Reply to Baier

Abstract

Annette Baier quite properly asks two questions:

• (1) What kind of theoretical beast is a ‘normative ethical theorist of virtue’?

• (2) How can one inflict such a creature on Hume, especially in relation to his conception of justice?

In ‘What Kind of Virtue Theorist is Hume?’ I was concerned to show that Hume’s moral theory should be understood as a pluralistic virtue theory. The emphasis was on the pluralistic character of his criteria of virtue rather than on arguments for reading him as a virtue ethicist per se. (I argue for a virtue ethical reading of Hume in ‘Can Hume be Read as a Virtue Ethicist?’ in Hume Studies, April 2007, Vol. 33, No.1, 91–113.) Nonetheless, implicit in the paper is a virtue ethical reading, so it is useful to say something about such a reading. It is important first to distinguish virtue ethics as a genus of moral theory from virtue ethics as a species. Virtue ethics has often been defined in terms of one of its species, Aristotelian virtue ethics. Such a definition makes a virtue ethical reading of Hume problematic, unless of course one interprets Hume as some kind of Aristotelian. It is my view that Hume should not be so interpreted, so a virtue ethical reading of him has to be non-Aristotelian. So the question arises, what is virtue ethics as a genus? Here are the central tenets.