The Virtues of Common Pursuit

Abstract

When we think about being good, morally good that is, what comes to mind is being good to others, and in less definite, though still important way, being good to ourselves. One set of virtues which comes into consideration are generosity, beneficence, and justice, with the focus perhaps, on welfare and rights. In Hume's words, a mind will never be able to bear its own survey, that has been wanting in its part to mankind and society.' In less definite way, virtues benefit self too (as Hume himself argues), and some benefit self directly, even though those same virtues may on other occasions be directed toward others. An individual may act with courage in the face of horrible disease or in circumstances which threaten morale and make suicide seem an attractive escape. Non-deception, temperance, and respect each can focus on self in ways that are morally admirable and praiseworthy. Equally, virtues focused on others may be said to have indirect benefit to their possessors, in the sense that they enhance their moral perfection. Put differently, we tend to think of virtues as self and other-regarding, and indeed in general, think of morality as matter of how we attend to individuals, whether it be ourselves or others, and in the case of others, strangers or loved ones, sometimes with regard to numbers, sometimes not. The preoccupation in contemporary moral literature with self/other asymmetries, with perspectives that break away from the agent neutrality of consequentialism, presuppose the same general worries about what we owe self and what we owe other.2 Appeal to the importance of giving due regard, sometimes moral, sometimes prudential, to self in distinction from others again echoes that