"What's Character Got to Do with It?"

Abstract

Do you trust your wife? Your husband? Your friend? Your colleague? Your editor? Your students? On what basis does anyone trust anyone? Do we really trust them? Or do we only predict their future behavior? Or, perhaps, we simply assume the stability of their circumstances and predict that those circumstances won't change. But this last has nothing to do with trust, as it has nothing to do with the person's character. Perhaps neither does prediction of behavior, which involves what have called reliance as opposed to trust. But even reliance depends on some sort of stability in a person's character. There is a line in an Elmore Leonard novel, Rum Punch, which was turned into the Hollywood film Jackie Brown. The character played by Samuel Jackson says, I don't need to trust Melanie. know But trust or knowledge, the presumption is that there is a basis for this in the person, a stability or regularity of character. Confidence in the stability of circumstances is not at all the same thing, and given the nature of life, betting on the stability of circumstances is probably a bad bet. trust my wife because know her. True, don't know what she might do in extraordinary circumstances, during a terrorist attack or a Latin American kidnapping. But trust her thoroughly, not just because know her, but because recognize in her a character that is robust and resolute, that has withstood many challenges and temptations, that remains more or less constant throughout an enormous range of different circumstances. want to think about what an enormous loss it would be if any such concept of character turned out to be an illusion. Many young philosophers seem content travelling safely in the well-worn ruts of their established field, its problems, and its already exhausted literature. How delightful, then, to meet a still rather young philosopher who refuses to play it safe and stay in the ruts but instead takes a jack-hammer to the ruts and, perhaps, even to the road. The rather young philosopher is John Doris, who has written an impressive book with the ominous title, Lack of