Monday, January 25, 2021

Virtue Ethics


Philosophy means the love of wisdom. For hundreds of years philosophers have struggled to understand the world and humanity’s place in it. Our task today is to understand our individual place in the world. The love of wisdom can only be a personal subjective conviction, which is why I believe focusing on building character through developing virtues is the best, most direct route to address ethical concerns. Henry David Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.[1]” The evils of the world are not inherent to the world. The decisions and policies that arise from people (including ourselves) and governments’ philosophies are the cause of the suffering we experience. By evil, I mean that which discourages continual personal and societal flourishing.  It’s not evil when a lioness kills a gazelle to feed her family. It is evil when I choose to be angry with my wife, and then express it in a manner that causes her pain. By continually developing virtues, I can uproot the evil I find within myself. By so doing, I can be free from the concerns that constantly vex me and cause me to perform less well than I know how. In this paper I will address why character building through personalized virtue ethics is the best way to answer evil.

Virtue ethics were most famously taught by Aristotle in ancient Greece. He taught that virtue was the mean between two extremes. For example, courage lies at the mean of the two extremes of foolhardiness and cowardice.  Some object to focusing on virtue because of the way Aristotle formulated virtues as situating between two vices. I think this is easily handled if we use virtue to mean its definition which is “behavior showing high moral standards[2]”. This may also cause some to object to my intentional misreading of Aristotle, but I do not see how it is incompatible with his focus on personal virtue, as opposed to rules and regulations. If you object to my looser definition of virtue, you are only doing so because I am not following the teachings, or “rules” of Aristotle. Many also object to virtue ethics because it is not clear what virtues we should pursue. This is a great question and, I think, the first question a virtue ethicist should be asking! Many ethicists run into trouble with audiences because people feel too prescribed when philosophers tell them they should be doing this and that, which can create feelings of guilt within the listeners, which breeds resentment toward the philosophical arguments themselves. Virtue ethics has a great opportunity to avoid this by focusing on the personal, rather than the universal, thus freeing people to apply the point of the argument to their lives. What seems like a potential weakness is actually the strength of virtue ethics; it does not proscribe what you should do, only that you should do it. It essentially says, “be good,” while leaving the how up to you.

            The simplest way (which is usually the best) to address ethical concerns is to address them for yourself first. This is why virtue ethics appeals to me and why I feel it offers the best of all possible philosophical worlds. Everything we perceive comes through our brains. We touch a keyboard; the brain sends electrical signals telling us we are typing. We eat a sandwich; the brain tells us it tastes good. It is -5 degrees outside; our brain tells us we are freezing. Everything we experience comes through our brains, and so, is subjective. This is an enormous strength to virtue ethics because it places the responsibility for developing virtue not on the mores of the dominant culture, but on the shoulders of those who make up that culture. This is a freeing and empowering thought that requires us to use our minds to discover what virtues we should personally be seeking. What virtues should you be seeking? I suggest starting with the one you know you lack and progress from there. Since we experience the world subjectively, the best place to start improving the world is in the vessel we view the world from.  I believe that there is objective truth, but that does not matter to our discussion at present.

                Some object to virtue ethics because they see the imperfect way many people behave. I saw this in a philosophy of ethics class when Peter Singer’s arguments for effective altruism were dismissed by many because he only gives an estimated 30% of his income away. This is flawed reasoning. If we only listen to those who lead perfect lives, we would have to dismiss almost all of the accumulated wisdom of the ages! Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy, were all adulterers. So their contributions are worthless and we should not follow the true things they espoused? I do not think that follows. Their positions may have been weakened because of their hypocrisy, but they still contributed good to the world. Another objection is that virtues are relative to the culture they belong to. In Mexican culture, it is not uncommon for a male child to live with his parents until he gets married. I had a professor that lived with his parents until he was married at age 30. He had a doctorate before he moved out of his parents' house! That would be looked down upon in the United States. While it is true that virtues are relative, that is not a problem with my argument because the relativity and subjectivity of virtues is vital to being a successful virtue ethicist. An example will make this clearer. Suppose you are in a classroom and the teacher is starting to bore you on a topic that you normally have some interest in. Maybe you have read a book on the subject. You could sit there and let your mind wander or you could engage and ask a penetrating question. If you think it is the teacher’s job to entertain you, you will probably disengage. If, on the other hand, you use the power of subjectivity, you will reengage by asking a great question, thus changing the shape of the discussion, and relieving your boredom. Subjectivity is not a weakness of virtue ethics, but a great strength. Another objection is that you are not getting rid of unethical behavior by focusing on your own character. I will show how this is untrue by the following example. A young woman in my speech class gave a very moving speech about preventing suicide. It was evident from her speech that someone she was close to had taken their own life. She said that you cannot ultimately prevent suicide, it is their choice, and all you can do is try to be there and show them that pain is a feeling and is temporary, and if you can feel pain that extreme, you have the capacity to feel joy that deeply as well. She is right, of course, that we are not responsible for the choices of others, and we cannot prevent them if they are determined to hurt themselves. But we can prevent our own suicide. We can get medical help, we can fill our lives with good things, and we can hold on. We do not need to remove the roots of evil in others, only in ourselves. That is how we change the world. Like Gandhi said, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ...we need not wait to see what others do.[3]

            In conclusion, I believe that admitting to ourselves that we see the world subjectively is a great help in obtaining virtues for ourselves, and that many of the so-called weaknesses of virtue ethics are actually its secret strengths.



[1] Henry David Thoreau. BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc, 2013. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrydavid161709.html, accessed December 5, 2013.

[3] Brian Morton, “Falser Words Were Never Spoken.” The New York Times, August 29, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/falser-words-were-never-spoken.html?_r=0 

No comments: