. Doing so allows us to achieve two desirable goals. First, we preserve what is important about care ethics (for example, its insistence on particularity, partiality, emotional engagement, and the importance of care to our moral lives). Second, we avoid two important objections to care ethics, namely, that it neglects justice, and that it contains no mechanism by which care can be regulated so as not to be become morally corrupt. The issue of the status of care ethics (CE) as a moral theory is still unresolved. If, as has been argued, CE cannot, and should not, constitute a comprehen- sive moral theory, and if care cannot be the sole foundation of such a theory, the question of the status of CE becomes a pressing one, especially given the plausibility of the idea that caring does constitute an important and essential component of moral thinking, attitude, and behavior. Furthermore, the answers given to solve this issue are inadequate. For instance, the suggestion that CE has its own moral domain to operate in (for example, friendship), while, say, an ethics of justice has another (public policy), seems to encounter difficulties when we realize that in the former domain justice is required. I want to suggest that CE be part of a more comprehensive moral framework, namely, virtue ethics (VE). Doing so allows us to achieve two general, desir- able goals. First, by incorporating care within VE, we will be able to imbed CE within a comprehensive moral theory and so accommodate the criticism that such an ethics cannot stand on its own.
    [Show full text]
  • A Thomistic Critique of the Ethics of Alasdair Macintyre
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2014 A Thomistic Critique of the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre Marcus Otte University of Central Florida Part of the Philosophy Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Otte, Marcus, "A Thomistic Critique of the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 4581. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4581 A THOMISTIC CRITIQUE OF THE ETHICS OF ALASDAIR MACINTYRE by MARCUS SHANE OTTE B.A. University of Central Florida 2009 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2014 Major Professor: Donald Jones © Marcus Shane Otte 2014 ii ABSTRACT Alasdair MacIntyre argues in favor of a historicist Thomism in ethics and political philosophy. In his theory, sociological categories take up much of the space traditionally occupied by metaphysics. This peculiar feature of MacIntyre’s Thomism, and its merits and demerits, is already a subject that has been taken up by many critics. In this thesis, these criticisms are supplemented and unified by identifying what is perhaps the most fundamental difficulty with MacIntyre’s ethics: his version of Thomism is problematic because it treats epistemology as first philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtue Ethics in School Counseling: a Framework for Decision Making
    Virtue Ethics in School Counseling: A Framework for Decision Making Felicia L. Wilczenski University of Massachusetts Boston Amy L. Cook Mercy College, New York 2 Abstract Virtue ethics focus on the motives that guide ethical decision making and action, and as such, are critical to the competent application of the counseling profession’s ethical codes. Knowledge of virtue ethics deepens understanding of moral responsibilities and ethical reasoning in professional practice. This paper is an overview of virtue ethics and discusses its relevance for school counselors and counselor educators. 3 Virtue Ethics in School Counseling: A Framework for Decision Making It is estimated that by 2040, no one ethnic or racial group will make up the majority of the national school-age population (National Association of School Boards of Education, 2002). The increasingly diverse student populations served by school counselors requires that they develop a conscious awareness of their morals from a multicultural perspective and to acquire a worldview that does not center on the values of mainstream culture. Ethical codes developed by professional organizations, such as the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), are derived from traditional Western standards. School counselors who adhere exclusively to professional ethical codes may not serve all individuals equitably or acknowledge the existence of cultural differences (Cook & Houser, 2009). School counselors are entrusted by society with the care of its most vulnerable members—children and adolescents. Therefore, it is important that school counselors have honorable motives and adhere to an ethic of care that goes beyond the basic legal/ethical principles incorporated in professional codes. Virtue ethics encourage the development of other-regarding perspectives.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtues, Perfectionism and Natural Law
    EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES – VOL 3 ISSUE 1 (2010) Virtues, Perfectionism and Natural Law Michele Mangini * I. Premise Many contend that liberalism is weak from the point of view of value orientation, because it neglects that central part of human experience which is expressed by substantive ideas of the good, such as human flourishing, the good life, human goodness, and the like. This paper argues that there is a long tradition, in the Western culture, of a substantive view of human goodness revolving around the notion of ‘virtues’. This tradition is supportive of, and still belongs to, liberal political theory insofar as one accepts the assumption that the cultural (and especially the ethical) presuppositions of liberalism are (at least, partly) embodied in natural law . The work of ‘retrieval’ and analysis necessary to forward this argument will be founded on a few claims concerning the compatibility between the ethical core of the virtues and liberalism. The substantive proposal of human goodness that is put forward, named ‘agency goods perfectionism’, is an attempt at establishing some continuity between a morality based on the virtues, in agreement with the natural law tradition, and a political morality in which liberal pluralism is balanced by some degree of value orientation through ‘general and vague’ conceptions of the virtues. The argument is aimed at showing more overlap than what is usually accepted between, on one hand, a secular political theory such as liberalism and, on the other hand, a religiously inspired conception such as natural law. In order to defend this thesis, this paper challenges some competing substantive ethical theories, such as objective list theories and new natural law theory; which are also aimed at addressing the problem of value-orientation, but from a perspective that is threatening the fundamental liberal presupposition of freedom of choice.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Virtue Ethics Lacks a Decision-Procedure to Help Us Make
    ‘Virtue ethics lacks a decision-procedure to help us make moral decisions. It is not, therefore a good moral theory.’ Discuss. THE HABIT OF VIRTUE: The Fundamental Development of Character by Tricia Baldwin Although far from a complete theory of ethics and indeed a flawed one, virtue ethics is a good moral theory as per its area of focus. The concentration of virtue ethics is on the development of character and in managing the intersection of reason and passion through practice. Its focus on character and moral virtues demonstrated by consistent moral action contributes significantly to our ethical understanding and formation of ethical principles. It attempts to answer a fundamental question in ethics: what sort of person should I be? The argument that virtue ethics has no decision procedure is a fallacious one. Virtue ethics has three decision-making procedures: 1) virtues are demonstrated by consistent virtuous action over a lifetime - moral virtues such as honesty, generosity and knowledge are demonstrated by a lifetime habit of consistent action to achieve these virtues, and this provides a decision guide in any given situation by taking actions founded on virtues (e.g. achieve honesty by not lying in a given situation and series of situations); 2) the golden mean - choose a moderate stance between excess and deficiency (e.g. choose courage as the mean between rashness and cowardice in a situation); and 3) virtuous exemplars - choose an action that would be chosen by a virtuous person (e.g. choose Jean Vanier as a virtuous exemplar for decisions about inclusivity). These decision-procedures may at times be vague in comparison to a rules-based morality, but this does not make them insignificant.
    [Show full text]