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Christensen on McDowell on Virtue Ethics

By Lawrence Solum

Anne-Marie S. Christensen has posted Getting It Right in Ethical Experience: John McDowell and Virtue Ethics (Journal of Value Inquiry) on PhilPapers. Here is an excerpt from the paper:

Most forms of virtue ethics are characterized by two attractive features. The first is that proponents of virtue ethics acknowledge the need to describe how moral agents acquire or develop the traits and abilities necessary to become morally able agents. A common way of describing this feature is by saying that they focus on the concept of being an agent rather than the concept of right action, thereby reminding us that we have to construe ethics in a way that makes it possible to understand how it becomes accessible and important for us, the ethical subjects. The second attractive feature of most forms of virtue ethics is that they are forms of moral realism. The acquisition of virtue is considered to be a process through which we acquire the ability to distinguish new features of the world, which serve as reason for virtuous actions. The two features come together in the attempt to describe virtue as a personal ability to distinguish morally good reasons for action. It follows from the general picture of virtue ethics presented here that we cannot evaluate ethical judgment independently of the viewpoint of a virtuous person. Being a virtuous person plays an essential role within such theories, as being a virtuous person stands for the possibility of correct moral judgment and exemplifies the abilities that such judgment depends on. The ideal of being a virtuous person is vital to our understanding of ethical reflection and judgment.

We will examine how this ideal unfolds in the realistic form of virtue ethics advanced by John McDowell. McDowell offers a compelling description of virtue as a natural ability grounded in human nature, while at the same time insisting that we cannot understand the judgment resulting from virtue without drawing on that very perspective. Moreover, he meets the need to describe how moral agents become morally able agents by presenting us with a detailed and clear picture of what it is to be a virtuous agent, the ideal that is crucial to our understanding of the character of virtue. However, McDowell?s focus on the passive taking in of reasons in ethical experience and his idea of the silencing of wrong reasons lead us to three related problems. The first is that he cannot account for certain features of the phenomenology of such experience; the second is that he cannot provide any relevant epistemological criteria for correct moral judgment; and the third is that he gives a morally objectionable characterization of the ideal of being a virtuous person. All of these problems arise because McDowell does not take into account the particular nature of ethical experience. If we try to resolve this problem by dropping McDowell?s idea of silencing, we then have to offer another substantial description of our ideal of a virtuous person that includes active and interpersonal ways of evaluating concrete judgments. Proponents of virtue ethics still have to lift this task and develop a position that does not limit ethical experience to the passive intake of reasons.

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Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 03, 2009 (boomark / email).