In 1958 Elizabeth Anscombe argued that the single greatest failing of modern moral philosophy was its neglect of virtue. In the past half-century the revival of virtue that Anscombe urged has taken place, with what had once been a two-way conversation between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics becoming a three-way debate that includes virtue ethics. In this book I return to historical sources in an effort to revitalize the contemporary conception of virtue. While my starting point will often be in ancient philosophy, moderns like Kant, Hume, and Smith will figure in the narrative. I draw on history, but the overall aim is neither to be exegetical nor chronological. The real impetus for the book is to recapture the developmental and moral psychological perspective so pervasive in ancient philosophy, and in a more limited way, in modern theories. The further point is to show the relevance of that perspective in understanding the demands of moral character in our own lives.
The key themes around which I structure the book (the development of moral character, the relation of manners to morals, the emotions, empathy, friendship, psychic conflict and unity) are of broad interest and should appeal to the non-specialist reader as well as the newcomer to philosophy. The narrative will be informed by philosophical conceptions, but never steeped in philosophical theory or jargon. Keeping the narrative accessible to the general reader is critical, given the prominent role of virtue in religious, political, and cultural arenas. Having served as the Chair in Ethics at the United States Naval Academy for a number of years, I am keenly aware of the hunger within the military community for discussions of virtue that are at once accessible and relevant to their concerns. I am certain this hunger is mirrored in many other groups of readers, eager to connect a philosophical conception of virtue with commonsense notions of virtue and character. Through liberal use of concrete illustration and historical and contemporary examples, I hope to make these connections readily available to the general readership. The book I am working on at the moment, Stoic Warriors, (under contract with Oxford University Press) is itself a trade book that aims to relate an often complex and esoteric Stoic discourse to popular military conceptions of stoic character. Its intended audience is the non-specialist. In tone and literary style, the virtue book will be closer to Stoic Warriors than to the narrower scholarly monographs I have published on Aristotle and Kant.
I should also note that throughout the narrative, I keep a close eye on the moral psychology trends in contemporary philosophical debate on virtue. But as with the historical debate, the aim always is to metabolize the academic debate well enough so that it can be presented in nontheoretic terms to a more public audience. There are benefits in that approach for a more specialized audience, too, in that overreliance on jargon and philosophical shorthand can often take the place of lucid and self-contained argument. I should also point out that detailed clinical vignettes are a standard part of the psychotherapy literature and find something of a parallel in Seneca’s vivid illustrations of character. I follow in both traditions in linking the narrative at pivotal points with concrete examples. This should give the non-specialist reader a further way into the narrative.
The developmental account is perhaps clearest in Aristotelian ethics, with its emphasis on cultivated emotions as a component of virtue and philia as a context for both the development of virtue and its fine expression. The Stoics present a more complex picture. While they view emotions as pathologies and intimate attachments as little more than vulnerabilities, their cognitive account of emotions and robust view of therapy add important positive elements to the moral psychological perspective. Equally critical within the ancient narrative are the notions of psychic conflict and unity. Aristotle and Plato divide the soul as a response to the fact of conflict. If order rather than conflict is to prevail, then the top parts of the soul must whip the bottom into shape. Desires must know well their hierarchical rankings. The Stoics reject partition in favor of a unified soul, recognizing, though, that the metaphysical redescription of the soul cannot itself do away with conflict. Anger can still resist reason, one emotion can still quarrel with another, even if each is made of the same cognitive stuff. Only an act of will, executed through radical therapy, can begin to eliminate unwelcome desires.
In the contemporary debate, notions of psychic conflict and integration are equally central to accounts of virtue and well being. So, for example, John McDowell argues that true virtue requires not the outweighing of competing reasons but the “silencing” of them; Harry Frankfurt claims that well being is a function of “wholeheartedness,” which in turn requires “disassociating” from a conflicting desire or as he puts it more vividly at times, “extruding” the unwelcome desire “entirely as an outlaw.” Both views have important antecedents in ancient thought (whether or not explicitly recognized by their authors) --McDowell’s in Aristotle’s virtuous ideal of sophrosune or temperance, Frankfurt’s in Seneca’s notion of psychic elimination. The narrative will bring out the historical dimensions of the debate and through the use of examples, show just what is at stake in our own lives in aspiring to one or other of these conceptions of virtue and well being.
