I’ve spent quite a bit of time on philosophical views that fall into either the consequentialist or teleological camp and the rules-based or deontological camp. In the case of the consequentialist, those of the utilitarians particularly. In the case of the deontological or rules-based camp, those of Kant, Scanlon and Rawls.
As I’ve noted previously, though, there is a third approach that philosophers call the ontological or virtue-based approach.
In earlier discussion of Aristotle and of Benjamin Franklin, for instance, we saw the emphasis on virtue. Virtues are traits of character rather than of behavior. Behavior is grounded in virtue, however. Franklin’s cultivation of Temperance was expressed in and measured by specific behaviors such as consumption of wine and food.
In that sense, the deontological is an expression of the ontological.
But can we really infer the activity of a virtue in an action itself? Does observing an action tell us the motive from which the action arose? There is probably an intermediate step.
The immediate predecessor of action is probably intention. But is intention only one step from virtue, or is it two? Does action result from intention which is formed in accordance with rules for the expression of virtue? Or does intention precede the selection of an action after filtering through rule-based alternatives? And is it important for us to have a clear sense of that?
If virtue is to be a serious third-approach option, we need to examine those questions.
Virtue has been brought back into the philosophical discussion in recent years by the Notre Dame professor Alasdair McIntyre, for instance. His book “After Virtue” is particularly important and I will write specifically about that book and his work shortly. Before that, however, I want to follow a pattern that I’ve found very useful on other topics; the review of a collection of papers that examine the subject across a broad range of approaches. It is, after all, our aim to bring into the discussion views on each major topic that express the positions of diverse cultures, times, religions, philosophies, etc.
This approach helps to draw out the broad principles and insights that allow comparison and reveal both agreement and contrast, which is the only realistic scope for a study like this one.
I’ve used collections of scholarly papers to contrast views on such diverse topics as The Golden Rule, the state of utilitarian philosophy and views of the afterlife. For the subject of virtue, I will use the volume edited by Nancy E. Snow and published by Oxford University Press in 2015. The book is titled “Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology and Psychology”. It presents twelve papers representing the work of fourteen authors, including Professor Snow, and I think it is particularly useful in that it presents thinking across academic disciplines as well as across time and culture.
Given the importance of virtue to Aristotle and the influence of Aristotle on as diverse a subsequent group as Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides and Spinoza, I think the virtue approach deserves concerted attention.
©Charles R. Lightner