Transcript Frankena - A Critique of Virtue

Frankena A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics
• A virtue is a disposition, quality, habit
etc.. Not a principle or rule. It is an ethic
of BEING.
• An ethics that focuses on principles or
duty is an ethic of DOING
• Frankena argues that both are
necessary:
• Traits of character must include the
disposition to act and
• We need principles to know what traits to
encourage.
How are we to judge an action?
• Are actions to be judged right/wrong
on the basis of
• Results?
• The Principle the action
exemplifies?
• Or a trait of character?
Frankena's answer
• An action is to be judged right or
wrong by reference to a principle or
set of principles
• An act may also be said to be good
or bad [praiseworthy or
blameworthy] and this moral quality
will depend on the agent's motive,
intention or disposition in doing it.
Restated: The difference is between an ethics of
being and an ethics of doing.
• What is the relationship between an
ethics of principles [doing] and the
development of dispositions [being]?
• Frankena views them as
complementary aspects of the same
morality in which principles are
basic.
• Praise and blame doesn't come from
adherence to principles, but the
rightness or wrongness of actions does.
Role of Moral Ideals: or why
principles are primary
• Moral ideals are motivations to live a
certain way [being]
• He names two Cardinal Virtues:
BENEVOLENCE & JUSTICE.
• He argues that all of the virtues can
be derived from moral principles
• He states that "traits without principles
are blind"
• It is hard to see what traits we should
cultivate without principles. [p. 433]
” If our morality is to be more than a
conformity to internalized rules and
principle, if it is to include and rest on an
understanding of the point of these rules
and principles, and certainly if it is to
involve being a certain kind of person and
not merely doing certain kinds of things,
then we must somehow attain and develop
an ability to be aware of others as persons,
as important to themselves as we are to
ourselves, and to have a lively and
sympathetic representation in imagination
of their interests and of the effects of our
actions on their lives."
Frankena, p. 437