Vice, Practical Necessity, and Agential Self-Destruction

Abstract

Virtue and vice involve modes of character-based necessity and impossibility in ways that do not diminish responsibility or voluntariness. To a large extent, aspiring to virtue involves striving to acquire cognitive and motivational dispositions by which certain ways of acting become practically necessary. Vices can practically disable an agent for acting well, on account of motivational and cognitive dispositions shaping necessities and impossibilities (even though the vicious agent does not strive to be disabled from right action). Jacobs maintains that the explication of character-based necessity shows how practical necessity and impossibility can become durable, significant features of character as a result of voluntary activity, even if the acquisition of those features was not intended. This is especially important because of the ways that virtues are related to each other and because of how vices are related to each other. The discussion in this chapter considers whether and why virtues are integrated and whether there is corresponding mutual reinforcement among vices.