Virtue ethics

6. Practical reason

One reason for the fading of the notion of character in ethical theory is that utilitarianism and Kantianism have commonly been developed as ethics of rules to resolve dilemmas. An argument against a rule-based ethics is found in Aristotle’s discussion of the legal virtue of epieikeia, ‘equity’. Rules will always run out in hard cases, and some sensitivity is required on the part of the judge to fill the gap between the law and the world. Likewise, for Aristotle, the virtuous man possesses phronēsis, ‘practical wisdom’, a sensitivity to the morally salient features of particular situations which goes beyond an ability to apply explicit rules.

This view has been revived in virtue ethics, by among others Iris Murdoch (1970) and John McDowell, in his article, ‘Virtue and Reason’ (1979). McDowell argues that we cannot postulate a world as seen by both the virtuous and the unvirtuous, and then explain the moral agency of the virtuous through their possessing some special desire. Since moral rules run out, any object of desire could not be made explicit. McDowell uses Wittgenstein to support his claim that rational action does not have to be rule-governed (see Wittgenstein, L. §§10–12). This has clear implications for moral education: it should consist in enabling the person to see sensitively, not (or at least not only) in inculcating rigid and absolute principles. This is one of the strands in the feminist critique of modern ethical theory, itself closely tied to virtue theory. Writers such as Carol Gilligan (1982) argue that the moral sensibility of women is less rule-governed than that of men, and this has influenced the ‘ethics of care’ of, for example, Nel Noddings (see Feminist ethics §1; Moral education §§1–2).

The emphasis in virtue ethics on non-rational factors in moral motivation sits well with the notion of moral sensitivity. And this latter notion provides another standpoint from which one might criticize the basing of morality on the categorical imperative. As we have seen, Foot claims that immorality is not necessarily irrational, since moral reasons depend on the agent’s desires. Writers such as McDowell who depict practical reason as perceptual can also deny that immorality is irrational. The unvirtuous lack not any capacity of the theoretical or calculative intellect, but moral sensitivity. Unlike Foot, however, McDowell would argue that this is in fact a failure to perceive genuine reasons for action independent of the agent’s motivations.

Again, in McDowell, we see the pastiche, characteristic of virtue ethics, of ancient and modern: rationality is made to depend on social practice, and yet, as Socrates thought, virtue turns out to be a kind of knowledge.