This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
This was made the dominant account primarily by Rosalind Hursthouse’s important work on right action. See e.g. On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Part I.
Not all interpreters see the dominant account as intended to account for what makes acts right. See Liezl van Zyl, “Qualified-Agent Virtue Ethics,” South African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2011): 219–228, at 220–221.
Compare Robert Merrihew Adams, A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7–8; Julia Driver, “Virtue Theory,” in James Dreier, Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 113–124, at 118; Sarah Broadie, “Aristotle and Contemporary Ethics,” in Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 113–134, at 120; Roger Crisp, “Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology,” Metaphilosophy 41 (2010): 23–40, at 25; Liezl van Zyl, “Qualified-Agent Virtue Ethics,” 220–221.
On a virtuous agent’s responsiveness to reasons for action de re, see Nomy Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 73.
Advocates of the dominant account may reply to such objections by arguing that right-making features are constructed rather than recognized by virtuous agents or by objecting to talk of what makes actions right. For the former, see Jason Kawall, “In Defense of the Primacy of the Virtues,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 3 (2009): 1–21. For the latter, see Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 47–51. Rather than consider the success of such replies, I consider how an alternative virtue-ethical account of right action might capture what makes actions right.
As an anonymous referee notes, one might think that ‘vicious in respect to a virtue’ is too strong to describe all cases of actions that miss the target of that virtue. There might be cases, for instance, in which an action misses a target but just barely. In this paper, I assume that an action’s being vicious in respect to a virtue is equivalent to its being contrary to that virtue. Such actions do not need to be especially wicked or depraved and do not even need to indicate the viciousness of an agent, since one may act contrary to a virtue out of inculpable ignorance. I agree that actions can fail more or less seriously in respect to a virtue and even that there are borderline cases of actions contrary to a virtue. I do not believe that any of the paper’s arguments hinge on this point.
For the first presentation of the target-centered account, see Swanton, “A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action,” Ethics 112 (2001): 32–52. For others developing target-centered accounts, see Ronald Sandler, Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), Ch. 4; Rebecca Stangl, “A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics,” The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 665–678; Rebecca Stangl, “Asymmetrical Virtue Particularism,” Ethics 121 (2010): 37–57; Glen Pettigrove, “Is Virtue Ethics Self-Effacing?,” The Journal of Ethics 15 (2011): 191–207; Liezl van Zyl, “Right Action and the Targets of Virtue,” in Stan van Hooft, The Handbook of Virtue Ethics (Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2014), 118–129.
Compare Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 228.
Compare ibid., 242.
Ibid., 19.
Swanton, “Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Moral Disagreement,” Philosophical Topics 38 (2010): 157–180, at 164. I address circularity worries about the use of ‘right’ here below.
Though, on Swanton’s view, it is not the case that to hit the target of a virtue always requires success along every dimension of the mean; she requires success only along dimensions that are salient in a given context. See ibid., 172; Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 236–237.
Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 21–23.
Ibid., 21.
Ibid., 23.
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 23, 110, & 234.
Ibid., 22–23, 173, & 234.
Swanton, “Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Moral Disagreement,” 164–166.
Ibid., 165.
This example is borrowed from Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 50 (1976): 115–135, at 117–122.
Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 99.
Swanton, “Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Disagreement,” 167. Compare Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 244–245.
Swanton, “A Particularist but Codifiable Virtue Ethics,” in Mark Timmons, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 38–64, at 43.
I here set aside the issue of whether an action’s being virtuous in respect to benevolence can be undermined or disabled as a right-maker on Swanton’s view. She argues, to be sure, that an action’s being kind is not always right-making, but it is less clear whether, on Swanton’s view, an action’s hitting the target of kindness is not always right-making. In any case, what I say about RIGHT-MAKERS can accommodate the possibility of undermining but only at the cost of using distracting qualifications – e.g. “such a feature may contribute to an action’s rightness” or “it contributes, if not undermined”. Since I focus on other issues with RIGHT-MAKERS, I avoid such qualifications.
Note that the issue here is whether the nephew’s action is generous rather than whether the nephew is generous.
‘Arguably’ because, due to Swanton’s incorporation of the concept of salience and various sorts of vagueness, applying her view to particular cases is not always straightforward.
Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 110.
Roger Crisp appears committed to this assumption. See “Particularizing Particularism,” in Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little, Moral Particularism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23–47, at 45; “A Third Method of Ethics?,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2015): 257–273, at 266. In the latter, Crisp supports this claim by appeal to the Aristotelian mean, but his interpretation of the mean differs significantly from my own, as will become clear below.
It is plausible that the sheriff’s action fails in respect to benevolence in regard to the framed man, since it significantly harms that man. In Section III of the paper, I discuss how virtue ethicists ought to regard actions that are, for example, benevolent to A but malevolent or callous to B.
Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 84.
Crisp, since he analyzes v-properties in terms of right action, concludes that “one cannot plausibly explain an action’s being right by reference to its being virtuous, or indeed its being charitable, benevolent, courageous, or whatever.” See “A Third Method of Ethics?,” 266. In my view, Crisp is correct to draw this conclusion from his analysis of v-properties but is incorrect to analyze v-properties in terms of right action, because an action can be, for example, both benevolent and wrong.
I have heard someone present the claim, “One can’t be generous with someone else’s money,” as an old saw. This claim does not apply to the case at hand because the inheritance belongs to the nephew, but even if it did, Robin Hood provides a plausible counter-example.
Martha Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 14 (1988): 32–53, at 37–39. Such thin accounts of virtuous action are similar to Swanton’s earlier formal account as presented above.
One reason why this is an oversimplification is that we do not regard employers as performing generous actions in paying employees their due, even though paying employees their due helps employees meet their needs, when these needs cannot be met without the help of others.
RIGHT-MAKERS: A feature F of φ is a right-making feature of φ just in case F consists in φ’s hitting the target of a virtue v or F significantly figures in φ’s hitting the target of v.
For discussion of how care and promotion of good may come apart, see Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 67–68.
RIGHT-MAKERS: A feature F of φ is a right-making feature of φ just in case F consists in φ’s hitting the target of a virtue v or F significantly figures in φ’s hitting the target of v.
I thank Christine Swanton, Glen Pettigrove, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Garrett Cullity for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, N.R. Right-Makers and the Targets of Virtue. J Value Inquiry 51, 311–326 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9571-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9571-8