Three Forms of Political Ethics

Abstract

second-order virtues (e.g., between being just and general conscientiousness), and sketched a of as his version of virtue ethics. Citing Stephen maxim on being and doing, he concluded: I propose... that we regard of principles and of traits of character, of doing and being, not as rival kinds of between which we must choose, but as two complementary acts of same morality. Then, every principle there will be a morally good trait, often going by same name, consisting of a disposition or tendency to act according to it; and every morally good trait there will be a principle defining kind of action which it is to express itself. To parody a famous dictum of Kant's: principles without traits are impotent, traits without principles are blind.19 The principles and traits that Frankena finds most fundamental and irreduceable are benevolence and justice. 16 Leo Strauss, Liberalism: Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 20-21. 7 Science of Ethics (1882), p. 148, quoted John Laird, Act Ethics and Agent Mind 55 (1946): 113-32, at 116. 18 Nicolai Hartmann, Ethics, Stanton Coit, trans. 3 vols. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932), Vol. 2, pp. 226-27. 19 Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 49, 53. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.111 on Sun, 22 May 2016 04:43:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Three Forms of Political Ethics 13 In 1970 an entire issue of The Monist was devoted to concept of virtue. In that issue Frankena, and also Stanley B. Cunningham, harked back to H. A. Prichard's influential article, Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? (1912), and suggested that eclipse of virtue as a concept contemporary philosophy owed much to it. Prichard's article so sharply separated right actions from inner desires or a knowable good that he felt right could never be derived from good. ...we can only feel an obligation to act; we cannot feel an obligation to act from a certain desire.2° The attempt to derive right from good was, Prichard's very influential view a mistake. Good actions could not be derived from good motives alone and valid obligations could not, by same token, be derived from anything as subjective and internal as virtue. The mistake was widely conceded, and deontologists began to look more external bases of moral obligation. demise of notion of virtue was inevitable when it was cut off from direct participation human actions and relegated exclusively to private area of emotions and desires.21 (Oddly, although did not allow right to be derived from good, i.e., did not allow us to feel obligated to act from a specific desire, he did allow reverse. He thought we could, example, intuitively feel an obligation to become courageous, even if we were not permitted to feel validly obligated by mere presence of courageous feelings.) dismissed possibility of a different view of virtue a footnote. This prompted Frankena 1970 article to say: ... moral philosophy must do more than hint at an ethics of virtue a footnote or an article or a chapter. It must fully explore possibility of a satisfactory ethics of virtue as an alternative or supplement to one of obligation and moral goodness, not only to explain what people we admire biography and literature live by, but to see what there is our morality and how we ourselves should or at least may live.22 The morality to which Frankena refers is presumably new communitarianism or ambiguous rebellious individualism that grew up nineteen sixties. Students of politics may be allowed to wonder that his illustration of usefulness of an ethics of virtue was not drawn from a slice of real world but from people in biography and literature. The sense that people books are more real than check-out clerk local supermarket may be a peculiar academic affectation. There is, however, a more serious point here. An ethics of virtue may always be somewhat academic because it rests on good motives, which are, we know, real life always somewhat opaque. Acting on assumed motives of others, however, may be a political necessity how else can bargaining, promising, contracting, threatening, cooperating go on? Students of politics may all be like Coddington's economists who need certain concepts mainly so they can beg question of what people really want. Virtue may not be a very good analytical concept political ethics because it points to an impenetrable inner self. Frankena may have been well advised to advocate an ethics of virtue to explain literary figures, literary figures have exposed motivations as real people rarely do. E. F. Carritt, a rigorous writer on ethics, perhaps on these grounds believed that and virtue should be separated altogether. His position is that if I do an act I think right for that reason it is a moral act (Carritt can be classified as an act-deontologist and an intuitionist). If I do an act because I desire to do it, and desire has usually led to right acts, it is a virtuous act. If act 20 Prichard, Does Moral Philosophy Rest Upon a Mistake? Mind 21 (1912): 21-37 at 33. The essay is reprinted H. A. Prichard. Moral Obligation (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). 21 Stanley B. Cunningham, Does 'Does Moral Philosophy Rest Upon a Mistake?' Make an Even Greater Mistake? The Alonist 54 (1970): 86-99 at 87. 22 Frankena, Prichard and Ethics of Virtue, The Monist 54 (1970): 1-17 at 17. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.111 on Sun, 22 May 2016 04:43:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 14 Western Political Quarterly is done because I desire to do, not just this particular act, but right acts as such, it is a saintly act. Finally, if act is done with no desires at all, it is a holy act.23 With arrival on pages of American Political Science Review of articles by Salkever and Bank and McCarl, mentioned above, we may perhaps herald return of virtue as a conceptual concern politics. (Whether postWatergate political campaigns of late 1970s with their added ingredient of appeals to good moral character represent a parallel shift popular consciousness remains to be seen.) Neither of these articles, valuable as they are, is directed at furthering a new virtue ethic as defined here. Salkever begins by noting how different are two questions, What am I obligated to do? and What is virtuous thing to do? He portrays politics of obligation and politics of virtue as the two alternative political languages presented to us most clearly by history of political thought. The forgotten political man, lover of city, is contrasted with central figure of modern political life, economic man, lover of self. It is predominance of latter which requires theory and practice of obligation and legitimacy. (Philosophic man, lover of truth, both ancient and modern times occupies a rarified atmosphere outside either political or economic realm.) Salkever's complaint is that modern thought, the shift from virtue paradigm to legitimacy paradigm appears to have been accompanied by a severe narrowing of range of questions which inform philosophic inquiry into political things.24 The weakness of Salkever is that he draws a Straussian line between ancients and moderns much too categorical a fashion and therefore exaggerates unity of obligation theorists and others who might be called modern. Hannah Arendt, example, despite her admiration Greek polis and her communitarianism, is put by Salkever unlikely company of modern liberals because she expounds a concept of freedom. Interest theory is treated as but an aspect of obligation theory. The deep gap that separates deontologists and utilitarians as well as attempts through rule-utilitarianism to overcome gap are overlooked by Salkever, presumably because neither are Aristotelian. Bank and McCarl, reaction to Salkever's juxtaposition of obligation paradigm over against virtue paradigm (economic man over against political man), argue that these divisions are not historical watersheds but simply stages a cognitive-developmental sequence that can be explained terms of personal growth of any individual. Following theories of cognitive and moral development employed by John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, they argue against Salkever's fixed view of human nature: Our position is also based on an understanding of human nature. We have argued that nature of a thing is how it grows, that man grows (develops cognitively and morally) presence of justice, so human nature is to be understood connection with justice.25 Virtue Salkever is Greek arete, employed with Greek phronesis, judged by Greek sophia. Virtue Bank and McCarl is Kohlberg's sixth stage of moral development. It is no disparagement of their positions to say that together their concerns are more meta-ethical, even epistemological, than ethical. Neither position is directly concerned to incorporate current ethical thinking into a virtue ethic that can be brought to bear on current policy decisions.