Description
In the second half of the twentieth century eudaemonist virtue ethics was re-popularized as a response to act-oriented moral philosophies. The appeal of Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, in comparison to deontological and utilitarian ethics, is that it aims to offer a psychologically accurate picture. How situationist thinkers have problematized an Aristotelian notion of character by arguing that situational elements strongly influence or determine our actions, and therefore there is no strong causal connection between character and behavior. Consequently, we can no longer speak of virtue, except in a very localized context. In this paper, I reconstruct a notion of virtue and character based on the responses of virtue ethicist to the situationist challenge.I examine the works of Nancy Snow (2010), who in line with McDowell sees virtue as a form of social intelligence, and Julia Annas (2011), who likens virtue to skill. Both these authors take the situationist challenge serious and they both aim to expand on the notion of habit in response to the situationists. I argue that the responses from Annas and Snow show good reasons for virtue ethicists to adopt a Deweyan psychology and understanding of reasons. Despite the rise in popularity of virtue ethics in the latter half of the twentieth century, Dewey remains largely ignored when it comes to virtue theory and virtue ethics. This is unfortunate because his works includes an extensive treatment of virtue. Like Aristotle, Dewey bases the notion of virtue on a biological notion of human being. However, for Aristotle species never change while, contrary to Aristotle, Dewey sees human nature through a Darwinian picture as being in flux. Instead of conceptualizing the individual as primarily atomistic, a Deweyan framework takes the person as an organism situated in a meaningful environment central to its psychology (2007, 2008). Dewey’s psychology aims to capture how people can alter and restructure their environments, bringing the individual in specific situations thematically to the foreground. By incorporating the successful elements of Annas’ and Snow’s work along a Deweyan notion of habit, we can construe a notion of virtue and character that meets the situationist’s challenge.
However, I argue that such a notion of virtue brings our reciprocal relations with another to the foreground. An important element of virtue is being sensitive to the moral demands of others and sensitive for possibilities for meeting those demands. Virtue must be understood in a functional manner as virtues are not good in themselves but are good in relation to the outcomes of our moral inquiries. In this sense, our moral agency starts when the other makes an appeal for our attention with a demand to meet their needs, mainly in the form of reactive attitudes. When our attention is successfully drawn to the needs of the other, a new social relation of responsibility is established, out of which virtues can be abstracted. I argue that this means that character must be understood as existing in the transaction between an organism and its social environment.
Bibliography
Annas, J. (2011). Intelligent Virtue. Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (2007). HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT: An Introduction to Social Psychology. Cosimo Classics.
Dewey, J. (2008). The later works of John Dewey, 1925 – 1953, Volume 7: 1932, Ethics (B. Boydston, Jo Ann; Levine, Ed.; vol 7). Southern Illinois Univeristy Press.
Snow, N. E. (2010). Virtue as Social Intelligence. In Virtue as Social Intelligence. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203880579
| Period | 9 May 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Philosophy at the Intersection of Moral Responsibility, Agency and Regulation 2022 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Birmingham, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |