How do we act rightly in a consistent and stable way?
Ethics of principles vs virtue ethics
M. Ndomba Ngoma
The concern in
ethics about what is right raises the question of knowing the right and doing
the right. If doing what is right can be the result of the fact of knowing what
is right, just or good, the contrary is not always true: knowing what is right
does not always lead to acting on it or acting accordingly. This distinction is
crucial between the ethics of principles and virtue ethics.
The knowledge of
rules, principles, or what is just, right and good does not always, or at least
in a compelling way, lead to acting accordingly. This difficulty also raises
the question of motivation in human actions. In a permissive society or at
least in a society where morality is said to be in decline, the most relevant
ethics is the one which can harmonize a consistent and stable “dialogue”
between knowing and doing the right.
Virtue ethics
explains such a dialogue through its twofold understanding of virtues. First, the
virtues refer to the wisdom to find the right and to know the morally relevant
issues. Second, they also refer to the motivation to do what is found and known
as right, just and good.
However, the
argument of virtue ethics does not totally exclude the ethics of principles.
Principles, rules, and standards are still needed in any society even when
everybody is virtuous. But an ethics
which only focuses on principles and rules may be limited in its scope.
For instance to
answer the question of why a particular person consistently acts rightly, one
may be obliged to go beyond the consideration of the knowledge of principles
and rules. A proper answer to such a question may include the consideration of
the character of the agent and his/her motivations. And the consideration of
the agent leads to underscore the priority of “being” over “doing,” the
priority of the character of the person acting over the act itself.
Consistent
actions find their motivation more in the character of the person than on the
knowledge the person has of what is right, just and good.
The problem with
the morality of principles is that, experience does not always show that the
simple knowledge of the good and the right provides the amount of motivation
needed to choose it in a consistent and stable way.
Thus, through a theory of virtues, virtue ethics provides an argument explaining that a virtuous person would more likely act rightly in a consistent and stable way than the person who just knows the principles and rules.
[1] Joseph J. Kotva, The Christian
Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
1996), p.31.
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