Download Character vs. Actions

Richard Johns
March 22, 2006
Character vs. Actions
Is morality fundamentally about character, with good actions being those of a good
person? Or is morality about actions, with a good person being someone who does the
right thing?
A. Character (virtue theories) Aristotle, Nietzsche, Aquinas
St. Paul: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. … If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender
my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Morality of actions seems superficial. Virtues are deep, complex character traits. They
go “all the way down”. As Rosalind Hursthouse points out, for example (SEP entry on
virtue ethics) the virtue of honesty is concerned with many other actions, in addition to
telling the truth, and also “…with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values,
desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities”.
The reference to emotions is important. An honest person will not merely refrain from
lying, but will hate lying, find it detestable, and similarly love truth. A morality of
actions does not seem to include such attitudes, and thus is hollow. (Like St. Paul’s
“resounding gong”.)
Virtue is partly constitutive of eudaimonia, as well as a means to it. That’s why you can’t
be really happy unless you’re also good. To be unjust toward others is therefore to harm
yourself, as Plato said.
Phronesis (moral wisdom, or practical wisdom) is also an important element of
Aristotle’s ethical view.
Phronesis is knowledge that one gains from experience of life. Children and adolescents
can possess many virtues to a high degree, but cannot attain perfect virtue because they
lack phronesis. (Even the nicest adolescent is apt to mess things up, because he lacks
knowledge of eudaimonia, for example.)
Is virtue ethics egoistic? After all, one is aiming at one’s own flourishing! No, because
part of virtue is altruism, or genuine concern for the well being of others.
What determines the content of the virtues? Is, for example, friendliness a virtue?
Gentleness? (These are attacked by Nietzsche, of course.) Who decides?
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Also there are such difficult questions as sexual normativity. Incest seems inconsistent
with arête and eudaimonia, but is it really? Or is it just an arbitrary cultural taboo?
Pedophilia? Sado-masochism? Necrophilia? Polygamy? Prostitution? Pornography?
Masturbation? Casual sex? Homosexuality? Oral Sex? Sodomy? Rape?
About such things one can have two possible attitudes:
1. There is an objective human nature, and thus each of these practices is objectively
either natural or unnatural. (E.g. Thomas Aquinas) Most gay rights activists take this
approach, for example, in arguing that society’s concept of normal sexuality needs to be
expanded to include committed, monogamous homosexuality. These relationships are
normal, healthy, and good. They should be celebrated, as heterosexual relationships are.
2. There is no objective human nature. Only culture defines which of these are “natural”.
(e.g. queer theory, which says that all categories such as gender are socially constructed.
Queer theory aims to undermine and destabilize the category of normality.)
(Note that some actions, like using one’s thumb to hitch a ride, aren’t thought to be
natural, and yet are not considered contrary to nature either. Some of these practices
could be in that third category.)
So what fixes the content of the virtuous character, or human nature, if there is such a
thing? Surely it should have something to do with the cause of human beings, their
origin?
Our evolutionary history? God? Is there a third option?
As we have seen before, our evolutionary history is unlikely to provide an adequate
source for a normative human nature, and hence for moral truth, for the following reasons:
1. The content of human nature, so defined, is unlikely to fit our moral intuitions. The
moral system that results from an evolutionary basis will likely be unpalatable. A
biologist may argue, for example, that a tendency to rape has been selected for in our
ancestors, and hence is “natural”. (Similar claims have been made about promiscuity, for
example.) We will likely reject the claim that a tendency to rape is a virtue, however.
2. Our evolutionary history seems to lack normative force. Suppose a trait F is “natural”,
in the sense that it was selected for in our hunter-gatherer ancestors. How does it follow
that F is a good quality, one that is excellent and to be acquired? A person who commits
her life to battling AIDS in Africa, for example, rather than having her own kids, goes
against evolutionary history. But so what? Why shouldn’t she?
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The second option, that our nature comes from a divine creator, does not seem to face
these two problems. Thus, I would argue that a character-based moral theory leads either
to cultural relativism or to theism. This may be one reason why philosophers have
strongly preferred action-based theories.
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B. Actions Hobbes, Mill, Kant
Some philosophers think that morality applies first and foremost to actions. A good
person can then be defined as someone who typically does what is morally right.
The two main groups of such philosophers are the consequentialists (including utilitarians)
and deontologists (e.g. Kant). They often ascribe to such theses as the following about
moral rules:
(a) the rule(s) would amount to a decision procedure (algorithm) for determining what the
right action was in any particular case;
(b) the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that any non-virtuous person could
understand and apply it (them) correctly.
These claims differ sharply from Aristotle’s view. He says that moral reasoning and
action are a matter of skill, that can be acquired only through rigorous training. To attain
perfect virtue requires phronesis, or practical wisdom, which cannot be reduced to a set of
rules, but comes from life experience.
These views criticise Aristotle for not giving us clear, action-guiding rules.
One response is to point out that, by identifying virtues such as honesty and generosity,
some such guidance is given.
Another is that the rules provided by deontologists and utilitarians are too blunt and crude.
They require arête and phronesis to apply them successfully anyway.
Yet the criticism surely retains some force. If the “virtuous character” isn’t defined by
culture, then what does define it? Until we know what virtue is, how do we find out what
kinds of action a virtuous person does?
I suspect, as I said above, that virtue ethics will lead either to cultural relativism or to a
theocentric system.
On the other hand, action-based moral systems seem to be incomplete at best.
Mill, for example, holds that the supreme good is pleasure. This just seems to be false,
even taking his distinction between higher and lower pleasures into account. Pleasure is
only a sensation, and is thus a mere symptom of eudaimonia, rather than eudaimonia
itself. If one modifies Mill’s theory, by making eudaimonia rather than pleasure the
supreme good, then one is in danger of converting it to a virtue theory. For, if virtue is
(partially) constitutive of eudaimonia, then character traits will have intrinsic moral worth.
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Kant, on the other hand, believes in a moral law that issues categorical imperatives.
(These categorical imperatives are truths of reason.) These command certain kinds of
behaviour, but don’t say anything about what kind of person you should become.
Kant’s moral system is rather complex, and hard to grasp. The question of how Kant’s
different formulation of the categorical imperatives are related is especially difficult.
The categorical imperative, in all its formulations, seems incomplete. It doesn’t say
anything, for example, about sexual normality. Or about appropriate feelings. Perhaps
any part of Kant’s system that seems right (such as respect for humanity, in your own
person or that of another) can be incorporated into a virtue system anyway.
The idea that humans are rational and autonomous seems rather close to the claim that
these are natural for humans. Isn’t it unhealthy for a human to be irrational or slavish?
One attraction of action-based moral systems, like those of Mill and Kant, is that they
seem to be both objectivist and independent of theism. (Although Kant himself argued
that the existence of the moral law required a lawgiver.)
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