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Are Virtue Ethics and Kantian Ethics Really so Very Different?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

John D O'Connor OP
John D O'Connor OP*
Affiliation:
St Columba’s, 74, Hopehill Road, Glasgow, G20 7HH
*
john.oconnor@english.op.org
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Abstract

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Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 87 , Issue 1009 , May 2006 , pp. 238 - 252
Copyright
© The Author 2006. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank Yonatan Witztum and Stephen Priest for helpful comments and insights.

References

1 E.g. O’Neill, Onora, ‘Consistency in action’, in her Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 81–104Google Scholar; ‘Kant after virtue’, in Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 145–162Google Scholar; ‘Kant's Virtues’, in Crisp, Roger ed., How Should One Live?(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 77–97Google Scholar; Louden, Robert B., ‘Kant's Virtue Ethics’, in Statman, Daniel ed., Virtue Ethics: a Critical Reader(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), pp. 286–299CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Allen W., ‘The Final Form of Kant's Practical Philosophy’, in Timmons, Mark ed., Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1–22Google Scholar; Kant's Ethical Thought(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Korsgaard, Christine, Creating the Kingdom of Ends(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The best known critique of kantian ethics from the perspective of virtue ethics is MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: a study in moral theory(London: Duckworth, 1981)Google Scholar. The claim, from a broadly virtue ethics perspective, that kantian ethics does not take account of persons, is in ‘Persons, character and morality’, in Williams, Bernard, Moral Luck(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A far more conciliatory attitude towards kantian ethics is in Hursthouse, Rosalind, On Virtue Ethics(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

3 Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Paton, H.J. (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar, henceforth abbreviated as the ‘Groundwork’. Passages cited from the works of Kant in this article are by the page numbers from the appropriate volume of the Prussian Academy of Science edition of Kant's work, Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlich preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften(Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902)Google Scholar. Most English translations have this pagination in the margins of the texts.

4 The examples in question are those of the three philanthropists, and are discussed later in the article. This negative interpretation of Kant is found early in the history of the reception of Kant's work. Friedrich Schiller famously mocked Kant on this point in his satirical poem in couplets, jointly published with Goethe, entitled Xenien, ‘The Philosophers’ in Schiller, Friedrich, trans. Bowring, Edgar Alfred, The Poems of Schiller(London, John W. Parker and Son, 1851), p. 287Google Scholar: “Scruple of Conscience: Willingly I serve my friends; but, alas, I do it with pleasure;/Therefore I often am vex’d, that no true virtue I have. Decision: As there is no other means, thou hadst better begin to despise them;/And with aversion, then, do that which thy duty commands.”

5 For a nuanced view, c.f. Hursthouse, Rosalind, On Virtue Ethics(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 25–39Google Scholar.

6 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 397–9. I have adopted the common terminology, referring to the three people of Kant's examples as ‘philanthropists,’ even though Kant does not.

7 C.f. Timmons, Mark ed., Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

8 O’Neill, Onora, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, henceforth referred to as, ‘Constructions of Reason’; O’Neill, Onora, ‘Kant's Virtues’, in Crisp, Roger ed., How Should One Live?(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 77–97Google Scholar.

9 Wood, Allen W., Kant's Ethical Thought(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Korsgaard, Christine, Creating the Kingdom of Ends(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. C.f. her 2002 John Locke Lectures, Self Constitution: Agency, Identity and Integrity. At the time of writing, the lectures were not yet published in book form, but available on Christine Korsgaard's website, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/. Relevant articles by Allan W. Wood are available on his website, http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/. The generosity of these important writers on Kant in making some of their work available to the public at no cost might well count as experimental evidence of virtue among kantians, and support the thesis being argued for in this article.

11 C.f. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics; Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae, especially Ia IIae; and, in more recent times, Foot, Philippa, Virtue and Vices(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar.

12 The principal sources of John McDowell's understanding of virtue ethics are as follows: McDowell, John, ‘Virtue and Reason’, in his Mind, Value and Reality(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 50–73Google Scholar, first published in The Monist 62 (1979), 331–350; ‘Two Sorts of Naturalism’, in Mind, Value and Reality(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 167–197Google Scholar, first published in Hursthouse, Rosalind, Lawrence, Gavin and Quinn, Warren eds., Virtues and Reasons, Philippa Foot and Moral Theory(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 149–179Google Scholar; ‘Values and Secondary Qualities’, in Mind, Value and Reality(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 131–150Google Scholar; first published in Honderich, Ted ed., Morality and Objectivity(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 110–29Google Scholar; and in Lecture IV of his 1991 John Locke Lectures. These lectures were published as: McDowell, John, Mind and World(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, in which the fourth lecture is entitled ‘Reason and Nature’, and is found at pp. 66–86.

13 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, pp. 169–173.

14 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, pp. 110–29.

15 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, pp. 50–73.

16 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, p. 190.

17 John McDowell, Mind and World, p. 81.

18 C.f. Gaynesford, Maxmilian de, John McDowell(Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 64–66Google Scholar for a very clear treatment of this issue.

19 John McDowell, Mind and World, p. 85.

20 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, p. 189.

21 C.f. John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, p.53.

22 John McDowell, Mind, Value and Reality, p. 188.

23 For example, c.f. Aristotle, Categories 8b28–9a4, and Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a34–35, 1152a29–33; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae q.49 on the concept of ‘habit’, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae qq.55–6 on the concept of ‘virtue’. Interestingly, in arguing that virtue be understood in terms of a single sensitivity, McDowell is also agreeing with Thomas Aquinas’ controversial “unity of the virtues”: that to fully possess a virtue, one must possess them all.

24 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 393.

25 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 400.

26 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 402.

27 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 44–45.

28 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 421–5.

29 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, pp. 91, 98.

30 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 92. This is the fourth of five Principles of Rational Intending O’Neill gives.

31 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork 400n.

32 Cf. Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends, p. 13.

33 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 84.

34 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 151.

35 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 84. C.f. p. 151. However, O’Neill is not claiming that maxims are always long term intentions. They can also be short term in nature: c.f. Louden, Robert B., ‘Kant's Virtue Ethics’, in Statman, Daniel ed., Virtue Ethics: a Critical Reader(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), pp. 290–2Google Scholar. She expresses this in: “Underlying intentions to a considerable extent express the larger and long-term goals, policies and aspirations of a life.”(Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 92. Italics added.)

36 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 153.

37 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 94.

38 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 397–9.

39 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 398.

40 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 398.

41 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 398.

42 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 402, 456–7.

43 Immanuel Kant, The End of All Things, 338–339.

44 Foot, Philippa, ‘Virtues and Vices’, in Virtues and Vices(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 10Google Scholar. C.f. Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, p. 94.

45 Allen W. Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, p. 37.

46 Kant, Immanuel, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Greene, Theodore M. and Hudson, Hoyt H. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 24nGoogle Scholar. C.f. Wood, Allen W., Kant's Ethical Thought, pp. 28–9, 38Google Scholar. Wood argues that the second philanthropist may even have acted from love. In the Metaphysics of Morals, 399–401, Kant argues the very un-Humean point that philanthropic love is not an inclination, since ‘inclination’ refers to empirical desire. Instead it is a feeling produced by pure reason acting on our sensibility. The second philanthropist would have shown love of this philanthropic kind.

47 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork, 398.

48 C.f. Robert B. Louden, ‘Kant's Virtue Ethics’, p. 296.

49 Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, p. 152.

50 Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, proposition 6, trans. H.B. Nisbet in Reiss, Hans ed., Kant's Political Writings(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

51 Christine Korsgaard, Self Constitution: Agency, Identity and Integrity, Lecture II, p. 24.

52 Kant, Immanuel, The Metaphysics of Morals, 405, trans. Gregor, Mary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also The Metaphysics of Morals, 394.