Section 1
Philosophical issues
One of the reviewers of our book proposal complained that most of the contributors to the volume endorsed some variety of the universality thesis. While few of the contributors are as explicit as Jacobs (Chapter 2 of this volume) in stating that āvirtue-centred ethics should be understood non-relativistically, non-locallyā and even as providing āreasons to reject relativismā, it is true that the sort of academics who turn up at conferences on virtue ethics, or its educational incarnation as character education, are rarely followers of moral relativism in any form or guise. Nevertheless, most of the present contributors make even-handed attempts at justifying their positions with respect to opposing, in particular relativistic, views ā so the latter do get a fair hearing in many chapters. Moreover, the whole idea behind the motivation to justify some kind of a universality thesis, radical or modified, cannot be fully understood except against the backdrop of the observation that the norms endorsed by various cultures undeniably differ to a substantial degree (cf. the opening sentence in Stanglās overview article, 2018, p. 508). Thus, in a way, the universalism thesis already contains an attempt to challenge what could be called āthe received wisdomā; and received wisdoms rarely needs as much spelling out as the arguments meant to counter them.
That said, it may again be an over-simplification to say that a thesis about the locality of virtues constitutes an undeniable received wisdom (the commonly encountered, developmentally induced relativism of high-school students and undergrads notwithstanding!). Offsetting any insights about cultural uniqueness ā be those modest insights about how the British mentality differs subtly from that of its mainland European counterparts, or more radical ones about the extreme opaqueness and unfamiliarity of cultures such as that of the Amish people ā are more mundane observations about how surprisingly similar human beings seem to be in some respects. Indeed, it would probably seem astounding to an alien from outer space how monocultural human beings are, irrespective of distances in geography and time. We more or less like and do the same things: eating, making love, playing games, creating art, socialising, gossiping, etc. We even started to build pyramids on both sides of the Atlantic at about the same time in history without any cross-Atlantic interaction. It would be somewhat astounding if our repertoire of virtues did not reflect those similarities in any way.
Recent historical and political developments have brought some of those considerations into sharper relief and, indeed, provided some of the motivations for the theme of the Oxford conference from which this volume derives. We are here obviously referring to the growing political polarisation in the Western world and the recent upsurge of post-truth populism and nationalism. We seem to have moved far away from the cosy consensus of the 1990s when a liberalist mindset, in one form or another, seemed to have become the norm in Western socio-political debate and writers mused profusely on the āend of historyā, in the sense that the time of radical ideological tensions was gradually drawing to a close (in the Western world and soon elsewhere, too), with the victory of soft capitalist economic structures and a social liberalist consensus. What nobody anticipated, but has happened since then, is what the columnist OāHagan (2020) refers to as an āanti-woke backlashā, with a silent majority of an odd mixture of privileged and under-privileged voters reacting badly to what they see as excesses of censorious political correctness, watered-down local traditions, bland and homogeneous āluvvieā culture, and anything-goes social mores.
To see recent political developments as an affirmation of local over global values and virtues is true to some extent. However, the alleged āliberal consensusā was not exactly built around the fulcrum of universalist virtues either, except perhaps one: tolerance. However, tolerance is a somewhat paradoxical virtue from the perspective of the debate about locality versus universality, because tolerance affirms the universal acceptance of difference. After all, liberalism rejects any thick comprehensive conception of the good life, so liberalist philosophy is not exactly the ideal home for a conception of virtues at all, let alone universalist ones. And although the current socio-political turmoil served as the backdrop of many of the presentations at the 2019 Oriel conference, the discussion quickly turned to more specific and time-honoured philosophical conundrums.
In Chapter 1 of this volume, Miller offers a helpful discussion of different kinds of relativism and notes that the one which need concern us in the present context is the meta-ethical version. He further explains the three levels at which meta-ethical misgivings about the universality of virtue may emerge. The first and most general one is about the presumed universal domains of life that the discrete virtues are meant to track. What exactly are those domains and their related virtues ā and why is there no intercultural agreement about the exact lists of either two? Second, going down the ladder, even if we agree on a particular domain as having universal salience, say the domain of self-worth, what is the virtue relevant to that domain: is it pride or is it humility? These are conflicting virtues, upheld by different theorists and cultures. Third, even if we agree on a domain and its respective virtue ā say, the domain of responding to facts being governed by the virtue of honesty ā there tend to be conflicting accounts of what exactly the virtue involves, within cultures and even more so between cultures, as soon as we attempt to populate the relevant āthinā virtue term with sufficient āthicknessā to constitute an action-and-emotion guiding state of character. Miller could even have added a fourth level: what happens when this specific virtue clashes with another one and phronesis is meant to kick in for adjudication? Does the context-sensitive nature of the phronetic decision, ideally to be arrived at in each case, mean that phronesis cannot operate along universalist principles? Moreover, if we agree that different decisions can be equally appropriate after the relevant individuality-and-context adjustments, is such pluralism compatible with universalism, or does it push us in the direction of relativistic localism?
In Chapter 4, Webber provides us with a helpful conceptualisation that complements Millerās insights. After explaining how the motivational structure of each virtue consists in a cluster of related evaluative attitudes, Webber employs the metaphor of a high and low resolutions. Our ordinary virtue talk āspecifies complex motivational states in fairly low resolutionā, allowing for a universalist interpretation. However, if we zoom in for a higher-resolution image that presents the relevant set of attitudes, or even further still for an even higher-resolution image that presents the evaluative attitudesā clusters of associated desires and beliefs, we end up with much more localised (culture-specific or even situation-specific) variance. However, Webber (as indeed Miller also, while using different descriptors) allows for the possibility that this āzoomingā exercise may yield different results in the case of different virtues: namely, that some virtues are universal āall the way downā while others lose their universalist āresolutionā fairly quickly as we zoom in on the specifics. Both Miller and Webber offer suggestions that would potentially change the constitution of the discourse animating the present volume from being about the universality or locality of virtue to being about the universality or locality of particular virtues.
In addition to this general debate, to which all the chapters in Section 1 contribute in one way or another, each chapter offers its unique take on particular issues. Millerās case study of the surprisingly neglected virtue of honesty indicates that its universality remains even in Webberās high-resolution mode. Webber makes a similar claim for ethical integrity, because the attitudes composing it do not refer to the particular ethical environment at all. In Chapter 2, Jacobs proposes a universalist argument from the nature of good moral education. This is quite a novel take on the universalism issue because claims about the universality of good moral education tend to be derived from the standpoint of some general ethical theory which the relevant theorist endorses and, subsequently, argues should inform moral education. Jacobs turns the argument on its head. He argues that moral education which cultivates the virtues (normally referred to as character education) is the sort of education that is ābest able to facilitate comprehension of moral values, their complex interrelations, and responsiveness to themā. Indeed, this is the way most parents and educators around the world do teach children in order to help them respond to the texture of moral reality. If that is the case, however, we have good reason to think that the moral reality to which the children are being alerted is indeed virtue-based. Moreover, since the methods to teach character tend to be fairly uniform, this gives us reason to think that the virtues that are being cultivated are also universal.
In Chapter 5, Rothschild argues that the ācoreā Aristotelian moral virtues such as justice, generosity, moderation and courage (although she excludes magnanimity), as well as some that Aristotle did not name, such as honesty and patience, are fundamentally social. This essential sociality of the core virtues, with their common existential tasks, entails that they make us good in ways that render them āfully universalā: namely, ārelevant to all of us, worth pursuing for each person in pursuit of the good, and in particular, for the good life enjoyed jointly with othersā. Rothschild acknowledges, however, the existence of other more local āsecondary virtuesā. In contrast to the upbeat tone of Rothschildās chapter, in Chapter 6, Snow brings us down to earth with her admonitions to virtue theorists for not staying in touch with recent developments in evolutionary science in general and in germline genome editing in particular: a technology that can produce heritable changes in members of many species, including humans. Virtue theorists tend to rely on low-level anecdotal evidence from everyday life but shun real science. The traits that can potentially be altered are not only the standard biological ones, having to do with disease prevention and an extended life span, but may also include moral traits and capacities. What would be the moral implications of this technology becoming widely available (or perhaps only available to a select few), and how would it problematise the whole universalityālocality discourse? In Chapter 3, Curren also takes virtue theorists to task in a way that relates to the concerns of this volume. His worries are not about the evasion of science, but rather about the evasion of talk about universal rules and laws, as enshrined for example in the natural-law tradition. Rather than drawing on Aristotleās Politics, as he has done in previous work, Curren here challenges a standard interpretation of Socrates as a virtue ethicist with no interest in moral law and duty. Rather, he depicts a philosopher whose understanding of virtue is āinformed by natural law and a related understanding of piety and fidelity to reasonā. Currenās discussion elicits various vexing questions about the role of laws and rules in a virtue-based system, and whether a debate on the universality of the latter can be conducted without an account of the universality of the former.
So what are the lessons to be learned from Section 1 of this volume, apart from evidencing how rich and illuminating ā yet varied ā the accounts are that these authors give us? There are many lessons, but we leave readers with just one. Perhaps the discourse on the universality of virtue has been conducted so far at too high a level of abstraction. We might be better served with more detailed accounts of individual virtues and how those represent universality or locality ā but without assuming that one general answer can found which applies to the virtue repertoire as a whole.
References
OāHagan, E. M. (2020). The āanti-wokeā backlash is no joke ā and progressives are going to lose if they donāt wise up. The Guardian. Retrieved January 30, 2020, from www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/30/anti-woke-backlash-liberalism-laurence-fox
Stangl, R. (2018). Cultural relativity and justification. In N. E. Snow (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of virtue (pp. 508ā523). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
