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Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Social and Political Realm Sean Cordell Submitted for the Degree of Phd, February 2010. Depart

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Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Social and Political Realm Sean Cordell Submitted for the Degree of Phd, February 2010. Depart Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Social and Political Realm Sean Cordell Submitted for the degree of PhD, February 2010. Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield. 1 Abstract This thesis concerns the problem of applying the ideas developed in contemporary virtue ethics to political philosophy. The core of the problem, explained in the opening chapters, is that assessment of right action offered by virtue ethics - in terms of what 'the virtuous person' characteristically does or would do - is focused on individual persons, rather than political principles of government. Accordingly, interpretations of traditional Aristotelianism have struggled to accommodate the putative value of modern value pluralism and manifold conceptions of the 'good life', whilst liberal theories that employ virtue concepts fail to offer a political philosophy that is distinctly virtue ethical. Rather than trying to fit individualistic virtue ethics to political theory in these ways, subsequent chapters start from the viewpoint of individuals and look outward to their social and political environment, arguing that an adequately socio-political virtue ethics requires, and suits, an ethics of social roles. Various virtue ethical approaches to roles, however, fail in different ways to determine what it means to act virtuously in such a role. In response, it is argued that virtue ethics needs a normative account of what specific role-determining institutions should be like. The possibilities for the Aristotelian ergon - function or 'characteristic activity' - serving as a normative criterion for a good institution of its kind are discussed and modified, leading to a positive account of institutional ergon that links the primary function of an institution with the specific and distinct human good or goods that it serves. The promissory conclusion to the thesis is that contemporary virtue ethics can, in this way, offer a distinct and enlightening approach to social and political philosophy, whilst also strengthening itself as an ethical theory. UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELI:' LIBRARY ii Acknowledgements I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the patient help, support and encouragement of Christopher Bennett and Robert Stem, my PhD supervisors over the last four years. My greatest thanks go to them not only for fulfilling their roles so professionally but also for making our monthly meetings so enjoyable. For fmancial support I thank the University of Sheffield for granting me an Incentive Bursary Award which fully funded my MA year and paid my Doctoral fees, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy for awarding me two annual Jacobsen Bursaries. I would also like to thank the staff and faculty of the Department of Philosophy at Sheffield for their support: in particular for giving me the opportunity to teach my research to undergraduates whose help in was also extremely valuable. My gratitude also goes to individuals, at Sheffield and elsewhere, with whom I have become good friends and who maintained faith in this project even - and especially - when mine faltered. Thanks to Paul Sludds, Paul Faulkner, Michael Neu, Robert Hopkins, Jimmy Lenman, Megan Kime, Jules Holroyd, Joe Morrison, John Divers, Joe Kisolo- Ssonko, Suilin Lavelle, Giles Banning-Lover, Robin Scaife, Richard Woodward, Steve Makin, Gerry Hough, Graeme Forbes, David Ekstrand, Dan Herbert, Katie Harrington, Jon Scarlett and Tom O'Shea, Steve deWijze, Fabian Freyenhagen, John Shand, Piers Stephens, Gideon Calder, Rosanna Keefe, Jonathon Webber and Dave Walker. I am especially indebted to Rosalind Hursthouse, both for arousing my research interests when I was an undergraduate at the Open University and for her recent encouragement with the thesis. For proofreading I am very grateful to Steve Harris, Michael Neu, and Jane Cordell, all of whom, along with Carol Stone, Jim Cordell, Jan and Alex Brotherton, and so many others, provide the kind of support that is vital not just to this sort of project but to any that is ongoing and worthwhile in life. This is dedicated to my mother, Olive Cordell (1939-2002). III Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: Virtue Ethics Now 1:1 Introduction 8 1:2 The Resurgence of Virtues and Virtue Ethics 9 1:3 The Non-Instrumental Value of the Virtues 12 1:4 The Priority of the Virtuous Agent, and Right Action 16 1:5 Virtuous Action and Contextual Dependence 23 1:6 Virtue Ethics: An Instructive Category 27 1:7 Conclusion 28 Chapter Two: The Political Challenge to Virtue Ethics 2:1 Introduction 29 2:2 The Political Task 30 2:3 The Aristotelian Tradition 32 2:4 Other Conceptions of Virtue in Political Theory 48 2:5 Siote on Social Justice 53 2:6 Conclusion: A New Direction 57 Chapter Three: Addressing the Political Problem for Virtue Ethics 3:1 Introduction 60 3:2 The Normative Quality of Social Roles 61 3:3 Why Role-Ethics? 70 3:4 Further Objections and Implications 80 3:5 Roles and Virtue Ethics 85 3:6 Conclusion 89 iv Chapter Four: Contemporary Virtue Ethics and Roles 4:1 Introduction 90 4:2 Roles: Over-determinacy and Indeterminacy 91 4:3 Virtue Ethical Approaches to Professional Roles 94 4:4 Conclusion:The Needfor a Virtue Ethics of Institutions 112 Chapter Five 5:1 Introduction 114 5:2 Why Look at Institutions? 116 5:3 Noteson Political Virtue Ethics and 'Corporate' Virtues 118 5:4 Goodness,Characteristic Activityand Function 119 5:5 Aristotle's Ergon Argument 123 5:6 Institutional Virtues 125 5:7 Conclusion 135 Chapter Six: The Institutional Ergon and Human Goods 6:1 Introduction 137 6:2 Institutions and Flourishing 139 6:3 Artificial Strategies for Determining the Institutional Ergon 148 6:4 An Alternative Account 161 6:5 Conclusion 168 Chapter Seven: Defendingthe Human Goods Account of Institutions 7:1 Introduction 171 7:2 Functioning Well but BeingBad 171 7:3 Good Institutions and Bad Functions 181 7:4 'Ring-Fenced' Ethics and Dirty Hands 185 7:5 Institutions, Character, Excellencesand Virtues 192 Conclusion 201 Bibliography 203 v Introduction This thesis is about the problematic relationship between contemporary virtue ethics and political philosophy: between an ethics grounded in the primary moral concepts of virtues and vices, and how this approach has struggled to apply, and how it could apply, at the level of society and the political state. When I first talked to people about this project, a common response was: 'how come an ethics chiefly associated with Aristotle and Plato hasn't been able to say much about politics?' or words to that effect. And a friend of mine asked how any ethics concerned with the moral character of individuals could coherently avoid some kind of account of their relation to each other and to the state and, accordingly, of what the political state should be like. Well, quite. Notably, contemporary virtue ethicists have themselves acknowledged this politics-shaped gap in their approach and, as far as I know, none has denied it. My aims are to show why contemporary virtue ethics has failed to take off politically, and then to suggest a way in which it could. So, firstly then, what is the problem? That is the question we look at in the first two chapters. In Chapter One I describe contemporary normative virtue ethics as ali approach that prioritizes the virtues as morally valuable, from which it then assesses the rightness. or wrongness of actions. Whilst 'virtue ethics' is neither a homogenous category nor one that has a monopoly on virtue concepts in ethics, the evaluative and explanatory priority it gives to virtues of character marks it out as a distinctly person- specific ethics. This means that its assessment of an action - in terms of it being what 'the virtuous person' characteristically does or would do - depends to an important degree on the particularities not only of the situation but also the person acting. In Chapter Two I contend that this person-specificity, the individualistic quality of contemporary virtue ethics, is at the root of the political problem. Starting, as so many virtue ethicists have with Aristotle, an initial obstacle is the question of whether 1 we can rescue Aristotelian politics from Aristotle's infamously elitist view of the properly functioning 'polis.' For, the Politics expresses a political theory that is from our perspective arcane and, perhaps from any perspective, perniciously illiberal and anti-egalitarian. Yet there is a deeper philosophical problem that persists beyond the historical detail. The basic Aristotelian conception of the political state is that it should create and sustain good, virtuous citizens, and the problem is whether such moral authoritarianism can be rendered coherently virtue ethical. Recent Aristotelian approaches hold that the very presence of a plurality of goods and values is itself valuable, and that individuals' capacity for choosing such goods is a key human good to be valued highly. If so, then the state's enforcing or favouring some or other conception of the good life poses a direct threat to these goods, and so is ruled out. This presents the anti-authoritarian Aristotelian with a paradox: the more a political state wants to make people moral, the more it has to leave them alone. But then if we are to say that the best bet for making individuals virtuous is something like the morally neutral or minimal state, or some version of liberal perfectionism, then we might wonder how Aristotelian based virtue ethics can offer a political philosophy much that is distinct from some or other version of liberalism. Following on from this, we look at some other political theories in which virtue concepts figure prominently, the problem here being that they employ virtue concepts instrumentally, valuing certain virtues in terms of how they facilitate life in the liberal polity, for example. Some or all of these theories might be compatible with a virtue ethics, and in particular Civic Republicanism appears to bear a strong affinity.
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