In November, Lawrence Solum had a good post on "Virtue Ethics", an approach to moral behavior. I thought about it while my students took their final exam this morning. This approach seems quite empty to me, though Professor Solum seemed to do a fair job of presenting it (I don't know whether he actually likes it or not). Here is what it is:

It might be illuminating to compare virtue ethics to deontology and utilitarianism via the following simplified formulas:

• Utilitarianism: An action is right if and only if the action will produce the best consequences as compared to the alternative actions that could be undertaken by the agent.
  
  
• Deontology: An action is right if and only if the action is either (a) required by a moral duty, or (b) allowed by a moral permission, and not (c) forbidden by a moral prohibition.
  
  
• Virtue Ethics: An action is right if and only if the action is one which a virtuous moral agent would characteristically perform under the circumstances.

Formulas are tricky, and I haven't tried to get these formulations exactly right. Instead, my aim was to paint broadly to give a sense of the basic structure of these three approaches to moral theory. Whereas, utilitarianism makes consequences (or states of affairs) the central idea of moral theory and deontology focuses on moral rules, virtue ethics focuses on character and human excellence.

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...Virtue ethics counsels us to cultivate virtue--to acquire the human excellences insofar as that is possible. Virtuous agents will then aim at the right goals in life, because their intellectual and emotional makeup naturally points them towards a just and flourishing life. Thus, a fully virtuous human will characteristically act in the right way for the right reasons. And what about those who lack full virtue? Many humans, however, lack fully virtuous characters. What counsel does virtue ethics offer those who lack the full complement of human excellence? The answer to this question can be developed in at least two ways. First, we might ask ourselves, "How would a virtuous human act in these circumstances?" This is, of course, part of ordinary human deliberation. When faced with a difficult choice situation, sometimes we think of someone whose character we admire, and ask, "How would she (or he) deal with this?" Second, we might ask ourselves, "What do the virtues counsel in this situation?" That is, we can take our understanding of the human excellences, and ask questions like, "What action would be courageous?" or "What action would accord with the virtue of justice?"

First problem: How do I know that the person is virtuous? Answer: He always does the right thing.

Second problem: What would a virtuous person do? Answer: He would do the right thing.

Without some other ethical theory to tell us right from wrong, there is no way to know who is virtuous or what is virtuous. And if we have the other theory, we don't need virtue ethics.

I checked in another source to see if I was missing something. Rosalind Hursthouse wrote an article called Virtue Ethics for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ( JUL 18 2003). She very helpfully has a list of objections people raise to virtue ethics, but she doesn't have quite the one I raise above. The closest objections she presents (without necessarily agreeing with them) is that virtue ethics lacks practical application and, close to my first objection above, how we decide what a virtue is:

... the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce codifiable principles is still the most commonly voiced criticism of the approach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unable to provide action-guidance.

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What does virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas -- cases in which, apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict because they point in opposed directions? Charity prompts me to kill the person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honesty points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do?

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Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by both utilitarianism and deontology, is (iv) "the justification problem." Abstractly conceived, this is the problem of how we justify or ground our ethical beliefs, an issue that is hotly debated at the level of metaethics. In its particular versions, for deontology there is the question of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are the correct ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim that the only thing that really matters morally is consequences for happiness or well-being. For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question of which character traits are the virtues.

Lawrence Solum also says,

Utilitarianism claims that there is a very simple rule (which if correctly applied) yields the morally correct action for each situation: act so as to produce the best consequences. Deontology has a similar claim: to do the right thing, simply consult the moral rules, and perform that action which is required or if no action is required, choose from among those that are permissible. Virtue ethics characteristically denies that there is any mechanical rule that generates the morally correct action. Why not? One answer to that question lies in Aristotle's idea of the phronimos, the person who possesses the virtue of practical wisdom. The phronimos has the ability to respond to the complexities of particular situations, to see what is morally salient, and to choose an action that will work given the circumstances.

The idea of pursuing virtue is, of course, not a bad one. It just needs some kind of supporting argument, and should not be seen as an end in itself. One thing that Professor Solum says is that

A virtue politics might begin with the idea that the goal of the state should be the establishment of the conditions for the development of human excellence.

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