If you're making decisions for a lot of people - if you're managing a healthcare budget or a nation - you really have to justify why you'd move away from utilitarian thinking. You might be able to nuance your utilitarianism - it seems as though there are a whole host of varieties. Basically, though, maximising happiness (or wellbeing) and treating everyone as one but no more than one (impartiality) has to be a great foundation.
And indeed, both Bentham and Mill saw the theory as principally for organising societies.
If you just an ordinary Jane or Joe, then, like Murdoch says, rules when you have to act fast (or before you have developed much understanding), consequentialism when a lot of people are involved or in decisions like charitable giving but at the same time some kind of duty to develop as a rational, benevolent and virtuous person.
It seems to me that the advantage of virtue ethics is that it enables a sense of autonomy - by which I mean that one feels that one can develop one's character (being as much as possible, self-created rather than just evolving out of the customs of the day) and that one experiences a greater locus of control.
In the self-creation idea, this is something specifically addressed by Mill. He wrote that custom:
does not educate or develop in [a person] any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.
As for locus of control, there seems to be scientific evidence supporting the view that having a greater locus of control is related to wellbeing. For example, people in old people's homes (those not, tragically, killed in the pandemic) improve in their mental and physical states even by simply having a houseplant to look after. Having a say - as well as having responsibilities - matters intrinsically. A personal commitment to virtue ethics suggests that the agent will engage in moral development. The process would call upon reflection and deliberation, the exercise of judgement and, one would hope, theory of mind. All of this would, over time, increase practical wisdom. Surely, a society is better, the more people in it are inclined to think ethically (as in, taking account of the needs of others) as well as self-interestedly.
Virtue ethics - at least in the Aristotelian framework –is distinctly social. It is predicated on the idea that virtues are contextual and relational. There is a flexibility, dependent on the agent's level of practical wisdom, which should ensure the best outcomes - but also the flourishing of the agent. The virtues recognise duties to others and to the state, but also bring benefits which are directly related to the social nature of ethics: for example, acknowledging that people will feel rewarded by esteem which can encourage such practices and increasing the evidential base of ‘good moral exemplars’ in the world. In this way, it seems that virtue ethics is aligned with an understanding of humans as social animals - who are affected by the praise and blame of others and who are inclined to mimic behaviours deemed admirable. Such social psychological wisdom was well ahead of its time, but I think has been supported by contemporary research.
Indeed, considering the positives to both individuals and communities, I think there’s a consequentialist argument for promoting virtue ethics!
Of course, there remains a problem: why should someone be motivated to have a commitment to virtue ethics?
Aristotle assumes that this would come out of having the right education and upbringing. So, that seems a practical answer: teach it in schools.
How do you choose the virtues to teach? Actually, I have heard that some schools do have these programmes. And I seem to recall that fairness and friendliness were among them.
As individuals grew up and continued learning (one would hope) they could weigh up the benefits of different moral theories and consider what seemed the right decision in a given situation. Deontology can appear far too inflexible and reduce all acts to duties; utilitarianism can be both too demanding and too devoid of human feeling. In fact, Bernard Williams viewed moral theories in general as one dimensional, missing a good deal of what held value for people.
It seems to me that what has value to people is what motivates them to act. People can change their values - and I think that through a process of attending and unselfing one can expand one's values to encompass a far wider terrain of concern. But I also think that society and culture play a role in establishing broad brushstrokes of value. Which may be why appearance, status and consumerism have such a powerful sway over many of us today. To be motivated to get beyond the custom and habit of society, perhaps people need some encouragement. Yet any suggestion of that reeks of paternalism.
It's only with children that one has the chance to shape minds!
Perhaps that idea of locus of control, though. perhaps people could be encouraged by the idea that they could come to understanding for themselves. That they could take ownership of their ideas and opinions. Yet I suspect that people feel that their inherited ideas really, truly, are theirs. And many they are.
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