Abstract

Dissatisfied with the narrow choice between deontological and consequentialist moral theories, a number of contemporary philosophers have urged that we instead turn to the example of Aristotle and develop an ethics of virtue. This dissertation seeks to affirm the merits of such an approach, but argues that a more profitable model can be found in the unlikely figure of Thomas Hobbes. ;One task of the dissertation is to establish that Hobbes is, in fact, best understood as a sort of virtue ethicist. I begin by taking seriously Hobbes's claim that ethics is a branch of natural philosophy, and by examining the science of human nature upon which his ethics is thus intended to rest. I then examine and reject three important interpretations of Hobbes's ethics and in doing so identify the elements of his theory of moral virtue: that ethics is concerned with what makes just people rather than with what makes just acts, and that a just person is one who is disposed by nature to do the right thing, and to want to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do. Finally, I examine Hobbes's attempt to ground this theory of virtue in his science of human nature. This is shown to involve two arguments which aim to demonstrate that the cooperation necessary for human beings to live well is best secured by cultivating the moral virtues. The argument from revealed disposition maintains that agents are judged according to the character traits that are revealed by their actions, and the argument from habituation maintains that agents can best ensure that they will perform just acts with sufficient consistency by coming to value doing them for their own sake. ;Having articulated and defended the interpretation of Hobbes as a virtue ethicist, the dissertation concludes with a critical examination of the moral theory itself. The penultimate chapter details a wide variety of objections that can be aimed at Hobbesian virtue ethics, and attempts to develop responses to them. And the final chapter attempts to show that, despite these potential problems, Hobbes's theory has considerable advantages which recommend it over the rival virtue theories of Aristotle and of some of his contemporary admirers