References
- 2002 . American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy , 1 : 59 – 63 . Some passages in the first two sections of this article borrow from a short piece entitled “Do the Wicked Flourish? Virtue Ethics and Unjust Social Privilege,” which I published in the:
- Aristotle . 1941 . Nicomachean Ethics Edited by: McKeon , Richard . New York : Random House . trans. W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle 1098a17.
- 1996 . The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck Philadelphia : Temple University Press . Claudia Card []) argues that the moral luck arising from conditions of oppression may make certain virtues easier for beneficiaries of oppression— and harder for the oppressed— to develop. For instance, she points out that the virtue of “liberality” is generally not available to those without means to carry it out (4). She also recognizes, though, that privileged people are likely to develop certain vices (see p. 53). (On liberality, notice that Aristotle does permit the poor to be called liberal: “There is. nothing to prevent the man who gives less from being the more liberal man, if he has less to give” [NE 1120b9–10]; however, the larger-scale getting-and-spending virtue, magnificence, is a virtue that is unattainable by the poor: “a poor man cannot be magnificent, since he has not the means with which to spend large sums fittingly; and he who tries is a fool, since he spends beyond what can be expected of him and what is proper, but it is right expenditure that is virtuous” [NE 1122b27–29]).
- 1999 . On Virtue Ethics Oxford : Oxford University Press . For instance, Rosalind Hursthouse []), in the context of considering the relevance of the point that it is difficult to convince the “wicked or the moral sceptic that the virtues benefit their possessor,” makes the following remark: “Few of us (by which I mean myself and you, my readers) are likely to be steeped in vice or to be genuine moral sceptics. Thereby we believe many things we know we couldn't convince them of, but we do not reject those beliefs as implausible just because of that” (174–75, emphasis added). Within the virtue ethics tradition, an exception to the tendency to portray vice as uncommon is found in John Kekes' “The Reflexivity of Evil,” in Virtue and Vice, E. Frankel Paul, F. Miller, Jr., and J. Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (though he is motivated in his claims by quite different concerns than I am); outside of the neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition, see Judith Shklar's Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984) for a discussion of the significance (especially for liberal tolerance) of “ordinary vices.”
- Tessman , Lisa . 2000 . “Moral Luck in the Politics of Personal Transformation,” . Social Theory and Practice , 26 See: 1–21; and “Critical Virtue Ethics: Understanding Oppression as Morally Damaging,” in Feminists Doing Ethics, ed.P. DesAutels and J. Waugh (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).
- The Unnatural Lottery For a sustained discussion of moral damage under conditions of oppression, see Card, (especially the first section of chapter three, for a consideration of how women may be morally damaged); I have relied heavily on Card's work in developing my own analysis of moral damage. For an argument against portraying the oppressed as morally damaged, see Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1998), 123–25; also see Daryl Michael Scott, Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). I extensively consider the question of whether and in what ways it is problematic to associate moral damage with oppression in “Critical Virtue Ethics.”
- Aristotle . 1984 . NE Edited by: Barnes , J. Princeton : Princeton University Press . See 1099a31–b8 and 1101a14–16, and Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, in The Complete Works of Aristotle 1360b20–30. Of course, not all virtue theorists agree with Aristotle's position on this; the Stoics, for instance, present virtue as sufficient for flourishing.
- Annas , Julia . “Virtue and Eudaimonism,” in ” . In Virtue and Vice See op. cit., for an interesting discussion of the relation between virtue and eudaimonia and on the differences between the Ancient Greek conception of eudaimonia and the modern conception of happiness.
- Republic In “Do the Wicked Flourish?” I also discuss Plato's portrayal of Socrates' disagreement with Thrasymachus in Book I of the where the dialogue focuses on whether the unjust or the just man is happy.
- Aristotle . Politics trans. B. Jowett, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, 1253a2.
- Aristotle . Eudemian Ethics trans. J. Solomon, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, 1245b9–11.
- NE There is of course much debate over whether Aristotle believes that the very best life is the contemplative life, which he portrays as a life of solitary contemplation (See Book X, ch. 7–8). I will not enter into that debate here.
- 1981 . After Virtue Notre Dame : IN: University of Notre Dame Press . The key text to see for a full discussion of the differences between the Ancient Greek context and the modern context that are relevant for virtue and flourishing is Alasdair MacIntyre,. MacIntyre also makes important distinctions within an Ancient Greek context, for instance, between a Homeric and an Aristotelian world. Because I am not developing any detailed account of Ancient Greek flourishing here, I am only noting some differences between Ancient Greek and modern/post-modern understandings of the relationship between virtue and happiness.
- Aristotle . NE See Book III, ch. 4, where he notes that some people aim not at the real good, but at an apparent good, usually because they mistakenly confuse the pleasurable and the good.
- 1989 . Ethics , 99 : 275 – 90 . This fact has led some feminists to critique communitarian thinking. See Marilyn Friedman, “Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community,”:
- Kelly , E. , ed. 1993 . Political Liberalism New York : Columbia University Press . See John Rawls' concept of political liberalism that attempts to balance an overlapping consensus in the political realm with individuals' or groups' privately held comprehensive doctrines. (John Rawls, [/96], and John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001].)
- Crisp , R. , ed. 1996 . Virtue and Vice Oxford : Clarendon Press . Very clear examples of this are L. W. Sumner, “Is Virtue its Own Reward?” in op. cit., which I analyze below, and Brad Hooker, “Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?” in How Should One Live?. (Hooker distinguishes between asking whether moral virtue is instrumentally beneficial to an agent, and whether it is constitutively beneficial; nevertheless, he is still concerned with benefits to a self-interested individual.) Also see Julia Driver, “The Virtues and Human Nature,” and Gabriele Taylor, “Deadly Vices,” both in How Should One Live?, and (for somewhat of a contrast) Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (ch. 8). D. Z. Phillips, in “Does it Pay to be Good?” (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 65: 45–60), is critical of the approach of asking whether justice (or any virtue) is beneficial or profitable, given the reliance of this approach on using non-moral justifications of moral claims; his critique focuses on the argument given by Philippa Foot in “Moral Beliefs” [1959], in Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
- Sumner , L. W. “Is Virtue its Own Reward?”, 21. Italics in the original.
- Ibid., 30.
- Ibid., 34.
- 2000 . Inclusion and Democracy Oxford : Oxford University Press . For instance, as Iris Marion Young has pointed out in residential racial segregation prevents those who live in predominantly white neighborhoods from perceiving in any detailed way how their quality of life differs from that of the residents of predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods. Young writes: “the very same process that produces. relations of privilege. obscures that privilege from those who have it. In order to see themselves as privileged, the white people who live in more pleasant neighbourhoods must be able to compare their environment with others. But this comparison is rarely forced upon them because those excluded from access to the resources and benefits they themselves have are spatially separated and out of sight” (208).
- Alcoff , L. and Potter , E. , eds. 1993 . Feminist Epistemologies New York : Routledge . For a critique of the use of the concept of epistemic privilege, see Bat-Ami Bar On, “Marginality and Epistemic Privilege,” in
- 1963 . The Varieties of Goodness London : Routledge and Kegan Paul . For a clear statement of the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding virtues, see Georg Henrik Von Wright,: “One way of marking the distinction between [self-regarding and other-regarding virtues] is to say that self-regarding virtues essentially serve the welfare of the agent himself, who possesses and practices them, whereas other-regarding virtues essentially serve the good of other beings” (153). Also see Philippa Foot, who remarks briefly on the distinction in “Virtues and Vices” (in Virtues and Vices) by noting that, while virtues are beneficial, “we must ask to whom the benefit goes, whether to the one who has the virtue or rather to those who have to do with him?” (3), perhaps picking up on her own consideration of the issue in “Moral Beliefs,” where she addresses the apparent problem that “while prudence, courage and temperance are qualities which benefit the man who has them, justice seems rather to benefit others, and to work to the disadvantage of the just man himself” (125); here she is able to answer that justice is beneficial to the agent precisely because of humans' equality and interdependence (pointing out that “if a man only needed other men as he needs household objects, and if men could be manipulated like household objects, or beaten into a reliable submission like donkeys, the case would be different” [129]), but she is not led to reject the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding virtues altogether.
- Plato . 1997 . Social Philosophy and Policy , 14 however, does question this connection: otherwise, there would be no Thrasymachus. This makes it clear that the question was quite thinkable within the Ancient Greek context, and that answering the question the way Plato ultimately does— by arguing that a trait such as “justice,” which seems to benefit others actually benefits oneself— required defense. See David Brink, “Self-Love and Altruism” []: 122–57), for a unique interpretation of how Plato (and Aristotle) cement the link between other-regarding virtues and an agents' own well-being.
- 1997 . Social Philosophy and Policy , 14 Obviously, ethical egoism is a theory that rejects the belief that self-concern is not moral. However, egoism is seldom seriously defended. As Kelly Rogers points out in “Beyond Self and Other,” []: 1–20), it might be because egoism violates the requirement that morality be about how one treats others that it is so implausible. Rogers argues for a rejection of the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding virtues, commenting about the “self-other model,” that “on this view, an action has no moral worth unless it benefits others— and not even then, unless it is motivated by altruism rather than selfishness” (1). Her focus is on critiquing the idea that morality is other-based. Jean Hampton has an interesting discussion of egoism in “The Wisdom of the Egoist: The Moral and Political Implications of Valuing the Self” (Social Philosophy and Policy 14 [1997]: 21–51. She rejects the view that self-concern is not moral, after having pointed out that the view that morality is limited to other-regarding concerns is something “that most contemporary moral philosophers take for granted” (21). She writes: “. moral action and moral regard are taken to be other-regarding. Self-interest is generally taken to be outside the province of the moral” (21). One of her points about egoism is that it can teach the lesson that “our own selves are valuable” (48). This has not been seen as morally significant to theorists who assume that agents believe in and promote their own self-worth. Hampton rightly remarks that “Probably because most philosophers have, up until now, been males from relatively privileged social positions— a background that encourages people to think well of themselves— there has been virtually no recognition of how difficult it can be for some people to believe in their own worth” (48).
- Hooker , B. “Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?” 142.
- Ibid., 142f.
- Tessman , Lisa . Critical Virtue Ethics See and D. M. Scott, Contempt and Pity.
- 1951 . Personality in the Making: The Fact-finding Report of the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth New York : Harper & Brothers . Helen Leland Witmer and Ruth Kotinsky, eds., 48–9; quoted in D. M. Scott, Contempt and Pity, 96. See also Kenneth Clark, Prejudice and Your Child (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
- Scott , D. M. Contempt and Pity 133 – 36 . See
- 1979 . Femininity and Domination New York : Routledge . For a classic feminist essay on this phenomenon, see Sandra Lee Bartky, “On Psychological Oppression,” [] in 1990), who draws on Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967 [French, 1952]).
- Hill , Thomas E. Jr. 1973 . “Servility and Self Respect,” . The Monist , 57 : 88 – 89 . 87–104
- Ibid., 97.
- Ibid., 98.
- One could describe the beliefs typical of the servile person without using the language of rights. For instance, under an Aristotelian account, if justice entails distributing to each their due amount, then believing one should give oneself less than is appropriate is as problematic as the vice of giving oneself an unfairly large share.
- The Philosophical Forum , 5 222 – 47 . For early essays on women's self-sacrifice and altruism, see Judith Farr Tormey, “Exploitation, Oppression and Self-Sacrifice,” (1973–74): 206–21; and Larry Blum, Marcia Homiak, Judy Housman, and Naomi Sche- man, “Altruism and Women's Oppression,” The Philosophical Forum 5 (1973–74):
- Notice that under slavery and to some extent under the pressures of a certain kind of paid labor (labor that while not fulfilling in itself meanwhile takes women away from their families), women are denied the affirmations offered by their potential role as nurturer in their families and are not compensated by being valued elsewhere.
- Noddings , Nel . 1984 . Caring: A Femmine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education Berkeley : University of California Press . See
- 1988 . Lesbian Ethics Palo Alto , CA : Institute of Lesbian Studies . See, for instance, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, ch. 2.
- Of course, Aristotle does not consider this as a virtue, but this very fact probably reflects his elitism: it is not a typical virtue of leisured gentlemen.
- Spelman , Elizabeth V. 1991 . “The Virtue of Feeling and the Feeling of Virtue,” in ” . In Feminist Ethics Edited by: Card , C. Lawrence , KS : University Press of Kansas . See
- Brown , Wendy . 1995 . States of Injury 70 Princeton : Princeton University Press .
- McFall , Lynne . “What's Wrong with Bitterness?” (in ” . In Feminist Ethics) See for a (qualified) defense of bitterness.
- Hoagland . 1985 . Lesbian Ethics 85 Hoagland is drawing on Claudia Card, Virtues and Moral Luck, Series 1, Institute for Legal Studies, Working Papers, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Law School, November
- The Unnatural Lottery Card, 53.
- Rhet. Aristotle does not recognize how one may exercise control or take vengeance from below (what did he think of Medea?) and wrongly asserts that “we feel comparatively little anger, or none at all, with those who are much our superiors in power” since “no one grows angry with a person on whom there is no prospect of taking vengeance” 1370b12–15).
- Wilkes , Kathleen . 1980 . “The Good Man and the Good for Man in Aristotle's Ethics,” in ” . In Essays on Aristotle's Ethics Edited by: Rorty , A. Berkeley : University of California Press . See: “The essential thing to realize is that Aristotle— and Plato— wrote in a time when the distinction between the moral (other-regarding) and prudential (self-regarding) virtues had not yet been framed, and, perhaps even more importantly, that they would have denied any reality or importance to the distinction had it been explicitly presented to them” (354). Wilkes' point is partially that Aristotle (and Plato) did not equate moral virtues with other- regarding virtues, but she makes this point without noting and accounting for the fact that Aristotle does specially pick out some traits as other-regarding.
- 1993 . The Morality of Happiness Oxford : Oxford University Press . These are in addition to his discussions of friendship, which could also be used as Aristotelian sources for thinking about self- and other-regardingness. I am not focusing on friendship in part because concern for a friend is so clearly a limited kind of other-regarding concern, as a friend is very close to one's self (especially for Aristotle). See Julia Annas' discussion of Aristotle in her chapter on “Self-Concern and the Sources and Limits of Other-Concern” (ch. 12) in where she does focus on Aristotle's treatment of friendship.
- 1993 . Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 53 A similar point is made by Nancy Sherman in “The Virtues of Common Pursuit,”: 277–99, 287.
- NE I do not mean, here, to refer just to the virtues that are displayed in social intercourse (such as amiability or friendliness, sincerity or truthfulness, and wittiness), though these are social virtues too. See Book IV, ch. 6–8. See Sherman (”The Virtues of Common Pursuit” for a discussion of what she calls the “virtues of common pursuit”; Sherman also points out that many of Aristotle's virtues mix self-regarding and other-regarding aims, naming even those that appear to be most other-regarding (liberality, magnificence and magnanimity) as having self-regarding elements such as (in reference to liberality) “being a good steward of one's acquisitions and expenditures” and “not being negligent about what one materially requires for a non-depraved existence” (286).
- 2001 . “Eudaimonism , One might argue for a different connection between other-regarding virtues and one's own eudaimonia under Aristotle's version of eudaimonism, a connection that does not emphasize (though is compatible with) Aristotle's assumptions of human sociality. William Prior argues (in and Virtue,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 35 []: 325–42) that “Reason is the crucial link between virtue and eudaimonia in Aristotle's theory. since a good life is essentially characterized by excellence in rational activity, every act that makes excellent use of reason, every virtuous act, contributes essentially to the good life of an agent” (330). With respect to an other-regarding virtue such as justice, Prior observes that “in order to act justly, we must first determine rationally what justice requires. This use of our rational ability contributes intrinsically to our eudaimonia, and so benefits us. The phronimos, in reasoning out the demands of justice in a particular situation, contributes to his own eudaimonia” (331).
- Pol. Book I, ch. 4–7, 12,13; Book III, ch. 5; 1280a32–34.
- They can also be fairly indifferent towards far-away strangers in general, regardless of privilege. Notice that Aristotle's conception of interdependent community is based on a small polis, which is not only exclusive, but is also simply limited in size or population.
- Annas , Julia . 1992 . “The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others,” . Social Philosophy and Policy , 9 See: 133–48, for a consideration of which of the ancient eudaimonistic theories might accommodate a wider-reaching other-concern than Aristotle's theory does.
- Inclusion and Democracy I find Iris Young, promising for addressing these questions.
- Flanagan , O. and Rorty , A. , eds. 1990 . Identity, Character, and Morality Cambridge , MA : MIT Press . Brink disagrees and contends in “Self-Love and Altruism” that “there are good eudaimonist reasons for recognizing a more inclusive common good than Aristotle does” (150). His argument rests on claims about “interpersonal self-extension” that he conceives as parallel to the continued personal identity of a single self through time; that is, one extends oneself by investing oneself in or contributing to the projects of others, no matter how distant those others may be. I do not find his argument to be convincing but will not argue the point here. See also David Brink, “Rational Egoism, Self, and Others,” in
- I do not know the source of this slogan; I think of it as a bumper sticker.