Virtue Ethics
Daryl Koehn
Overview
A virtue ethic, like any ethic, describes human character and action in an evaluative manner. Virtue ethicists, such as Plato and Aristotle, believe that all human beings aim at being happy. In the language of virtue ethics, happiness is the ‘‘end’’ of human action. Agents are happy when they are doing well or thriving. More specifically, human beings are happy when they are fulfilling their peculiarly human potentialities. While a cat will be satisfied leading an animal’s life of sensation and appetite, a human being needs something more. A human’s life will not be a full one unless that person is, in addition to sensing and desiring, also maximally exercising the specifically human capacity to choose and to reason.
For the virtue ethicist, the process by which an organism realizes its particular potential and grows into its peculiar being or actuality is natural. Indeed, the Greek word for nature – physis – simply means a growing characterized by a successive and progressive realization of a certain end state. Since this fulfilling growth only occurs under specific conditions, it is the task of the virtue ethicist to specify these conditions. By doing so, the virtue ethicist hopes to make his or her audience more aware of the conditions to which they must pay attention if they, too, want to realize their nature or, equivalently, to be happy.
What are these conditions? First and fore most, human happiness depends upon participation in community, be that the community of a household, a clan, a business, or the larger political community. A community is ‘‘natural’’ if human growth (i.e., actualization) depends upon it. The human family is natural because no child becomes an adult without parents who nurture the child and teach her skills for survival. Similarly, human beings are ‘‘by nature’’ political beings because they cannot fully realize their peculiarly human rationality without participation in the larger political community. By providing and enforcing a rule of law, the political regime frees its citizens from having to constantly protect themselves from marauding thieves and murderers. In addition, the law makes for regular and predictable interactions among citizens. Such predictability, in turn, helps make deliberation possible. People can plan actions only when there is some stability in their environment (e.g., when banks do not arbitrarily choose not to open on some day; or when airlines do not willy nilly refuse passengers because of their race or sex, etc.). Further more, by legislating public education, including the teaching of ethics, the political regime not only develops agents’ ability to think and reason about the human condition and the surrounding world. It also aims at getting its citizens to see the necessary connections between their happiness and that of the community at large. Educated citizens will demonstrate the loyalty needed for the community to continue to be healthy and for subsequent generations to have a chance at actualizing their human potentiality.
Human happiness depends upon a second condition as well. To be happy, the agent must be virtuous. Virtue is not to be taken as some extraordinary or saintly goodness. Rather, a human virtue is a state or condition that serves to realize some dimension of human potential. Thus, while it would be better for soldiers to fight only in wars they know to be just, Aristotle treats even unthinking courage as virtuous. The soldier who acts to take a stand in the face of death thereby develops his or her ability to take risks and confront the consequences. Insofar as this ability is a critical life skill, this ‘‘false’’ courage is virtuous.
While ‘‘false’’ courage is a virtue, truly courageous persons do not fight to death simply because ordered to do so. Instead, they consider whether a given situation demands such a stance. Their thoughtfulness points to a third condition for human happiness. To fully (i.e., excellently) realize their human potentiality, persons must learn to deliberate well. Deliberation does not consist of merely identifying means to an end. Someone who deliberates rethinks the end at the same time as she analyzes means to the end. Thus, the deliberative daughter who is considering how best to care for her elderly mother will try to identify various options for care. Some means might include placing the mother in a nursing home, getting a residential nurse, or having the mother stay with the daughter. If the daughter is on the road to becoming virtuous, she uses her thinking about these various alternatives to further clarify what will count as ‘‘caring’’ for her mother. If she thinks the mother would like an in house nurse because that will preserve the mother’s independence, then the deliberative daughter refines her end of caring for her mother. ‘‘Caring’’ now means not merely physically tending to her mother but also meeting her mother’s need for independence. Deliberation, unlike means–end cunning, examines the end along with the means in figuring out how best to achieve a desired end.
The person who fails to deliberate and who relies instead on simple cunning is little more than a crafty animal. Animals, too, can identify means to an end. To the extent an agent is little more than an animal, that agent is neither a virtuous nor a happy human being. The virtuous person’s happiness inheres in the active life of deliberating. By consistently trying to deliberate about how best to act, agents develop their de liberative skill. They thereby realize their specifically human capacity to deliberate instead of merely engaging in cunning calculations. They also come to grasp important connections be tween the ends and means, linkages not apparent to vicious persons who fail to deliberate. Consequently, they are less frustrated because the end their action brings about tends to be the end they foresaw and wanted to achieve. The virtuous person’s reward is happiness understood as an entire life of satisfying actions, while the vicious person’s punishment is a life of actions that produce both unexpected and unintended con sequences for himself and others.
Relevance of Virtue Ethics to Business
While virtue ethicists care about issues such as workers’ rights and consumer protection, they are also concerned to raise the larger question of the meaning and goodness of business. Business is a practice, akin to the other professions and arts. Like all other professionals, business per sons either realize or fail to realize their happiness through their activity at work. Persons who view their jobs with ‘‘another day, another dollar’’ mentality are not likely to be happy. Such a mentality turns action into a means to make money. In terms of the above discussion, the agent with this mentality becomes little more than a cunning animal.
The virtuous business person, by contrast, always asks whether a proposed act will help to actualize his human being. If, for example, an act manifests contempt for his fellow citizens and for the law, the agent will refrain from it. For business, like the household, is a part of the larger political community. The virtuous person does not deliberately act in ways that destroy the laws that make his and others’ happiness possible. Instead, the business person who desires to be happy will strive to make friends within the corporation, friends who can help the agent arrive at sound choices. The virtuous business person will also support his or her corporation’s charity drives and other community projects. From the perspective of the virtuous agent, there can be no question as to whether business should be socially responsible. Insofar as business is a part of society, the acts of corporations and their employees will affect the society at large and, hence, the happiness of persons who are by nature political beings.
Distinctive Insights of the Virtue Ethics Approach
Virtue ethics has become increasingly popular among business ethicists who think this mode of analysis offers important and distinctive in sights. According to virtue ethics, what makes an action good is not its conformity to some rule(s) but rather its tendency to fulfill human actuality. Virtue ethics resembles situation ethics inasmuch as both emphasize the need to evaluate particular, and possibly unique, features of a situation in arriving at a decision.
Unlike situation ethics, however, virtue ethics employs a non relativistic standard for evaluating a course of action. Stated roughly, that principle is: What is humanly good and desirable is what actualizes human being. Not every decision made with respect to a situation is equally good. A sloppy, ill considered decision or a choice that undermines the happiness of other members of the political community is not as fine and good as a carefully thought through choice consistent with (and preservative of) human virtue. Since what counts as being consistent with human virtue is itself often not immediately obvious in a particular situation, the agent who desires to be happy will investigate this question as well with her friends and col leagues.
One strength, then, of virtue ethics is its ability to provide non relativistic, yet situation sensitive, guidance to agents. Virtue ethics is also appealing because it brings to the fore features of action often overlooked by other modes of ethical analyses. Suppose, for example, that a businessman wonders whether he should bribe government officials in order to get a government contract. The Kantian ethicist will argue that the action will not be right if a description of the act’s maxim involves the agent in a contra diction of will (see kantian ethics). If we take the maxim in this case to be ‘‘Act to circumvent government rules and regulations in order to be able to do business with government,’’ the maxim is clearly self contradictory. Since all governments require rules in order to govern, the agent’s envisioned act commits him to a practice that would destroy the very institution with whom he wants to do business. No rational agent therefore can will this act. Hence, it is immoral from the Kantian point of view.
While the virtue ethicist will acknowledge the force of the Kantian objection, it will not be decisive. She will urge the businessman to con sider the consequences of this act for his character and long term ability to lead a happy life. He should deliberate as to how the proposed means (bribing) may impact the end (doing business with the government). To successfully work with the government, the corporation’s representatives will need to develop mutual trust. Doing so may be difficult if the relation begins in an underhanded fashion. Furthermore, if the businessman does win the business through a bribe, he cannot claim honestly that he succeeded because he had the superior product or because of his ability to help the customer see what service is best for the customer. The businessman is little more than a conduit for money in this case. He adds little to the transaction. Since his action does not develop any of his particularly human capacities, the virtue ethicist will suggest that the businessman who relies upon bribery may wind up feeling dissatisfied and alienated from his work.
Virtue ethics may also be contrasted with utilitarianism. The utilitarian will consider whether the act of bribing maximizes the happiness of the society as a whole. One could argue that the act would benefit the bribed official. In the short run, bribery might benefit the company and the businessman as well, assuming the company gets the contract and is not simply tricked by the government official into paying ever more in bribes. If these and other benefits outweigh the various costs of bribery (e.g., the company has to pay bribery fees it would not have to pay if the bidding system were not corrupt), then the utilitarian will judge the action a good one and will recommend its performance.
The virtue ethicist will listen to the utilitarian’s analysis. But once again it will not be decisive. Unlike the utilitarian, the virtue ethicist does not assign equal weight to all benefits and costs. Virtue ethics weighs those consequences impacting human growth most heavily. The businessman who pays the bribe initially may be overjoyed at winning the contract. How, though, will he win the next contract? He has not developed his selling skills, and not all con tracts can be procured through bribes. By taking the easy route of offering a bribe and by failing to take a stand against corruption, the businessman is choosing a path not likely to serve him well in the future. The virtue ethicist is more inclined than the utilitarian to evaluate each choice from the perspective of the whole of life. As Aristotle puts it, ‘‘one swallow does not a summer make’’ nor does a single act make for a happy life.
Weaknesses of Virtue Ethics Analysis
Critics of virtue ethics worry that the approach is too simplistic. The analysis posits a timeless, invariable human nature. Yet recent discoveries of anthropology show that humans have changed dramatically over time. If so, then it is question able whether happiness can be said to be the human good. If human nature is indeed variable, happiness, too, must change over time.
In addition, since the virtue ethicist makes claims that are simultaneously descriptive and evaluative (e.g., ‘‘all men are by nature political’’), some critics have alleged that this approach confuses descriptive with prescriptive claims. If ‘‘ought’’ cannot be derived from ‘‘is,’’ then virtue ethics must be on shaky ground.
Of course, these criticisms are themselves controversial. Readers should consult materials listed below and judge the relative merits of virtue ethics for themselves.
Bibliography
Aristotle (1975). Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Broadie, S. (1991). Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press.
Donaldson, T. (1992). The language of international corporate ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2 (3), 271 82.
Hartman, E. M. (1996). Organizational Ethics and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Plato (1968). Republic, trans. A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books.
Rorty, A. (1980). Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Salkever, S. (1990). Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sherman, N. (1989). The Fabric of Character. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Solomon, R. C. (1993). Ethics and Excellence. New York: Oxford University Press.