Will Power and the Virtues

Abstract

I A number of authors in the past twenty-five years have tried to answer the general question What is a virtue? or as G. H. von Wright says, to shape a concept of a virtue. This project has thrown light on the nature of the virtues, but has sometimes tended to raise the expectation that they must all be the same kind of trait. 1 One proposition which has enjoyed general consent is the denial that virtues are skill-like dispositions or powers. I shall argue here that one group of virtues, which might be called the moral strengths or virtues of will power, are to a large extent skill-like. Some theorists have proposed that moral virtues are all determinations of the good will. A broad-ranging list of traits having moral relevance will probably include some that are not easily corralled into this pen. For example, foresight and psychological insight are characteristics of an ideally moral person, yet it seems wrong to call them determinations of the will. And gentleness, politeness, and friendliness, in some people at least, are unwilled and nonwilling styles of behavioral demeanor. So probably not all morally relevant traits are matters of the will. Yet it is clear why philosophers might make this mistake, for many of the virtues most central to the moral life, such as honesty, courage, justice, compassion, and self-control, are determinations of the will. But this observation is not very clarifying unless we know what will is. There are broadly two ways in which we employ 'will' or its cognates. In the first kind of case we designate inclinations and disinclinations, desires and aversions, motivations. If I go willingly to a horse race, I go gladly or at least with a minimum of distaste. A willful person is one who does just whatever he wants to, without