Nussbaum (Virtue ethics. A misleading category) BB.pdf

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM?
VIRTUE ETHICS: A MISLEADING CATEGORY?
Received 9 June 1999; accepted 13 July 1999
ABSTRACT. Virtue ethics is standardly taught and discussed as a distinctive approach
to the major questions of ethics, a third major position alongside Utilitarian and Kantian
ethics. I argue that this taxonomy is a confusion. Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism con-
tain treatments of virtue, so virtue ethics cannot possibly be a separate approach contrasted
with those approaches. There are, to be sure, quite a few contemporary philosophical
writers about virtue who are neither Utilitarians nor Kantians; many of these find inspira-
tion in ancient Greek theories of virtue. But even here there is little unity. Although certain
concerns do unite this disparate group (a concern for the role of motives and passions in
good choice, a concern for character, and a concern for the whole course of an agent’s
life), there are equally profound disagreements, especially concerning the role that reason
should play in ethics. One group of modern virtue-theorists, I argue, are primarily anti-
Utilitarians, concerned with the plurality of value and the susceptibility of passions to
social cultivation. These theorists want to enlarge the place of reason in ethics. They hold
that reason can deliberate about ends as well as means, and that reason can modify the
passions themselves. Another group of virtue theorists are primarily anti-Kantians. They
believe that reason plays too dominant a role in most philosophical accounts of ethics,
and that a larger place should be given to sentiments and passions – which they typically
construe in a less reason-based way than does the first group. The paper investigates these
differences, concluding that it is not helpful to speak of “virtue ethics,” and that we would
be better off characterizing the substantive views of each thinker – and then figuring out
what we ourselves want to say.
KEY WORDS: Aristotle, ethics, Hume, K