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I say ‘corrupted’ because it has become all too common to allow a vague concept of justice and rights to encompass large areas of morality that virtue ethicists believe are better dealt with in terms of other, more concrete, virtues. According to virtue ethics-and in this book-what is wrong with lying, when it is wrong, is not that it is unjust (because it violates someone’s right to the truth’ or their ‘right to be treated with respect’) but that is dishonest, and dishonesty is a vice. What is wrong with killing, when it is wrong, may be not so much that it is unjust, violating the right to life, but, frequently, that it is callous and contrary to the virtue of charity. Nor do I subscribe to the view that, if some action is ‘absolutely required’, it thereby falls into the province of justice rather than one of the other virtues. From the perspective of virtue ethics, one can say that it is ‘absolutely required’ that one does not ‘pass by on the other side’ when one sees a wounded stranger lying by the roadside, but the requirement comes from charity rather than justice.
Although I acknowledge that existence of the gap, it would be premature to assume that this gap cannot be filled. In their introduction to Virtue Ethics, Crisp and Slote, admitting that virtue ethics needs to meet the challenge, cite several virtue ethicist who are beginning to do so and look forward to the day when there will be an ‘Oxford Readings in Virtue Politics’. There certainly seems to be a growing concern over whether justice is the only virtue which should figure in discussions of political morality. Could human beings even sustain social union, let alone a just one, if parents did not love their children, and if there were no such things as what Aristotle describes as ‘civic friendship’? Statman, admitting that ‘the whole issue concerning VE and political theory… has only just started to be explored’ suggests of VE’. Who knows. But while we do not know, we should keep an open mind, not waste our time trying to show in advance that since virtue ethics is to be specified in such and such a way, it is bound to be unable to give an account of justice or political morality. Could human beings even sustain social union, let alone a just one, if parents did not love their children, and if there were no such things as what Aristotle describe as ‘civic friendship’? Statman admitting that ‘the whole issue concerning VE and political theory…has only just started to be explored’ suggests that communitarianism ‘might turh out to be the political aspect of VE’ . Who knows. But while we do not know, we should keep an open mind, not waste our time trying to show in advance that since virtue ethics is to be specified in such and such as way, it is bound to be unable to give an account of justice or political morality.
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