Good character

2

There’s a crucial moral distinction between what happens and what I do

Without this distinction we can not understand what it means to have integrity

Moral integrity requires the individual to view himself as a moral agent whose actions flow “from projects or attitudes which in some cases he takes seriously at the deepest level, as what his life is about”

Utilitarianism can’t understand this notion of moral integrity, because it leaves no room for describing the ethical importance of the relationship between our projects, identity, and actions.

Williams’s “Integrity objection” against Utilitarianism

Williams’s “One thought too many”

objection to Kantianism At least in some cases, acting from moral duty can not be the

right motivation.

Some actions can not be adequately justified by reference to abstract impartial principles.

Bernard Williams1929 - 2003

Character-based theories

Sample approach 1: consequence-based ethics

o Start/focus on good states of affairso Right actions are those that bring about good states of affairso A good character is one that leads you bring about good states of

affairs

Sample approach 2: duty-based ethics

o Start/focus on right actionso Good states of affairs are those in which right actions are takeno A good character is one that leads you to perform right actions

Sample approach 3: character-based ethics

o Start/focus on good charactero Good states of affairs are those in which good characters are

developedo Right actions are those that bring about (arise from) good character

Utilitarianism

Kantianism

Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics: being good & living well

Aristotle

Ethics is practical science – the practical art of living well.

What matters most to humans is to have a good human life – to flourish.

Living a good life involves not just behaving well (doing the right things) but also having the right nature - the right feelings and sensitivities and skills.

384 BC – 322 BC

What is a good life?

A life of wealth?

A life of pleasure?

A life of honor?

A life of virtue?

And no “life-busting” tragedies

A Functional Account of the Good

What good things have in common is that they perform their function well. And the qualities that make something good will differ depending on their ergon.

The ergon of a thing is what it does that makes it what it is as opposed to something else.

The good life for a human is one in which we perform well our distinctively human function (our ergon)

The Human Ergon

What distinguishes normal human beings from everything else and gives us our nature?

Our nutritive activity? (digesting, sleeping, reproducing)

Our appetites/desires?

Our rational (intellectual) capacity to contemplate ideas and cosmos?

The human ergon is to exercise reason to manage our desires and to contemplate higher things

A good human life is…

Virtue of intellect – A disposition to reason well.

Virtue of character – A disposition to do the right things and in the right way.

The good life is an active life exercising virtues of character and intellect, with our friends, and enjoying the pleasures associated with these activities.

Virtues of Character

We respond virtuously or well if we respond in the right way at the right time towards the right people and with the right attitude

A Virtue lies at the mean between excess and deficiency, relative to us.

Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Unity of the Virtues

You can’t possess any virtue without also possessing all of the other virtue

All virtues require finding the mean, and the practical skill of judging the mean is a general skill

If you have this skill, you can find the mean with regards to all the virtues

How do become gain the virtues?

(1) Find someone wise (a virtuous person – someone who has this skill) and imitate them.

Develop good habits – practice doing as the virtuous person would do until it becomes your own.

(2) Aim to avoid the extreme that is more tempting for you.

The good life and the best life

If you’re a virtuous person your life could never be worthless or wretched, but unless you have sufficient support to be able to exercise your talents and pursue your ends, you’ll never have the best kind of human life.

Warren Buffett(Billionaire

Philanthropist)

Friendship

“Scipio used to complain that men were more painstaking in all other things than in friendship; that everybody could tell how many goats and sheep he had, but was unable to tell the number of his friends; and that men took pains in getting the former, but were careless in choosing the latter, and had no certain signs, or marks, so to speak, by which to determine their fitness for friendship.”

- Cicero (from Laelius on Friendship)

Friendship and the good life:Why do we need friends?

What’s the point of being rich if you can’t use that money to help others – especially your friends?

How can you preserve your prosperity without friends?

If things go wrong, friends are the only refuge.

Friends motivate us to do noble things.

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods”

Friends help keep the young from making mistakes

Friends help the old by ministering to their needs

When men are friends there is no need of justice

Aristotle’s Conditions for Friendship

A friendship must have:

Feelings of liking and affection toward one another.

One must wish a friend well for that friend’s own sake.

The mutuality of affection and goodwill must be recognized

Three Kinds of Friendship

1. Friendships of use – the basis of your friendship is your functionality to each other

2. Friendships of pleasure – based on the enjoyment you get from your interaction with the other person.

Aristotle: “Such friendships are short-lived”

Three Kinds of Friendship

3. Friendships of virtue – the friendship of men who are alike in virtue, wish well to each other, and are good themselves.

Such friendships are long-lasting (potentially permanent), but rare

Only virtuous people can have virtue friendships with other virtuous people

Unlike friendships of utility or pleasure, one can at best have few friendships of virtue.

“Alike in virtue”: roughly on the same level

Friendship and the Good Life

Virtue friends help make you a better person

Help you know yourself Let you know if your judgment is

good Support you in projects that are

tough, but good for you

AND Friends are pleasurable – they make people happy.

Part of the good life is being able to exercise our virtues with our friends and enjoy sharing that experience.

Friendship among unequals

Virtue friendships are equal

Other friendships are properly not equal

Older/younger, wealthy/poor, ruler/subject, mentor/mentored

In such relationships, the love should be proportional to the merit of the parties.

Friendships do not tolerate difference in virtue, wealth or anything else that are too large.

What do we owe our friends?

Friendship asks a man to do what he can, not what is proportional to the merits of the case

In unequal friendships, we must repay what we can and how we can. if you receive money or virtue,

return in honor.

Wronging someone becomes increasingly worse, the closer friends you are with him

What you owe to your friend increases with the intensity of the friendship.

Friendship and Morality

Your best friend is dying and needs a kidney transplant to survive. Your connections at the hospital allow you to put her name at the top of the list. If you do it, a stranger that would have otherwise lived, will die.

Does your obligation to your friend conflict with the moral thing to do?

“Friends help friends move, real friends help friends move bodies”

William Frankena’s criticism

Without principles we wouldn’t know what traits to encourage!

For every moral principle there’s a morally good trait – the disposition to act according to it.

For every good moral trait there is a principle that defines how that trait expresses itself in action

It’s the principles that are basic

But we still need the virtues: To motivate us to be moral To act responsibly

Sample approach 3: character-based ethics

o Start/focus on good charactero Good states of affairs are those in which good characters are

developedo Right actions are those that bring about (arise from) good character

Because it’s a matter of principle, you should develop the kind of character that will act accordingly. “I made the wrong decision but I did it in a responsible way.”

Good actions & Good people An action is right if it follows the right principles

Whether an action or person is morally good doesn’t depend on rightness, but on motive. What kind of motive?

1. When done solely from a sense of duty or desire to do what is right (Kant)

2. When motivated primarily by a sense of duty or desire to do what is right (Kant-ish)

3. When motivated at least in part by a sense of duty or desire to do what is right (Aristotle)

4. If your sense of duty or desire to do right would keep you trying to do your duty, whatever your actual motivation was; OR if you acted out of natural kindliness, gratefulness, or similar morality-supporting motivation (Frankena)

Ex: 2 people work for a bank & have the opportunity to embezzle $1 million from the bank. One person doesn’t even consider it, the other considers & wrestles with it but doesn’t end up doing it. Which one is more right?Aristotle: “you won’t think about your duty, but it’ll flow naturally from who you are, because you have a certain kind of character”Ex: one person donates $100 to Ethiopia b/c she thinks it’s the right thing to do but has no feelings about it, the other person does the same because they feel empathy & THIS is the right motivation while acting from a sense of duty is not.

Cardinal Virtues

A cardinal virtue is a virtue that:

1. Can’t be derived from any other virtues;

2. Other moral virtues are derived from it

Ancient Greek view: Wisdom Courage Temperance Justice

Traditional Christian view: Faith, hope and love (the

theological virtues) Prudence, fortitude, temperance

and justice (the human virtues)

A contemporary view:

Beneficence Justice

Virtue ethics begins with principle. Criticism is that it needs to begin with principle.Cardinal virtue: the grounding for other virtues – fundamental character trait from which other character traits come. The cardinal virtue doesn’t come from any other virtue.Traditional Christian view has different sorts of cardinal virtues – Jesus is the modelFrankena’s view: there are really only 2 kinds of virtues: (contemporary view) desire to bring beneficence & justice into the world

First and Second-order virtues

First order moral virtues - all the virtues cardinal or otherwise that correspond to corollaries of moral principles; help to become a good person. Ex. Honesty = one must always tell the truth

Second-order virtues – more general virtues that help us make good moral decisions or be a good person more generally; tell us how to be so that we can develop first order virtues.

1. Conscientiousness

2. Moral courage (have this have courage to do what’s right)

3. Disposition to find out and respect the relevant facts

4. Disposition to think clearly

5. Ability to make moral decisions

6. Ability to revise your principles and change your opinions

7. Ability to realize vividly the “inner lives” of others

(5-7 are abilities, not virtues)

Moral Ideals

Having a moral ideal is wanting to be a person of a certain sort, wanting a certain trait of character rather than others.

If one’s ideal is truly a moral one, nothing in it wouldn’t be covered by the principles of beneficence or justice – even it goes beyond the call of duty.

“you have integrity if you’ll still say 4 with a gun to your head”

(Moral) Saints and Heroes

How Morality

Some actions are “forbidden”. We must not perform them.

Some actions are “required”. We have a duty to perform those actions.

All other actions are “permitted”. They are morally neutral. We can do them if we like.

3 ways to be a saint or hero: Someone who does his duty regularly in

contexts in which inclination, desire or self-interest would lead most people not to do it, and does it through exercising abnormal self-control is a saint.

Ex: stay home & care for sick relative

Someone who exercises abnormal self-control in contexts in which terror or fear are involved is a hero.

Ex: care for a population that’s contagious & fatally ill, when normal people would flee from the situation J.O. Urmson (1958)

3 ways to be a saint or hero:

Someone who does his duty in contexts in which inclination or self-interest would lead most men not to do it, without effort is a saint.

Ex. washing a homeless person’s feet in skid row

Someone who does his duty in the context of fear and terror without effort is a hero.

Ex: an ER nurse, responsibility for the lives of others

 J.O. Urmson (1958)

3 ways to be a saint or hero:

Someone is saint if she performs actions that are far beyond the limits of her duty.

Ex: Contagion (movie), the CDC doctor goes the extra mile & chooses to enter the area where the epidemic is going on

Someone is heroic if they perform actions that are far beyond the limits of their duty in the context of fear and terror. (Going beyond the call of duty.)

Ex: Soldier that jumps on a grenade, self-sacrifice, his body takes the impact & saves other soldiers but nobody would have blamed him had he not done it.

Ex: Stand & Deliver (movie), teacher quits his great job for one at a bad HS & teaches a remedial math class full of gang-bangers, but he teaches them calculus & they ace the AP exam.

 J.O. Urmson (1958)

This goes beyond the call of duty

Are saintly and heroic moral actions beyond the call of duty?

Does it matter whether St. Francis thinks his actions are obligatory or whether they really are obligatory?

What he thinks the action is a duty for him, but not for others?

Minimally, there is something different between duties all of us have and these types of duties.

St. Francis preached to the birds about Christ because he believes it was his duty. Is he going beyond the call of duty when his duty is to preach to people, not animals? Is this action supererogitory?Urmson doesn’t give answers to these questions, just gives them as food for thought.

Other types of moral actions that are neither optional, forbidden, or permitted

Going the extra mile (Ex: dropping a friend off at the airport & stopping on the way so that they can also run an errand.)

Favors (Ex: Charity – can of food… Something done out of the goodness of your heart, not because you have to.)

Acts of generosity (give because you want to)

Forgiveness (you don’t have to forgive)

Mercy (Ex: “I’ll overlook something you did that typically goes against justice,” such as not pressing charges against someone who did you wrong. Ignoring, not = forgiving!)

All of these acts aren’t required!

Supererogatory actions

Some initial thoughts:

1. Supererogatory acts are praiseworthy because unlike most moral actions, which are required, they are done voluntarily. Saintliness can’t be a duty. (Urmson, 1958)

2. Supererogatory acts appear to ‘extend’ moral demands. They promote moral value ‘beyond the call of duty’ and so seem essentially connected to moral duties and the values they promote.

3. Supererogatory acts are praiseworthy for (at least something like) the usual moral reasons, rather than other types of reasons (e.g. pragmatic or aesthetic).

Supererogatory actions are morally good actions that seem to go beyond ‘the call of duty’ – actions that are good, but that the agent has no overall obligations to do. (Actions that are good, but not required.)

Urmson asks why it is that we think these acts to be so praiseworthy. Answer: the fact that we’re voluntarily doing something good, something we don’t have to do.

What should we make of all this?

Option 1: Show that we do, in fact, have duties to do these morally good actions

Option 2: Conclude that the praise we have for these actions is not for their morality, but for something else (e.g. – the beauty of character they reveal).

(We’re not saying that they did something better than what’s morally expected/there’s something morally better about them, just that there’s something beautiful about their choice.)

Option 3: Explain what it is that could make an act morally valuable other than than being morally required

Supererogatory actions are morally good actions that seem to go beyond ‘the call of duty’ – actions that are good, but that the agent has no overall obligations to do.

The “moral” & the “ethical”

The agent makes a first-order judgment Φ that: morality requires A to do B would be to perform a

morally superior action She is (physically) capable of doing B

The agent then makes a second-order ethical judgment Ψ concerned with what to do given Φ, which concludes that she should do B

Option 3: Explain what it is that could make an act morally valuable other than than being morally required

EXAMPLE

Is moral sainthood too good for its own good?

“I don’t know whether there are any moral saints. But if there are, I am glad that neither I nor those about whom I care most are among them. By moral saint I mean a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be. In other words, I believe that moral perfection in this sense, does not constitute a model of personal well-being towards which it would be particular rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive.”

- Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints” (1982)