The predominant view of moral virtue can be traced back to Aristotle. He believed that moral virtue must involve intellectual excellence. To have moral virtue one must have practical wisdom - the ability to deliberate well and to see what is morally relevant in a given context. Julia Driver challenges this classical theory of virtue, arguing that it fails to take into account virtues which do seem to involve ignorance or epistemic defect. Some 'virtues of ignorance' are counterexamples to accounts (...) of virtue which hold that moral virtue must involve practical wisdom. Modesty, for example, is generally considered to be a virtue even though the modest person may be making an inaccurate assessment of his or her accomplishments. Driver argues that we should abandon the highly intellectualist view of virtue and instead adopt a consequentialist perspective which holds that virtue is simply a character trait which systematically produces good consequences. (shrink)

In The Virtues of Ignorance the author demonstrates that classical theories of virtue are flawed and developes a consequentialist theory of virtue. ;Virtues are excellences of character. They are traits which are considered to be valuable in some way. A person who is virtuous is one who has a tendency to act well. Classical philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, believed that virtues, as human excellences, could not involve ignorance in any way. On their view, the virtuous agent, when acting (...) well, knows what she is doing under the description which makes the action conform to virtue. For example, the generous person must know that she is, in fact, helping others in need. Yet, there is a class of virtues, the "virtues of ignorance," which essentially involve ignorance. For example, modesty requires that the agent underestimate self worth. In the first portion of the dissertation, this class of virtues is discussed, and problems raised for the traditional theories of virtue. ;In the latter portion of the dissertation, the author outlines a consequentialist theory of virtue. It is argued that the only hope of developing a unified theory of virtue is along consequentialist lines, because attempts at identifying the psychological state which is necessary for virtue have failed. On a consequentialist theory, a virtue is defined in terms of its consequences. Thus, the moral quality of the character trait is determined by how much good it brings about . The virtues of ignorance can easily be accommodated in such a theory because these traits do bring about good, even if the agent possessing the trait acts out of ignorance. (shrink)

Consequentialism is the view that the rightness or wrongness of actions depend solely on their consequences. It is one of the most influential, and controversial, of all ethical theories. In this book, Julia Driver introduces and critically assesses consequentialism in all its forms. After a brief historical introduction to the problem, Driver examines utilitarianism, and the arguments of its most famous exponents, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and explains the fundamental questions underlying utilitarian theory: what value is to be (...) specified and how it is to be maximized. Driver also discusses indirect forms of consequentialism, the important theories of motive consequentialism and virtue consequentialism, and explains why the distinction between subjective and objective consequentialism is so important. Including helpful features such as a glossary, chapter summaries, and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Consequentialism is ideal for students seeking an authoritative and clearly explained survey of this important problem. (shrink)

We seem less likely to endorse moral expertise than reasoning expertise or aesthetic expertise. This seems puzzling given that moral norms are intuitively taken to be at least more objective than aesthetic norms. One possible diagnosis of the asymmetry is that moral judgments require autonomy of judgement in away that other judgments do not. However, the author points out that aesthetic judgments that have been ‘borrowed’ by aesthetic experts generate the same autonomy worry as moral judgments which are borrowed by (...) moral experts. The author then explores various approaches to accepting the testimony of moral experts and concludes that the asymmetry may best be explained by (1) the conditions for moral expertise being more difficult to satisfy than those of aesthetic expertise and (2) the intuitive greater seriousness of accepting the moral judgments of others, since moral norms are generally viewed as more binding than aesthetic norms. (shrink)

_Ethics: The Fundamentals_ explores core ideas and arguments in moral theory by introducing students to different philosophical approaches to ethics, including virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, divine command theory, and feminist ethics. The first volume in the new Fundamentals of Philosophy series. Presents lively, real-world examples and thoughtful discussion of key moral philosophers and their ideas. Constitutes an excellent resource for readers coming to the subject of ethics for the first time.

This essay defends moral expertise against the skeptical considerations raised by Gilbert Ryle and others. The core of the essay articulates an account of moral expertise that draws on work on expertise in empirical moral psychology, and develops an analogy between moral expertise and linguistic expertise. The account holds that expertise is contrastive, so that a person is an expert relative to a particular contrast. Further, expertise is domain specific and characterized by “automatic” behavior and judgment. Some disagreements in the (...) literature regarding moral expertise are diagnosed as being due to failures to adequately distinguish different ways in which someone can be a moral expert. For example, expertise in action does not imply expertise in judgment or analysis. (shrink)

Accounts of virtue suffer a conflation problem when they appear unable to preserve intuitive distinctions between types of virtue. In this essay I argue that a number of influential attempts to preserve the distinction between moral and epistemic virtues fail, on the grounds that they characterize virtuous traits in terms of ‘characteristic motivation’. I claim that this does not distinguish virtuous traits at the level of value‐conferring quality, and I propose that the best alternative is to distinguish them at the (...) level of good produced. It follows from this that a consequentialist account is best placed to avoid a conflation of moral and epistemic virtue. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch believes that unselfing is required for virtue, as it takes us out of our egoistic preoccupations, and connects us to the Good in the world. Love is a form of unselfing, illustrating how close attention to another, and the way they really are, again, takes us out of a narrow focus on the self. Though this view of love runs counter to a view that those in love often overlook flaws in their loved ones, or at least down-play (...) them, I argue that it is compatible with Murdoch's view that love can overlook some flaws, ones that do not speak to the loved one's true self. Unselfing requires that we don't engage in selfish delusion, but a softer view of our loved ones is permitted. (shrink)

Peter Singer is well known as an ethicist who has contributed much to current debates in ethics and public policy. He has published on topics ranging from vegetarianism to famine relief to bioethics, always with something interesting to say, and often with something provocative as well. How Are We to Live? adds to Singer’s work in the area of applied, or practical, ethics. This book is not as deeply challenging as some of Singer’s earlier work. However, it is not intended (...) for an audience composed exclusively of professional philosophers. It is written for people who feel that ethics doesn’t speak to the concern of living a full and fruitful life, who believe that ethics, at best, is too narrow to guide us in a wide spectrum of decisions, and, at worst, is for “suckers.” This sentiment is one that professional ethicists encounter all too frequently. Singer’s book does a splendid job of addressing these sorts of concerns. He does so with a light touch, without being too moralistic. It is easy to read, engaging, and will appeal to a wide audience. Thus, the book accomplishes its goals admirably. (shrink)

abstract In this paper moralism is defined as the illicit use of moral considerations. Three different varieties of moralism are then discussed — moral absolutism, excessive standards and demandingness, and presenting non‐moral considerations as moral ones. Both individuals and theories can be regarded as moralistic in some of these senses. Indeed, some critics of consequentialism have regarded that theory as moralistic. The author then describes the problems associated with each sense of ‘moralism’ and how casuistry evolved to try to deal (...) with some of these problems. The author also defends consequentialism against one charge of moralism [1]. (shrink)

This paper explores a problem for Michael McKenna’s conversation model of moral responsibility that views blame as characteristically part of a conversational exchange. The problem for this model on which this paper focuses is the problem of private blame. Sometimes when we blame we do so without any intention to engage in a communicative exchange. It is argued that McKenna’s model cannot adequately account for private blame.

Some of our moral commitments strike us as necessary, and this feature of moral phenomenology is sometimes viewed as incompatible with sentimentalism, since sentimentalism holds that our commitments depend, in some way, on sentiment. His dependence, or contingency, is what seems incompatible with necessity. In response to this sentimentalists hold that the commitments are psychologically necessary. However, little has been done to explore this kind of necessity. In this essay I discuss psychological necessity, and how the phenomenon of imaginative resistance (...) offers some evidence that we regard our moral commitments as necessary, but in a way compatible with viewing them as dependent on desires (in some way). A limited strategy for defending sentimentalism against a common criticism is also offered. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on sentimentalism – the view that morality is based on sentiment – in particular, the sentiment of sympathy. Sentimentalism was historically articulated in opposition to two positions: Hobbesian egoism, in which morality is based on self-interest; and Moral Rationalism, which held that morality is based on reason alone. The Sentimentalists challenged both views, arguing that there is more to what motivates human beings than simple self-interest and that reason alone is insufficient to motivate our actions, including our (...) moral actions. The philosophies of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith are considered. The discussion then turns to sympathy, moral realism, moral virtue, and psychological realism. (shrink)

This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental terms.

This essay is a rejoinder to comments on Uneasy Virtue made by Onora O'Neill, John Skorupski, and Michael Slote in this issue. In Uneasy Virtue I presented criticisms of traditional virtue theory. I also presented an alternative – a consequentialist account of virtue, one which is a form of ‘pure evaluational externalism’. This type of theory holds that the moral quality of character traits is determined by factors external to agency (e.g. consequences). All three commentators took exception to this account. (...) Therefore, the bulk of my response focuses on defending the externalist account of virtue presented in the final chapters of Uneasy Virtue. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that there is an important asymmetry between a duty to love and a duty to not love: there is no duty to love as a fitting response to someone’s very good qualities, but there is a duty to not love as a fitting response to someone’s very bad qualities. The source of the asymmetry that I discuss is the two-part understanding of love: the emotional part and the evaluative commitment part. One cannot directly, or (...) “at will,” control an emotional response, but one can undermine any commitment one would normally have under the circumstances. Thus, the feeling of love is not a duty, though being disposed to act a certain way with respect to the person one has the feelings for is controllable. (shrink)

This paper responds to criticisms of sympathy-based approaches to ethics made by Jesse Prinz, focusing on the criticism that emotions are too variable to form a basis for ethics. I draw on the idea, articulated by early sentimentalists such as Hutcheson and Hume, that proper reliance on sympathy is subject to a corrective procedure in order, in part, to avoid the variability problem.

This paper begins with the idea that we can learn a good deal about promising by examining the conditions and norms that govern promise- breaking. Sometimes promises are broken as a deliberate plan, other times they are broken because they are simply incompatible with other, more signifi cant moral norms, or because it becomes clear that they are impossible to keep. There are cases where people make promises that are actually incompatible with each other. Politicians, for example, often give such (...) incompatible promises, either intentionally, or by making too many commitments, some of which turn out to be incompatible. In making such promises, agents guarantee that at least one promise be broken. Is the agent who makes incompatible promises under any obli- gation? If ‘ought’ implies ‘can,’ and promises entail obligations, then it seems that one cannot, in fact, make promises one cannot keep. This paper explores the problem by drawing analogies between incompatible promises and other promises that cannot be kept. It suggests that we can deny ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ strictly speaking, but recognize that there is a practical limit on what the agent can be called on to do. On this view, even promises to do the impossible commit the agent. Similarly, politi- cians who promise too much are still obligated to do as promised. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has generated a great deal of excitement among ethicists largely because it is seen as an alternative to the traditional theories – utilitarianism and Kantian ethics – which have come under considerable scrutiny and criticism in the past 30 years. Rather than give up the enterprise of doing moral theory altogether, as some have suggested, others have opted to develop an alternative that would hopefully avoid the shortcomings of both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Several writers, such as Jorge (...) Garcia and Michael Slote, have tried to develop this alternative of virtue ethics, or at least sketch out ways such a theory could be developed. (shrink)

This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental terms.

The evaluation of character has taken on new significance in moral theory, and, indeed, some advocate a shift in focus away from evaluating action to evaluating character. This has been taken to pose special challenges for utilitarian and consequentialist moral theory. Utilitarianism's commitment to impartiality and its seeming failure to accommodate virtue evaluation have led to problems, some of which are developed in the essays in this volume.

This paper focuses on an underappreciated issue that dreams raise for moral evaluation: is immorality possible in dreams? The evaluatiotial internalist is committed to answering ‘yes.’ This is because the internalist account of moral evaluation holds that the moral quality of a person's actions, what a person does, her agency in any given case is completely determined by factors that are internal to that agency, such as the person's motives and/or intentions. Actual production of either good or bad effects is (...) completely irrelevant to the moral evaluation of that agency. Since agency can be expressed in a dream, the internalist is committed to dream immorality. Some may take this as a reductio of evaluational internalism, but whether or not this is the case the issue reveals what such a theory is committed to. In this paper I explore the significance of dreams to morality, and argue that the absurdity of dream immorality supports an account of moral evaluation with an externalist component, rather than a purely internalist account of moral evaluation. (shrink)

Elinor Mason has provided an account of blame and blameworthiness that is pluralistic. There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which we aptly blame -- and ordinary sense, directed at those with poor quality of the will, and then a detached sense and an extended sense, in which blame is aptly directed towards those without poor quality of the will as it is normally understood. In this essay I explore and critically discuss Mason's account. While I argue that she has (...) identified interesting aspects of the way in which we hold people morally responsible, I disagree with certain features of the account, in particular, that ordinary blame issues in demands and that there is any deep sense in which we can simply decide to take on responsibility. (shrink)

A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art is an expert and deeply interesting exploration of the third Earl of Shaftesbury’s theory of beauty. Shaftesbury was an impressive figure, highly influential in his day, though eclipsed by later writers such as David Hume. Gill has done an excellent job of drawing out Shaftesbury’s views—looking not only at his publications but also at other manuscript materials such as Shaftesbury’s correspondence and diaries. I found Gill’s book informative and engaging, and (...) I strongly recommend it to scholars who are interested in the sentimentalist project. One will come away not simply with a better understanding of Shaftesbury’s own views but with an appreciation of his influence and the way in which later scholarship was shaped by his work.Gill’s approach is semibiographical. He draws upon facts about Shaftesbury’s life to account for various features of his philosophical writings. This feature of the book contributed to the enjoyment I had in reading it. It was interesting to be able to see how Shaftesbury’s philosophy developed out of questions he was asking himself about how he ought to live. Shaftesbury had a strong sense of duty. He made many decisions over the course of his life that were centered on a desire to live up to family obligations and obligations to his country. He also had a more general sense that he should be doing what he could to improve the lives of other people. One might describe this as beneficence felt as a duty. For these reasons, Gill notes that it is very likely due to Shaftesbury’s ill-health that he decided to pursue philosophy. Otherwise, his strong sense of duty would have led him to take on more public-facing roles as a means of improving the lives of others.He felt that this task could only be accomplished if people actually read and took notice of his work. Gill argues that this is at least in part what led Shaftesbury to develop such a distinctive and flamboyant writing style. Shaftesbury’s major work in ethical theory was Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, published in 1711, and anyone taking a course on the British moralists would have read parts of the Characteristicks, particularly the sections on virtue, as those sections are the ones that quite obviously fit into the sentimentalist narrative on the nature of virtue and make for interesting comparisons with later writers on the same topic, Frances Hutcheson as well as Hume. But Shaftesbury’s other works which are important sources regarding his thoughts on beauty and virtue include The Moralists and An Inquiry concerning Virtue, both of which Gill makes extensive use of in his discussion of Shaftesbury’s considered views.Gill notes the many complaints about Shaftesbury’s writing style. Gill notes that Adam Smith, for example, viewed Shaftesbury as someone whose writing is a paradigm of stylistic failure, leading him “frequently into a dungeon of metaphorical obscurity” (Smith, quoted by Gill on p. 14). However, Shaftesbury had very well-considered views on aesthetics and on aesthetically valuable writing. I especially liked how Gill’s careful reading of both Shaftesbury and his critics is further illuminated by considering some of these works that are often ignored by philosophers working on the British moralists, such as Soliloquy; or, Advice to an Author, which Gill discusses in the fifth chapter.What do beauty, nature, and virtue have to do with each other? Those familiar with the sentimentalist projects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries know that, for the sentimentalist, morality and aesthetics are closely connected if not identical. At bottom the idea is that virtue is a kind of moral beauty, analogous to the positive aesthetic characteristics we associate with natural objects and works of art. In the case of Shaftesbury himself, one of his more famous claims is that beauty and good are identical, “one and the same.” What Shaftesbury meant in this claim, as Gill notes, is that it is a life in pursuit of beauty that is the good life for human beings. Beauty comes in many forms, and in the first chapter of his book, Gill focuses on natural beauty. Some writers viewed nature as ugly and deformed. Some, like Locke, seemed to think that the value of the wilderness was entirely instrumental. One of Gill’s claims is that Shaftesbury was responsible for changing these attitudes toward nature. Shaftesbury saw beauty in wilderness landscapes. Gill argues that Shaftesbury was to some extent interested in natural beauty because it helped solve a problem that concerned him: there is a deeply emotional aspect to worship of God, and yet it is also the case that we ought to maintain our rationality—to the extent that even scripture should be subject to critical scrutiny. Our love of God is not threatened by rational inquiry. Nature and wilderness were created by God, and by using our rational capacities we can come to appreciate the beauty in even the most disgusting aspects of nature, such as excrement. Excrement is evidence of God’s beautiful design.There is also moral beauty. Moral beauty is extensively discussed in chapter 2 of Gill’s book. Moral beauty applies to our “mental children”—and by this Shaftesbury means features of our agency, such as our feelings, emotions, principles of action, determinations of the will, and so forth. These can be beautiful as well. We perceive this beauty via our moral sense, our sense of right and wrong, which arises out of our feeling of second-order sentiments about our first-order mental states or inclinations. Virtue involves being guided by these second-order sentiments.The second chapter lays out very quickly Shaftesbury’s views on virtue, but here Gill is mainly concerned with exploring a problem that bothered Shaftesbury on a personal level. Drawing on evidence from Shaftesbury’s diaries, as well his published works, Gill argues that we can see that he was very troubled by his failure to love humanity in general. He believed this to be a flaw. However, the failure to love humanity in general arose out of an understanding of the terrible things people do to each other. How can it be a flaw in one’s character to fail to love what is not worthy of love? Shaftesbury wants to show that we do possess fine qualities that warrant love. One prong of his argument is his criticism of Hobbesian egoism as bad moral psychology. Another prong appeals to our inherent sociality. Human beings have a strong desire to be with other human beings (this is an illustration of what Gill calls ‘the herding principle’). This desire underlies much prosocial behavior and demonstrates that moral beauty, or virtue, is certainly achievable by humans. However, if not properly cultivated it can lead to partiality; that is, it can lead to tribalism or caring more about some people than others. The underlying psychology appeals to the fact that we prefer to associate with those we are more in sympathy with. This leads us to exclude others, and even try to harm them. But our capacity to display moral beauty, to be virtuous, renders us the apt objects of love.In the third chapter Gill discusses art and artistic beauty, and this chapter serves as a prelude to the final two, which consider two different forms of artistic expression: painting and writing. Art is another way in which beauty is manifested in the world. Shaftesbury argued that art was an important part of the good human life, though as Gill notes he gave varying reasons for why this was the case. Sometimes he focused on the purely instrumental: appreciating a work of art can cause one to develop dispositions important to living a good human life, those dispositions properly instances of moral beauty. On this view, art would in principle be disposable at some point in a person’s development into a good human being. Once moral beauty is attained, one no longer needs to be spurred on through artistic appreciation. However, he sometimes argues that art is important in itself—that artistic beauty is an important component of the good life for its own sake, and not simply as a spur to moral development. Gill doesn’t believe that Shaftesbury can be made fully consistent on this issue, but he offers the following as the best charitable interpretation: appreciation of beauty is a final good, but moral beauty is a final good as well and is more significant. Thus, appreciation of beauty, while still a final good, should be sacrificed if it interferes with moral beauty.In the penultimate chapter, on painting, Gill focuses on Shaftesbury’s views regarding the category of art that is morally representational—that is, art that represents morally significant content. In this category he focuses on the genre of history painting—a prominent genre at the time Shaftesbury was writing, though not well represented in Britain at that time. Here he discusses an essay Shaftesbury wrote, A Notion of the Tablature, or Judgment of Hercules, in which Shaftesbury provides a description of a painting that he would later have painted by an Italian artist, Paolo de Matteis. Here, in going over the process of conceptualizing the painting that he would commission de Matteis to produce, various important features of composition are highlighted. But the important point of such painting is to convey a moral message. The choices that the artist makes should be guided by this norm. Gill writes that Shaftesbury believed that a well-executed history painting would be able to rouse virtue in its audience and discourage vice. Gill is doubtful. He also points out that Shaftesbury’s discussion of history painting highlights Shaftesbury’s “morally archaic” view of women. It is women who are often presented as spurs to vice in men.Writing, on Shaftesbury’s view, should also inspire one to virtue. Among those writers who fail in this task are the super speculative philosophers who mistakenly believe that abstruse philosophical speculations improve the lives of people. What they need to engage in, Shaftesbury writes, is soliloquy. Here we get an analogy with the exercise of moral agency. As a writer, one needs some critical distance, some critical “self-dissection,” to improve. The same for moral agents, who must subject their first-order mental states to critical scrutiny.In this book Gill has made a very powerful case for taking Shaftesbury’s work seriously beyond the standard topics of interest to the moral sentimentalists. Shaftesbury had a tremendous influence on many areas in philosophy—metaethics, virtue theory, aesthetics, and natural religion. Gill’s book does an excellent job of showing us how Shaftesbury’s philosophical thought permeated aspects of his day-to-day life and influenced more than the work of other, subsequent, philosophers. After reading this book I came away with a better understanding of Shaftesbury the human being, as well as Shaftesbury the philosopher. (shrink)

This essay explores the obligations that may arise from benevolently intended interventions that go awry. The author argues that even when the intervening agent has acted with good intentions and in a non-negligent manner, she may be required to continue aid in cases where her initial intervention failed. This is surprising because it means that persons who perform supererogatory acts run the risk of incurring additional heavy obligations through no fault of their own. The author also considers deflationary accounts that (...) run counter to her own analysis. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical discussion of Gopal Sreenivasan's integral account of virtue in his book Emotion and Virtue. This discussion focuses on his account of the paradigm virtue of compassion, arguing that the view does not have most of the advantages Sreenivasan suggests it has when compared to competing models of virtue.

Normative Ethical theory underwent a period of refinement in some areas and proliferation in others during the 20th century. Theories prominent in the 19th century, such as Utilitarianism, underwent refinement in light of criticisms; other approaches, such as normative intuitionism and virtue ethics, were developed in new directions, ones that reflected the sophistication of analytical techniques developed by philosophers in the 20th century, particularly in ordinary language philosophy. The middle of the 20th century was marked by an interest in conceptual (...) analysis and what could be revealed about our concepts in the analysis of ‘ordinary’ language appeals to those concepts. For example, Gilbert Ryle argued that the hope of clearing up our concepts via formalizing them was futile, and instead the task of philosophy was to clear up confusions present in the ordinary use of concepts, concepts employed by ordinary people as well as specialists in a given area. Normative ethicists in the very early part of the 20th century had not yet adopted a ‘scientizing’ attitude to philosophy. They believed, for example, that one could rely on intuition in formulating ethical theories.1 Theorists in the early part of the century were also optimistic about the prospects of systematizing normative ethics in a way that would be faithful to our common sense normative judgments. This began, largely, with a critical look at Utilitarianism. (shrink)