Tradition Of Virtue Ethics Research Articles

What Is Offensive about Offensive Jokes?

There is an element of malice in much humor. (That slipping on a banana peel is funny does not make the fall any less painful, after all.) A good deal of our laughter in comedy is directed at misfortune, presented in such a way as to elicit amusement rather than outrage, tears or compassion. One need not be a Freudian to recognize the element of hostility in certain jokes; and Bergson's remark that comedy requires a momentary anesthesia of the heart is surely plausible.1 This might tempt one to draw gloomy conclusions about human nature; yet few would insist, I suspect, that we eradicate all of the nastiness from our humor. However even fewer would argue that joking be set completely free from moral restraint. Joking is a social activity; it involves and implicates others whether as audience or as butts.2 It is subject to moral consideration and assessment. Joking, we judge, is sometimes inappropriate, and on moral grounds. Jokes themselves range along a continuum, from those that are totally innocuous from a moral point of view, to those that should probably not be repeated. While we might come to broad agreement over which jokes are morally inappropriate, it is no simple matter to say when a joke is offensive, what makes an offensive joke offensive, and to determine where the moral fault lies when there is one. In what follows I will discuss several attempts to do just this. In the small philosophical literature on the morality of we can discern two dominant positions: (1) a cognitivist or belief-based position and (2) a consequentialist one. Writers often incorporate elements of both positions, but they can be separated for the purpose of analysis. Worthy of note yet not fitting into either category is (3) Ted Cohen's recent antitheoretical account of the morality of offensive jokes.3 In this essay I argue that the cognitivist position is fundamentally flawed as an account of the immorality of offensive jokes. The consequentialist position is more adequate but ultimately unsatisfactory; the moral deficiency of offensive humor is not exhausted by its consequences or possible consequences. I suggest, contra Cohen, that the ethics of humor is an appropriate area of theorizing, and propose an account of the moral fault of offensive jokes that is broadly within the virtue ethics tradition.4 My account can be taken both as a stand-alone account of the morality of offensive jokes and as a necessary supplement to the consequentialist position. I should say at the outset my conclusions will not be framed in the language of necessary and sufficient conditions. As Aristotle cautioned, precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions. Joking is one of those subjects for which we can indicate the truth only roughly and in outline.5 Why is this topic worthy of philosophical consideration? Is it not trivial, given the problems that usually vex moral philosophers? Philosophers seem to me all too reluctant to address the morality of life. Yet this is precisely the subject of much ordinary reflection on right and wrong. The tools we use to sort out the morality of weightier and more public topics can be put to good use here. It may even turn out that the morality of smaller everyday issues will illuminate bigger problems. An additional sort of objection to taking the morality of jokes seriously is that offended responses to humor say more about those who offense than it does about the jokers. Those offended, such an objection runs, should learn to take a get a sense of humor, and laugh at themselves. Yet such an objection is itself a moral claim and as such requires argument. It may indeed be the case that some of those wounded by offensive jokes are inappropriately or excessively sensitive. But I doubt this could be true in every instance or in response to any joke, however malicious. I am particularly interested here in jokes at the expense of an individual or group based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or physical or cognitive ability. …

ISAIAH'S VISION OF HUMAN SECURITY: VIRTUE-ETHICS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

The book of Isaiah has more strongly influenced the Western theo-political imagination than any book in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah presents a global vision of human security that, instead of relying on power politics, is based on virtue-ethics. Today the tradition of virtue-ethics is concerned with the long-term consequences of foreign policies, not only their immediate effects. Virtue-ethics are focused as much on identity as on interests, often contradicting realist balance-of-power diplomacy. The concept of justice for Isaiah is more than legal equity; it is a sustainable positive peace, encompassing the concepts of development and well-being.

The bourgeois virtues: ethics for an age of commerce

For a century and a half the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken's booboisie, and David Brooks' bobos all have been, and still are, framed as responsible for everything from financial and moral poverty to world wars and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre N. McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus offering a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey's sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities - from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich - overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism's critics with astonishing erudition and range of reference. Applying a new tradition of virtue ethics to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, Van Gogh, and, of course, economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life's work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism - and surprising entertainment as well.

Communication Ethics: Centrality, Trends, and Controversies

The centrality of ethics, both theoretically and professionally, to the field of communication is demonstrated. Then 7 trends in communication ethics scholarship are illustrated: (a) the proliferation of books on media and journalism ethics; (b) stress both on individual ethics and on social or institutional ethics; (c) recognition of the interrelationship of freedom and responsibility; (d) scholarship on ethics in organizational communication contexts; (e) diverse feminist contributions to communication ethics; (f) scholarship from a feminist viewpoint on an “ethic of care”; and (g) applications of the ancient Greek tradition of virtue ethics to contemporary communication contexts. Finally, 6 controversies or challenges in the development of communication ethics are probed. (a) Can we develop a viable concept of the “self as an ethical agent in communication? (b) Can we develop a postmodern ethic or ethics of communication? (c) Can we legitimately search for some minimum transcultural ethical standards for communication? (d) Can we recognize the roles that diversity and marginalization play in developing communication ethics? (e) Can we develop a viable communication ethic for the internet and cyberspace? (f) Can some conception of “shame” be legitimate for communication ethics?

Less is More

When it comes to economic consumption, less is more. Not always, and not beyond a certain minimum level. Sometimes more really is more, and less really is less. But often, less is more; especially for the middle and upper class members of wealthy societies. This essay argues that we should judge economic consumption on whether it improves or detracts from our lives, and act on that basis. It seeks to place the issue of consumption in the context of living a good life, in order to discuss its justifiable limits. Environmental Virtue Ethics Many writers in the ancient eudaimonist or virtue ethics tradition argued that human lives could be improved through decreasing consumption, and indeed decreasing economic activity generally: consuming less food, avoiding ostentatious building or entertaining, thinking less about money. For Plato and Aristotle, Seneca and Epicurus, the good life was equally a life devoted to right thinking and a life not devoted to wealthgetting or sybaritism.1 These two positions supported each other. They were held to be key to achieving eudaimonia, that complex term usually translated as happiness, but often better thought of as well-being, or flourishing.2 A leading issue in ancient ethical debate was whether the pursuit of the good life entailed limiting and harshly disciplining our natural desires and acquisitiveness, or providing for their moderate fulfillment. This question in turn was related to the role that pleasure and physical satisfaction were thought to play in a good life: whether defining of it, irrelevant to it, or a more or less important part of it. A wide variety of positions were staked out on these issues which I will not attempt to summarize here. My main point is that almost all of the ancient writers argued for limiting material acquisition and limiting our attempts to satisfy our physical desires through consumption. This was true for those who thought pleasure the greatest human good and for those who declared physical pleasure irrelevant to questions of how humans should live their lives. It was true for those who argued that people should set moderate goals and accept moderate successes in life, and for those who advocated the pursuit of perfection. The major philosophical schools all preached limited consumption and disciplining appetite, because they all accepted the idea that the proper level of consumption was a function of its role in furthering good human lives. In what follows, I attempt to show that such economic restraint remains in our self-interest today. If our goal is to live well, we should consume less. Such restraint has a further benefit, for those worried about the fate of the many non-human beings with whom we share our planet. Individuals focused on developing their better selves and on fulfilling their true needs, would demand less of Nature. We would demand less as a matter of course in the West, where we already have a surfeit of money and material goods, and more ofthe same will not improve our lives. And we would actively protect nature in our own self-interest, because pursuing our higher goals demands it. Environmental pollution and the transformation of wild nature into managed natural resources, are primarily the result of human economic activities. More benign forms of production and lower levels of consumption are therefore typical goals of environmentalists, in addition to the direct preservation of wildlife and wild places. These goals reinforce each other. For example, less paper consumption allows for less wood-pulp production. This in turn lessens the pressure to log previously unlogged lands, or to convert natural forests into more productive, managed tree farms. One type of argument for such economic reforms builds upon the intrinsic value of wild nature.3 If there is a value or integrity to individual non-human organisms, wild species, or wild places, then our right to use, modify or destroy them is called into question. …

David N. BeauregardO.M.V. Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press; Cranbury, NJ, London, and Mississauga, Ontario: Associated University Presses, 1995. 260 pp. $41.50.

David N. BeauregardO.M.V. Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press; Cranbury, NJ, London, and Mississauga, Ontario: Associated University Presses, 1995. 260 pp. $41.50.

Book Review: Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition

Book Review: Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition

Virtue's own feature: Shakespeare and the virtue ethics tradition

Virtue's own feature: Shakespeare and the virtue ethics tradition