Abstract
The classical doctrine that the moral virtues are unified is widely rejected. Some argue that the virtues are disunified, or even mutually incompatible. And though others have argued that the virtues form some sort of unity, these recent defenses of unity are always qualified, advocating only a partial unity: the unity of the virtues is limited to certain practical domains, or weak in that one virtue implies only moral decency in the fields of other virtues. I argue that something like the classical doctrine—a full unity of the virtues thesis—remains defensible. After reviewing the arguments of partial unity theorists for the claim that the virtues form at least some sort of unity, I examine their main arguments for thinking that this unity is only partial (limited or weak). I then show that these arguments fail, and address some further criticisms (such as the argument that full unity implausibly requires that a person must attain the virtues “all at once”). I do not seek here to prove the truth of the full unity thesis (in fact I suggest a modification of it), but only to refute important extant criticisms of it, and thus to show that it remains a plausible view.
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Notes
See Russell’s discussion of the interaction of truthfulness and tactfulness at Russell 2009, p. 353.
See Badhwar 1996, Wolf 2007, and Russell 2009. Badhwar, of course, articulates a precise statement of LUV, and I will cite and work with her formulation below. Russell, I should note, actually accepts FUV at the “model level” of discourse (where we have to do with the virtues themselves, the nature of the virtues; I discuss model concepts below), but rejects it at the “attributive level” (where we have to do with the virtues as we find them in actual agents—and it is this level that is my concern here).
Russell 2009, pp. 112–113. He prefers “satis” (enough) to “threshold” because he thinks the latter, contrary to Swanton’s intention, implies a sharp boundary between F and non-F things.
Hursthouse, as we saw above, speaks of being characteristically responsive to “X reasons”; Russell speaks of being characteristically responsive to “the reasons there are” to do the brave thing (see Russell 2009, pp. 183–185). For both, this responsiveness includes actions, of course, but also, as Hursthouse puts it, “appropriate feelings and attitudes”.
The quotation is from Badhwar 1996, p. 317. I should note that Badhwar herself does not endorse or even discuss such a possible method of determining what it is to be virtuous enough to be virtuous tout court.
See Badhwar 1996, pp. 312–315. The main idea is that virtues are acquired over time, and that our development of them will typically be uneven (even within the field of one virtue, our natural emotional constitution may make it easier to attain excellence in some areas than in others, our upbringing may train us in some ways but not others, we will have more experience in some domains than others, and so forth).
Nor does it rule him in. Judging whether he is possible requires employment of model conceptions of virtues which form no part of LUV.
Perhaps the strategy could be further pursued in a way that addresses such concerns. If so, others would remain, for example one regarding how to account for non-compartmentalizable practical concerns, such as the “concern to lead a good life and be a good person”. This concern, then, will not fall under any particular domain, and yet it is “necessary for having any virtue at all, and is a crucial determinant of the extent and degree of an individual’s virtues” (Badhwar 1996, p. 316).
Watson 1984, p. 60. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first use of the phrase “weak unity”.
Russell 2009, p. 362; see also p. 357.
We can also set aside the idea that mere “natural virtue” could serve since, as partial unity theorists note, such virtue tends often to lead one into acting badly, even in the sense of failing to perform actions in accord with virtue.
People in this condition would slide back and forth between continence and incontinence. This is worth mentioning because Aristotle claims, plausibly I think, that most of us are in this intermediate condition (see Nicomachean Ethics VII.10 1152a25 (Aristotle 1999)).
As Badhwar explains, “… the continent man lacks practical wisdom because his emotional dispositions affect the quality of his understanding, deliberation, and actions, without yet making them wrong … he lacks the kind of fine-tuned perceptiveness and responsiveness that is characteristic of the wise, because perceptiveness and responsiveness require good desires and emotions. For example, the continent person will deliberate and act correctly when he sees another in need, but he will be less likely than the virtuous person to perceive the need in the first place” (Badhwar 1996, p. 310). Here she is glossing Aristotle, but she seems to accept the reasoning, given her endorsement of the unity of the virtues in domains. And in any event, the reasoning seems sound.
Even Peter Geach, who forcefully rejects FUV, recognizes this point at least with respect to courage: as he writes, “any ascription of virtue other than courage may be defeated if a lack of courage is established” (Geach 1977, p. 161).
On Odo, see Walsh 1986, pp. 458–459. One theorist who explicitly argued that such social virtues as agreeableness and wit are unified or connected with the other virtues was Jean Buridan. As Walsh briefly summarizes his view, “Anyone truly loving the honorable will console through wit if that is called for” (Walsh 1986, p. 461). But although this seems right, it still does not show that mere decency in the fields of wit or agreeableness would so subvert our ability to act well that we could not count as virtuous tout court (as opposed to perfectly virtuous) in other fields. One other possible line of defense of FUV’s claim that all virtues, including social virtues such as wit and agreeableness, are strongly connected is worth briefly mentioning: Attaining sufficient practical wisdom to guide our responses reliably in any field may depend upon being able to rely on receiving wise counsel, which in turn may depend upon being able to build and sustain certain sorts of relationships, which may in its turn depend upon reliably exercising the social virtues.
I write “at least some” because, even granting MacInytre’s point about courage and agreeableness (or similar points regarding wit, tactfulness, etc.), it may be that some individual non-cardinal virtues are strongly unified {say, proper modesty and truthfulness [as Aristotle understands the latter in Nicomachean Ethics IV.7 (Aristotle 1999)]}, and it may further be that a given cardinal virtue is strongly unified with some non-cardinal virtue {say, justice and equity [the epieikeia discussed in Ethics V.10 (Aristotle 1999)]}. Some of what we want to say here will be determined by how we individuate the virtues, and this is far too complex a matter for me to broach in this article (for an excellent discussion, see Russell 2009, Chs. 5–7).
The account here sketched in crude lines is a very rough approximation to Russell’s sophisticated theory of cardinality (and Russell, of course, does not construct it with a view to saving FUV, of which as we have seen he is a stern critic), which itself is a sort of free development of Aquinas’s; see Russell 2009, Ch. 6, especially pp. 196–198; see Ch. 7 for a detailed discussion of the relationship between generosity and magnificence.
References
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Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean ethics, 2 edition. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Badhwar, Neera. 1996. The limited unity of virtue. Nous 30: 306–329.
Geach, Peter. 1977. The virtues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hursthouse, Rosalind. 2006. Practical wisdom: a mundane account. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (new series) 106: 285–309.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After virtue, 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Russell, Daniel. 2009. Practical intelligence and the virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Stocker, Michael. 1976. The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories. Journal of Philosophy 14: 453–466.
Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue ethics: a pluralistic view. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walsh, James. 1986. Buridan on the connection of the virtues. Journal of the History of Philosophy 24: 453–482.
Watson, Gary. 1984. Virtues in excess. Philosophical Studies 46: 57–74.
Wolf, Susan. 2007. Moral psychology and the unity of the virtues. Ratio (new series) XX: 145–167.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Rosalind Hursthouse and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Toner, C. The Full Unity of the Virtues. J Ethics 18, 207–227 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9165-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-014-9165-2