Modern virtue ethics... or Can you smell what the ethicists are cooking!

A modern virtue ethicist might view ethics like some people view cooking.  A rule of cooking is that adding salt to soup makes it better.  However, how much salt you add depends entirely on your experience with cooking, your familiarity with the recipe, your own ideas of how salty you want your food to taste, the kind of soup you are making, or the people for whom you are making the soup.  So even though the rule "Add salt to soup to make it better" is true, putting the rule into practice is based entirely on ideas that are non-rules (our own personal taste)

But my non-rules are still rules!

Let's start applying this idea to ethics.  There may be a rule that says "Don't kill."  In order to follow that rule, you need to following a rule that says, "Listen to the rule that says, 'Don't kill'."  In order to follow that rule, you need to follow a rule that says, "Listen to the rule that says, 'Listen to the rule that says, "Don't kill"'."  Ad infinitum.

A more modern virtue ethicist would say that this is precisely where purely rule-based ethics break down.  While rules are useful and necessary, we don't apply just because they are the 'rules', rather we apply them according to ideas that are non-rule-based.  So a cookbook is a good guide, but it's not the only way to make soup.  A moral rule may be a good guide, but there can be more than one way live it out because we all have different tastes!  Ta daa!

So what are these things that are non-rule-based?  Different ethicists disagree (surprised?).  Some have said compassion, another said the idea of 'caring' and 'caring for' others, and others have said that we have a 'fellow-feeling' for one another.

These ideas of modern virtue ethicists are, well, modern.  So how could their ideas have been missed over the past +2000 years of ethical rule-based theories?  I smell a thought experiment coming up.

Let's see what happens when you plug your nose, close your 

mouth, put your fingers in your ears and then sneeze.

Let's say that Group A is a group that has been raised in an environment that emphasizes competition, contests, hierarchies, and ranking.  Would you expect that their ethics would be rule-based and an emphasis on following the rules?  Let's also say that Group B has been raised in an environment that emphasizes group success, community projects, and maintaining relationships.  Would you expect that their ethics would have more of an emphasis on interdependence, working together, and group success?

Of course you would.  So one thing that has been noticed over the history of ethical theorists is that most (if not all) of them have been men.  And men are typically more rule-based and define success as 'following the rules correctly'.  Women, on the other hand, are typically more concerned with working together, group success, and all that jazz.

Now a modern virtue ethicist would not put one way of thinking over and against another.  All they are claiming since most of the famous ethical theorists have been men, it's no surprise that they missed this 'key ingredient' that was found in the 20th century.

So true.

So "Don't kill"?  Great!  But putting it into practice will require some non-rule-based idea such as compassion or kindness.  The exact way to carry out that compassion and kindness is up to the individual.

But what if someone doesn't share the same standard of compassion that I do?  Well, the best you can do is to try to make them feel the same way as you do.  This idea does overlap with emotivism (all moral expressions are just reflections of your feelings), but a modern virtue ethicist wants to keep rules, thinks we should follow them, but they still need some interpretation.

A Christian Response

So what can one make of this silliness?  As a Christian I have no problem with rules and virtues.  God as certainly told us rules that He wants us to follow (I can think of about ten of them off the top of my head).  These rules are not just arbitrary ideas that He came up with out of thin air, rather they are based on His character (which can described with words that describe virtues).

The problem that these modern virtue ethicists have is that they have no firm basis on how we are to apply the 'rules'.  They leave it up in the air and say that just like there can be more than one way to season a soup properly, there can be more than one way to be compassionate over a situation.  The problem is that they have no ultimate standard upon which to rest.  The best they can do is to plant their feet firmly in mid-air and make some subjective claim.

Isn't it interesting that they claim that we should be compassionate and care for others?  I wonder where they got that idea?  ;)

Thanks for reading.