Virtue Theory

Sorry Professor, your plea for a more interesting title was heard, but I was unable to answer it.

Greg Pence's "Virtue Theory" focuses on the many aspects of virtue and how it affects human behavior and character. Elizabeth Anscombe believes that the older ideas of morality, that one should do something, not because one wants to, but because it is morally right to do it (251), no longer holds true and have been confused with the beliefs of people in modern day. Alasdair MacIntyre adds to this by saying that society has combined and absorbed a plethora of different traditions, causing confusion and conflict in morals. MacIntyre gathers that the meaning of life will come “when a person belongs to a moral tradition which allows for a narrative order of a single life” (251), and not by jumbling many different beliefs together. Virtues can only thrive in particular types of societies, not all.

Many contributions were made in the history of ethics, in hopes of better understanding virtue theory. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle focused on virtues as the issue of ethics, studied the few major virtues (courage, wisdom, justice), and ranked the types of characters. Thomas Aquinas builds on their major virtues by adding, what he calls, the ‘theological virtues’ – faith, hope, and charity. Immanuel Kant tried to determine the core of moral character and virtue through examination of reason. Kant believed that completely rational people are virtuous because of a respect for a ‘universalizable’ moral law (252). However, this theory would negate any belief that people act virtuously by character. Susan Wolf says that, should a person really act in the way Kant describes, this person will have a dull, limited life.

Pence goes on to talk about courage and brings up two questions: if it is possible for one to be courageous without knowing specifically what courage is, and whether or not courage was connected to things like virtue or knowledge (253). Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle argue that courage is unaffected and not measured by time. They argue that it was not merely a trait that allowed one to overcome just any fear/obstacle, but worthy obstacles.

Reading on, it talks about ‘eliminatism’ and ‘essentialism. Anscombe and MacIntyre’s believe ‘eliminatism’ to be a conjecture that assumes a correct account of virtue would be able to abandon principle-based ethics (253), which Pence summarizes as “whether an ethical theory based entirely on character can do all the work of ethics” (254). Frederich Nietzche says that a person may want to help another for no particular reason, and simply because he/she feels like doing so; this answers Pence’s question: the ideals of character is insufficient to complete the work of ethics. ‘Essentialism’ would be the theory that virtues may not fundamentally share a “master virtue” (255), but they do share a common essence.

The chapter ends by discussing how each virtue rouses feelings, character and society. In turn, society inspires different virtues or vices, and this is based on the disputable claim that people have the ability to mold their character.