>>What kind of thing is a virtue? Aristotle says it is a good trait of character and a
vice is a bad trait of character. But that by itself does not get us very far because
we still need to know what a trait of character is. Is a trait of character something that
lasts? Does it matter how it is acquired? Does it only involve behavior? Or does it
also involve motives? Does it matter whether the person succeeds in reaching the aims she
has when she acts virtuously? The way I propose to proceed is to think of persons we admire
and ask ourselves what it is about them that makes us feel admiration. When we look at
them closely and for a long period of time our admiration may increase or decrease. Narratives
are very important for teaching us what the virtues are because they reveal what a person
is like over an extended period of time. Over time we can separate what we admire from what
we do not admire. And that can help us identify the components of a virtue as well as the
individual virtues. So the first thing to say is that a virtue is an admirable trait.
It is a trait we identify through the emotion of admiration. Of course we can be mistaken
in what we admire. We may admire someone who is not admirable or fail to admire someone
who is admirable. But I assume that our disposition to admire is the faculty we use to identify
the admirable. We can make that disposition more reliable by reflecting on our emotion
of admiration. And the emotions of other people we trust. I assume next that the admirable
is the excellent. We admire excellence of any kind and that includes more than moral
excellences. It includes inborn talents or gifs like native intelligence, natural musical
ability, strength and beauty. But I think that we admire inborn qualities in a different
way than excellences that are acquired through human agency. One way to see that is to look
at the opposite emotion. If someone is courageous or compassionate or supremely just we admire
them, and if he is cowardly or cruel or unjust we feel an emotion like contempt or disdain.
But my admiration for the musically gifted does not have an opposite emotion. If someone
lacks musical ability I generally do not feel anything at all. In some cases I might feel
pity but I don’t feel contempt or disdain. I propose then that a virtue in a sense we
mean for virtue ethics is an acquired excellence. In born qualities are not admirable in the
right way for the theory. When we look at people we admire in stories, films, or in
our personal lives the most obvious thing we admire about them is their behavior. They
act in ways that attract our attention and makes us admire them. Sometimes the acts are
heroic. Recently I saw a movie about Leopold Socha, a Polish sewer inspector and a former
petty thief who made great sacrifices to hide Jews in the sewers of Lvov for 14 months during
World War II. Socha brought them food, medicine, games, prayer books, and crucial information
about the outside world. Some died, some escaped and were shot, but ten of them survived. At
first Socha hid them for money but when their money ran out he continued to hide and protect
them out of concern for their welfare. I think this story reveals some things about the components
of virtue. I admire an ongoing disposition to behave in a particular admirable way more
than a one-time act of kindness. We think that a disposition to act repeatedly in helping
others expresses something deeper in the person than acts that are performed only once or
occasionally. Few people are so heroic or saintly that they perform acts of kindness
or generosity at every opportunity. But we think of the most admirable qualities as those
that involve an enduring disposition. But is behavior all that counts? Do the motives
make any difference? Socha first hid the Jews out of a motive for monetary gain but later
his motive changed and he did it purely out of compassion. In fact he said that he loved
them. I admire him much more when his motive was compassion or love than when he did it
for the money. If you agree with me that suggests that a virtue is not simply a disposition
act in a certain way but to have certain motives in acting. We admire compassion much more
than a motive for personal gain. I want to propose one more component of virtue that
is more controversial than the other components we see in this story. We admire persons not
only for what they try to do but for what they succeed in doing. If two people rush
into a burning building to save the people inside and one of them succeeds in saving
a life while the other one pulls out someone who dies anyway do we admire them both the
same? I’m inclined to say yes but that is because they are acting on a single occasion
with only one chance of success. What if all the people Socha was hiding died before they
could come out of hiding? Would we admire him just as much? I doubt that there would
be movies and books about him but that might only mean we prefer stories of success. If
he did everything he could and they died because of something they couldn’t prevent we would
probably admire him just as much. Maybe we would have admired the people who participated
in the civil rights movement just as much if the movement ultimately failed. In fact
many participants did fail in their aims and it was only later that there was success.
I think we will want to say they were admirable whether or not the movement succeeded. We
have a different opinion of people who regularly fail at reaching the goal of their virtuous
acts because of their own stupidity or ineptness. Imagine somebody who always seems to make
pain worse when they’re trying to alleviate pain. Or someone who regularly gives to charities
that are fraudulent and the money doesn’t help anybody. To some extent we probably think
that every virtue requires reasonably good practical judgment. We all should have enough
sense and information about the consequences of our acts that we don’t make mistakes
that could be easily avoided. We are not really compassionate if we don’t know how to alleviate
its suffering. We are not really generous if we do not take the trouble to find out
how our money is being used. But these cases do not settle the matter of whether success
is part of virtue because there is a deeper question lurking in the background. A virtue
is a quality that makes its barrier admirable but does it also have to make the world a
better place? Must a virtue be a disposition to act in ways that generally succeed in making
the world better? I’m inclined to say yes but this is a controversial position. I know
of some interesting empirical studies that relate to this question. In one study subjects
were asked to describe courageous acts they had heard of. Most described an act that’s
succeeded. In another study subjects were asked to rank the degree of courage of a number
of different acts. Successful actions were rated as more courageous than acts that were
identical except that they did not succeed. Even more interesting is the effect of the
subject’s endorsements of the goals of a person’s act. When they judge whether or
not the person acted courageously. One study showed that people have mixed reactions to
the question of whether the 9/11 terrorists acted courageously. Some thought that calling
them courageous implied endorsing the terrorists’ goal and so they denied that they were courageous.
Other subjects thought that the terrorists could be called courageous because courage
is a matter of facing danger for what one believes in whether or not it is correct.
The 9/11 terrorists were successful from their point of view but whether or not they had
courage depends upon whether you think courage is a virtue and that a virtue must be something
that reliably leads to making the world a better place. In my book Virtues of the Mind
I proposed a definition of a virtue that is similar to what we have been saying so far.
A virtue is a deep and enduring acquired excellence of the human person. That includes a disposition
to behave in an admirable way, out of an admirable motive, and reliable success in reaching the
end of that motive. I will leave it open for discussion whether the end must be a good
one from an objective view point and whether virtue requires reliable success in reaching
an end that is good from either the agents perspective or the perspective of an objective
observer. Either way I think this definition can serve to shape our discussion of a host
of moral, intellectual, and civic virtues.