Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy

Michel Croce, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Michel Croce, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119525738
• eBook ISBN: 9781119525691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Connecting Virtues examines the significant advances within the fast-growing field of virtue theory and shows how research has contributed to the current debates in moral philosophy, epistemology, and political philosophy.

• Includes groundbreaking chapters offering cutting-edge research on the topic of the virtues
• Provides insights into the application of the topic of virtue, such as the role of intellectual virtues, virtuous dispositions, and the value of some neglected virtues for political philosophy
• Examines the relevance of the virtues in the current debates in social epistemology, the epistemology of education, and civic education
• Features work from world-leading and internationally recognized philosophers working on the virtues today

PART 1
MORAL PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER 1
Utrum Sit Una Tantum Vera Enumeratio Virtutum Moralium

Sophie Grace Chappell

(Readers should feel at liberty, if they wish, to translate this into thirteenth-century Latin, as well as the title.)

It seems that there cannot be a single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 1. For any counting of items presupposes that we have a principle of individuation applicable to those items. But there is no one correct principle of individuation for the virtues of character. And so, no single correct list.

Objection 2. For what is true in ethics is “what everyone or most of us or the wisest have always thought is true,” as Aristotle (Topics 100b23–25) and the Catholic Catechism both incline us to agree. But there is no single list of the virtues that has been accepted semper ubique ab omnibus [always, everywhere, by everyone]: different lists are found in Plato and Aristotle and St. Paul and Buddhism and Islam and Confucianism and (implicitly) the Lonely Hearts columns and in many other places too. Therefore there cannot be a single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 3. Moreover, if there were a single correct list of virtues of character then Aristotle or Plato or St. Paul would already have discovered it. But Plato and Aristotle and St. Paul all give different lists in different places; and Aristotle and St. Paul present no argument for their lists, while Plato sometimes just assumes a list, as in the Protagoras, and sometimes presents an unconvincing argument for a different list, as in the Republic. So none of them discovered a single correct list of virtues of character. Neither, then, can we.

Objection 4. Moreover, the virtues are those dispositions of character that people admire. But what people admire changes all the time and includes many contradictions and perplexities. No stable single list can be founded upon this mutability, contradictoriness, and perplexity. Ergo, etc.

Objection 5. Again the virtues are those dispositions of character that are always beneficial. But no dispositions of character are always beneficial; social structures and environmental conditions change constantly, and we change with them. Therefore there are no virtues of character, and hence no single correct list of such virtues, or indeed any list at all.

Objection 6. Again, the virtues are those dispositions of character that no one can make bad use of. But there is no disposition of character that no one can make bad use of: a soldier who fights knowingly in a bad cause can be courageous, a burglar who incidentally passes treasures on his way to the burglary he intends can temperately ignore them, justice can be unloving through harshness, love can be unjust through partiality, faith and hope can be sincere but misplaced. Ergo there are no virtues, and hence no list.

Objection 7. Again, the virtues are those dispositions of character that promote or instantiate human flourishing. But human flourishing is an evolutionarily determined notion, and what promotes it is not only different depending on the human animal’s environmental conditions but also sets a standard that is not so much an ethical one as, in Bernard Williams’s words, the “ethological standard of the bright eye and the gleaming coat” (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 46). By this way, then, either the list of virtues of character includes such things as ruthlessness and cunning and dissimulation and promiscuity, quod minime convenit [which would be entirely unfitting], or there is no list of virtues of character.

Objection 8. And the true virtues are those dispositions that necessarily express and promote the good of and for any rational creature. But if we were a different kind of creature then different dispositions would be virtues for us (see Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness, on wolves and bees and plants). Therefore all of these dispositions only contingently express or promote our good; so none of them is truly a virtue. So there can be no list of virtues of character.

Objection 9. Moreover, the virtues are deep dispositions in us, as Bernard Williams says in several places. But as Williams also says, it is impossible for us to state consciously and explicitly the depth of these dispositions without detaching ourselves from their motivational power. Therefore, if there can be a single correct list of the virtues of character, it is one we cannot state. Therefore we must either speak knowingly falsely or say that we know of no single correct list of the virtues of character.

Objection 10. Moreover, a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues. But “virtue” means “a quality of soul that resides in the will.” And the soul and the will are unities. So therefore is virtue. So there is only one virtue, and unless a singleton “list” is a list, there can be no list of virtues.

Objection 11. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, Augustine says in De libero arbitrio, book 1—following Socrates and the Stoics, and followed by Kant—that virtue means the capacity of the will that makes use of everything else, including all other capacities. So we have it on the authority of Socrates, the Stoics, Augustine, and Kant that virtue is a unitary capacity. So there is only one virtue. So no list of virtues.

Objection 12. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, Aristotle says—following Socrates—that virtue of character is the knowledge of something specific: Socrates says knowledge of the good, Aristotle says knowledge of the mean. So there is only one virtue. So no list.

Objection 13. And while a list of virtues implies a plurality of virtues, John Lennon says—following the Epistles of St. John and, indeed, most of the rest of the New Testament—that love is all you need. So there is only one virtue. So no list.

Objection 14. Again, the object of those lists of virtues that have typically been offered, as by St. Paul or by spiritual directors, is not philosophical but devotional; St. Paul in such lists as he offers in his letters aims to exhort his readers to live better lives, spiritual directors aim to get their dirigees to consider with compunction in what ways they might have failed to live up to the Christian standard. Such lists are simply ad gregem aedificandam [for the edification of the flock] and have no bearing upon philosophical truth, and they do not imply that there can be a list of the virtues of character.

Objection 15. Again, the virtues are by definition the dispositions of character that we need to fulfil our highest destiny, that is, to get to heaven. But St. Paul and the Gospels say clearly that all we need to get to heaven is to be forgiven and redeemed. And to be forgiven and redeemed is not a disposition of character at all but a work of grace in us. So there are no dispositions of character that we need to get to heaven. Hence there are no virtues. And no list.

Objection 16. Moreover, the life of perfect goodness is what interests the ethicist. The life of perfect goodness is the life that we shall live in heaven; and supposedly, the life of perfect goodness is the life of the perfected virtues. But the virtues are, as St. Thomas says, circa difficilia [concerned with what is hard for us]. And nothing will be hard for us in heaven. So the life of perfect goodness will involve no virtues. So even if there is a single correct list of the virtues of character, it is of no interest to the ethicist.

But on the other hand, St. Thomas says, on the authority of the whole tradition, including scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and innumerably many others, that the cardinal virtues are fittingly enumerated as justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom (Summa Theologiae [ST] 1a2ae.61.2), and that the theological virtues are fittingly enumerated as faith, hope, and charity (ST 1a2ae.62.3). This, then, is our list of the seven virtues of character.

What needs to be said is that the virtues of character are those permanently admirable and reliably beneficial dispositions of the will that always express our attachment and orientation to the good.

“Permanently admirable” because every virtue of character always has something beautiful (kalon, pulchrum) and something great about it, and it is the nature of admiration to fix on what is beautiful or great or both. Admiration is often misdirected, sometimes even by entire societies: as it can be directed to honour killings of oneself or others, as it has been in Afghanistan and Japan; or to military violence, as it was by Homer’s heroes and is by many eleven-year-old boys; or to racial purity or racial baiting, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Old (and alas not so old) South of the United States; or to the acquisition of fame and money and column inches in Hello! magazine, as it most inexplicably (unintelligibilissime) is in Britain and Italy today. Yet the admirable is not what is admired but what most intelligibly can be, what should be, admired.

“Reliably beneficial” because the virtues do not in every case or inevitably benefit either their possessor or those around her; as when a person herself suffers or dies exactly because of her virtue, as Edith Stein and Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, or as when some great common good ca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1: Moral Philosophy
• Part 2: Epistemology
• Part 3: Political Philosophy
• Index
• EULA