Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics
Mark Vernon The Return of Virtue Ethics
What is the good life? How can we know?


The Enlightenment was a revolution in the way we think about morality. Two ethical models, in particular, have come to dominate ever since. One can be traced back to Immanuel Kant, and is based upon the notion of duty (and hence is called deontological, from the Greek deon, meaning duty.) The second is hedonist and can be traced back to Jeremy Bentham, and his principle of utility: an action can be called good if it increases pleasure or decreases pain.

Put them together and you have the liberal approach to asking what’s the right thing to do. It’s liberal not in the sense of being pro-gay or pro-abortion. Rather, it’s liberal in the deeper sense of focusing on the individual and the choices an individual makes. It's ethics conceived of in terms of rights and responsibilities, or in terms of what makes you happy or sad. The philosopher John Stuart Mill summed it up when he wrote: “Neither one person, nor any number of persons is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it.”

You can understand why Mill wrote what he did. He lived in a period of history in which many people were not free to do as they chose. They were ruled by monarchs and chastised by prelates. The result was the subjugation of women and the owning of slaves. But we don’t live in such a world now. Most enjoy a degree of freedom that would have been unimaginable for most of human history, in the West at least. As a result, the liberal approaches to ethics are increasingly being questioned. Can they tell us what this freedom is for? Is it for more than just more consumption, more accumulation? What is the good life?

The problem is that we’ve lost touch with the bigger picture: what is it that makes life good for us humans? The Enlightenment left us with few resources for thinking about that larger question, because it was so focused on winning individuals their freedom. The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe described our dilemma this way. Our talk of having “moral duties,” or our description of actions as “morally right,” has become vacuous because we are now free of the law-giving God who fixes those duties and obligations. And Anscombe, as a Catholic, was a firm believer in God — only not a law-giving God but a loving one.

In any case, now that we are relatively free, we need to ask again what life is for. There is another ethical tradition that can help. It’s known as virtue ethics. Virtue ethics begins by asking what it is to be human, and proceeds by asking what virtues — or characteristics, habits and skills — we need in order to become all that we might be as humans. It’s much associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who discussed the meaning of friendship as a way to illustrate his approach to ethics.

Science tells us we are social animals, Aristotle observed. But in order to live well as social animals, we also need a vision of what our sociality can be. He had a word for that vision: friendship. The good friend is someone who knows themselves, who is honest and courageous, who has time for others, who is engaged not only in their self-interest but has a concern for others. These are some of the virtues we should nurture in order to be fulfilled as friends.

However, there’s a further dimension to the good life, which virtue ethics also highlights — and which is problematic for us, given the hyper-individualism of contemporary societies.

The virtue ethics approach is not individualistic. It tells us that to become all we might be as humans we need others. And we need others in a number of ways. One is highlighted by Aristotle’s focus on friendship. Social animals, like ourselves, are fulfilled by being with others: we discover who we are by discovering who others are — those to whom we are connected by way of family, affection, community, and society. They shape us, and we shape them, and so we need to have a concern for them all. If we live in an unhappy family, or in an oppressive society, that is going to have a major impact upon our own lives, even compromising our full flourishing as human beings.

That’s one reason we need others. But we also need them because the communities to which we belong are also the repositories for the skills that we need to live well. The contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has draw attention to this in his book After Virtue. He points out that community life is the context within which we learn the characteristics and habits that make for the good life. Consider how one learns to play chess. It’s only by belonging to a community of chess players, and learning from past masters, that you too might become good at chess. You can learn the basics on your own, but the art of chess only by practicing with others. Alternatively, think of baseball. “If, on starting to play baseball, I do not accept that others know better than I when to throw a fast ball and when not,” MacIntyre writes, “I will never learn to appreciate good pitching let alone to pitch.”

There’s a third reason we need communities too. They are not only the context within which we learn life’s virtues, they are also the context within which we hear the stories that can inspire us about who we might become. These are the stories held, most commonly, in religious communities — the stories that convey how life is a gift, how life is for love, and how even in the midst of suffering there is hope. Stories are so important because they inform our vision of the good life — and that, in turn, informs us, and shapes our conduct.

Of course, the Enlightenment tells stories about who we are too. Only, they are individualistic, having to do with our rights and happiness. Much modern science tells us stories about who we are as well. Evolutionary psychologists, for example, frequently tell us we are basically the same as our primate cousins, struggling to survive, and driven by our selfish genes. This last story has been particularly powerful over recent decades.

When Alasdair MacIntyre asked how we might use virtue ethics to inspire us to live well today, he concluded pessimistically. He thought that our common life had become too thin, as a result of individualism, and so is unable to teach us the virtues. Hence he called his book After Virtue. He thought we are at a moment in history that needs some striking individual to stir up the desire in us to flourish again. It's happened before. In 5th century BCE Athens, figures like Socrates emerged. In the early Christian period, there was the person of Jesus. Or again, in the period around the collapse of the Roman empire, Benedict of Nursia emerged, and essentially became the founder of Western monasticism. Who will it be today?