Part III. Rationality
The final section of the book is on the ‘rationality of morality’ in relation to virtue ethics, the question of whether there is any ‘objective’ criterion for a certain character trait’s being a virtue. The standard neo-Aristotelian premise that ‘A virtue is a character trait a human being needs for eudaimonia, to flourish or live well’ should be regarded as encapsulating two interrelated claims, namely, that the virtue benefit their possessor, and that the virtues make their possessor good qua human being (human beings need the virtues in order to live a characteristically good human life). These are separately discussed in the first three chapters of this part, and eventually brought together at the end of final one.
In these chapters express disagreement with two main schools of thought. I assume, rather than argue for, the view that it is a mistake to suppose that ethics can be given any sort of foundation ‘from the neutral point of view’. I assume that ethical thought has to take place within an acquired ethical outlook. However, despite disagreeing with those who seek to provide such a foundation, I do not take up the other familiar position which locates all fundamental ethical disagreements in disagreements about values, which I also deny. Ethical disagreements can be seen to lie in disagreements about facts, albeit, frequently, rather odd facts.
Chapter 8. The Virtues Benefit their Possessor. Some familiar objections to the very idea that the virtues on the standard list benefit their possessor can quickly be cleared away. We may also note that, when we consider the claim in the context of brining up our own children or reflection on our own lives, rather than in the context of trying to convince the wicked or the moral sceptic, we believe it. According to Phillips and McDowell, we believe it in so far as we are virtuous, because we have special conception of eudaimonia, benefit, harm, and loss, which guarantee its truth. Hence any appeal to the sort of facts that Hare and Foot give in support of the claim are irrelevant. I agree with them that there is no discerning the truth of ‘the virtues benefit their possessor’ from a neutral or wicked standpoint, but not with their explanation. The sorts of facts that Hare and Foot give form essential support for the clam, and are essential to our inculcating virtue in our children. However, they are odd facts, which philosophy has, as yet, no easy way to classify.
Chapter 9. Naturalism. There is another way of interpreting the premise that the virtues are those character traits a human being needs for eudaimonia, to flourish or live well, which has it expressing a form of naturalism. We interpret it as saying that the virtues are those character traits that human beings need to live well as human beings, to live a good, characteristically human, life. Ethical evaluations of human beings as good or bad are taken to be analogous to evaluations of other living things as good or bad specimens of their kind. The analogy is instructive, because it reveals that several features of ethical evaluation thought to be peculiar to it, and inimical to its objectivity, are present in the quasi-scientific evaluation even of plans.
Chapter 10. Naturalism for Rational Anmals. However, the analogy can only be pushed so far. Ethics is not a branch of biology. Other living things have characteristic ways of going on that they cannot choose to change, against the background of which they can be evaluated as good or bad specimens. But in so far as we have characteristic ways of going on, we can intelligibly ask ‘Is that a good way to go on?’ of almost any of them and look for ways of claimed that ethical naturalism, construed as the attempt to ground ethical evaluation in a scientific account of human nature, is a misconceived enterprise. But that is a far cry from claiming that no account of human nature can be objectively well-founded and moving straight to the idea that any conception of it is as good as any other.
Chapter 11. Objectivity. The two different interpretations of the premise that ‘a virtue is a character trait a human being needs for eudaimonia’ can ultimately be seen as interrelated, for both rely on the idea that our nature is such that the virtues, as we know them, suit human beings. This fact, if it is a fact, is a highly contingent one. It is a contingent fact that we can, individually, flourish or achieve eudainomia, contingent that we can do so in the same way as each other, and contingent that we can do so all together, not at each other’s expense. If things had been otherwise then, according to the version of virtue ethics presented here, morality would not exist, or would be unimaginably different.