2005/03/18

A small project in virtue ethics

Some thoughts jotted down over lunch, outlining a project to occupy the next week or so. (The abbreviation "Hb" shortens "human being" and all of its cognates.)
The virtues of a good Hb go beyond "moral" goodness. The excellence of the best Hb seem of involve health in the purely physical sense; these are to be set aside. What we're looking at is what it is to be what is colloquially called "a good person." It seems that this is not just goodness in the narrow traditionally moral sense, which is itself mainly derived from religious (specifically Christian) notions of good behavior. Taking the specifically religious out of this context (that is, removing the original cultural ground of the ordinary use and conception of good behavior) still leaves us with a fairly wide field of behavior to look at.
For one thing, other-concern and self-concern are both within the province of excellent behavior. But here, I think, I want to make virtue go beyond just being a "good person" as well. Now the question becomes: how do I approach the theory in order to see whether this can be (needs to be, and/or in some sense ought to be) done.

Is it the case that so-called moral virtues are just one kind of excellent Hb behavior set off from others by content? Probably. Are they also set off by the overridingness of motivations based on salient features of situations which "activate", in some sense, one's reasons (because one is disposed, qua virtuous, to act on such reasons; or because one has a virtue that constitutes in some sense a "secondary" reason)? Unknown at this time. It may be that various kinds of reasons just are the overriding ones in the relevant situations with such salient features. If this is the case then in situations of conflict is the moral reason overriding? (These are, anyway, the interesting cases, since overridingness wouldn't be necessary in situations where the salient features conduce only to one type of (motivational?) reason). If such reasons are ovrriding in this sense, is that why the content distinction arises? Unknown at this time. A special class of overriding reasons, if it exists, it would seem (assuming we know the type of actions constituting it), marks out the relevant content of types from others. That is, the division is non-accidental.

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