Since the 80’s of the last century a trend has emerged in the English language literature on Chinese thought that suggests reading early Confucian texts as a form of virtue ethics. However, Alasdair MacIntyre has presented early Confucian and Aristotle’s thoughts as incommensurable thought systems and doubted that notions and statements of one incommensurable thought system can be adequately expressed and addressed within the framework of another. This article discusses MacIntyre’s position and two strategies - employed by the proponents of virtue ethics interpretation of early Confucian texts - of meeting MacIntyre’s challenge. The article attempts to show that none of the responses were successful, thus leaving the quest for the most adequate philosophical framework to interpret early Confucian ethical thought open.
An argument is made that to further develop the field of environmental virtue ethics it must be connected with an account of environmental sentiments. Openness as both an environmental sentiment and virtue is presented. This sentiment is shown to be reflected in the work of Barbara McClintock. As a virtue it is shown to a mean between arrogance and the disvaluing of individuals, a disposition to be open to the natural world and the values found there. Further development of EVE is then shown to require a connection with an account of environmental wisdom.
For effective environmental protection, the necessary tools are not only the external ones in the form of commands, and legal or economic instruments. A very necessary tool for dealing with the environmental crisis can be inner work on one’s own character and personality, as well as on the social virtues and vices that determine our approach to the environment. Recently, a growing interest in environmental virtue discourse can be noticed, and this paper presents a proposal for five cardinal environmental virtues, and oppositional to these, five cardinal vices. The presented virtues are: care, moderation, respect, wisdom, and responsibility. On the opposite side of the barricade are the following vices: egoism, greed, arrogance, ignorance (stupidity), and apathy.
Michael H. Mitias argues that friendship is a central moral value constituting an integral part of the good life and therefore deserving a prominent place in ethical theory. He consequently calls upon ethicists to make immediate and decisive adjustments toward accommodating what he regards as a neglected organic relationship between friendship and morality. This is not a fanciful amendment to our standard conception of morality but a radical proposal grounded in a unifying vision to recapture the right way of doing ethics. While the assessment is compelling, and the plea well-placed, neither has been fully understood in the scholarly reception of Mitias. This paper clarifies both. What sets it apart from other reactions to Mitias is a holistic approach drawing on literary considerations as well as philosophical ones. The combined aim is to demonstrate that Mitias is not seeking simply to restore friendship to its rightful place in normative ethical theory, which is indeed the full extent of his formal mission, but that he is seeking to do so specifically within virtue ethics. This interpretation rests on a broad engagement with Mitias’s publications beyond the recent treatise often taken understandably yet erroneously to be his only work on the subject.
Outside institutionalised environmental activities, we find that individual efforts to combat environmental damage are at risk of succumbing to resignation. For her reflections on ‘green fatigue’ the author borrowed economist Alberta O. Hirschman’s psychological concept of the potential for disappointment. Whether and to what extent an individual is able to withstand failure depends on one’s mental fitness, the degree of support received from one’s social group, and historical and other circumstances. This article considers the proposition that the potential for disappointment largely hinges on what a person’s motivation is to engage in environmentally-oriented behaviour. The author works with a typology of motivations derived from categories of normative ethics: teleological and deontological ethics and virtue ethics. The article first describes these motivational types on a general level and then examines them in relation to environmentalism. The findings of this study may have practical as well as theoretical significance: environmental problems cannot be tackled solely through technical and scientific efforts founded on goal-directed, teleological motivations, as these are at risk of succumbing to disappointment and fatigue. Environmental problems must be approached from a broad humanistic perspective, as it is on that level that the ethics of environmental virtue take shape and deontological motivations are reinforced – two approaches that are not grounded in great expectations and are thus relatively resistant to disappointment from negative environmental development and provide a basis for effective goal-directed behaviour.
Nie jest łatwo ułożyć katalog cnót, szczególnie cnót w biznesie. Przedsiębiorca napotyka wiele sytuacji, w których pojawia się dylemat między zyskiem a moralnością. Bankowiec Karl G. Jechoutek, w opracowaniu na temat etyki religijnej w ekonomii rynkowej, wymienił szereg takich cnót: nie kradnij, bądź sprawiedliwy i uczciwy, zapobiegaj nadmiernym nierównościom majątkowym i skrajnemu ubóstwu, traktuj własność prywatną jak zobowiązanie wobec społeczności, angażuj się w działalność charytatywną, prowadź działania konkurencyjne w sposób przejrzysty, zachowuj szacunek dla konkurentów, nie nadużywaj władzy gospodarczej i politycznej, a wykorzystuj ją dla dobra publicznego, nie bądź chciwy i zachowuj umiar.
EN
It is not easy to compile a catalogue of virtues, especially in the business. The entrepreneur meets many situations with the dilemma between fast profit and morality. The banker Karl G. Jechoutek, in the book on religious ethics in the market economy, mentioned the list of such virtues: don’t steal, be fair and honest, prevent excessive economic inequality and poverty, combine ownership with social responsibility, engage in charity work, be transparent in the market competition, keep respect for competitors, don’t abuse economic and political power, and use it for public good, don’t be greedy, lead the business in moderation.
In this paper I examine which is the most appropriate moral theory for dealing with disaster bioethics contexts. It is pointed out that, contrary to what is usually believed, moral theories of right action cannot actually guide us in such difficult situations. Instead, it is claimed that a virtue ethics theory of an Aristotelian version, which gives emphasis not only on the virtuous person but also on the relevant developmental process of becoming virtuous, can provide us with the right theoretical framework for coping with the problems which the victims of such disastrous situations face.
Marsilio Ficino did not write a methodical, complete treatise on ethics, but the ethical questions are discussed in most of his writings, including his opus magnum entitled Theologia Platonica. The most important sources for Ficino’s ethical considerations are Platonic and Neoplatonic texts and this is strongly reflected in Theologia; one of the aspects of this dependence regards the nature of virtues: they are seen as unchangeable, indivisible and that is why they are objective. The main purpose of the paper is to present the objective character of virtues in Platonic Theology by invoking their definition, role and status with references to Plato’s works.
My argument in this paper is that Charles Taylor’s view of liberty and ethics unites Isaiah Berlin’s liberal pluralism with Elizabeth Anscombe’s virtue ethics. Berlin identifies, in “Two Concepts of Liberty,” a tradition of negative liberty advocated by figures like Locke and Mill. He maintains that this concept of liberty is unique to modernity, and it is the form of liberty best suited to the political sphere. The much older concept of positive liberty, which is found in ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, as well as modern thinkers like Hegel, Berlin regards as ill-suited to the political sphere. Anscombe, in “Modern Moral Philosophy,” specifically identifies and criticizes the Anglo-Saxon tradition of moral philosophy. Utilitarian thinkers like Mill are, for Anscombe, consequentialists. The virtue ethics of Aristotle gives a basis for the intrinsic goodness and badness of actions not in sentiment but reason. Charles Taylor draws upon the views of both thinkers. He advocates a liberal pluralism in a manner comparable to Berlin. However, Taylor strongly emphasizes, with Anscombe, that the most complete conception of ethical and political life must be rooted in virtue ethics and positive liberty. Thus, Taylor’s views constitute a synthesis of the approaches of his two mentors.
In this paper I argue that the most fundamental goal of any public policy is to assist the realization of social good. I take it that the idea of social good has developed differently in different political and moral traditions, and focus my analysis on the interplay of liberalism, virtue ethics and the Capability Approach. I argue that the liberal conception of social good, as espoused by its leading exponents, is somewhat problematic, and that it fails to account for meaningful civic associations. Even though liberal thinkers often prioritize an individual’s freedom and autonomy, they do not provide us with concreto principles that can facilitate the realization of these goals. I draw upon the practical functioning of leading liberal democracies, including the United States, Canada and India, emphasizing the role of normative political constraints in policy making. I conclude that the liberal conception of social good stands in an acute need of a fresh principle that can rectify the above anomalies and reinvigorate its moral force, and that such a principle can probably be constructed with the help of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Aristotle’s Virtue Theory.
Patients suffering from advanced dementia present ethicists and caregivers with a difficult issue: we do not know how they feel or how they want to be treated, and they have no way of telling us. We do not know, therefore, whether we ought to prolong their lives by providing them with nutrition and hydration, or whether we should not provide them with food and water and let them die. Since providing food and water to patients is considered to be basic care that is morally required, it is usually only the provision of nutrition and hydration by artificial means that is considered to require ethical justification. Building on what I call a virtue-based conception of autonomy, I argue that, at least for some patients suffering from advanced dementia, even providing food and liquid by hand is morally wrong.
There are always new proposals concerning the application of new genetic technology. Some of them concern the genetic enhancement of man. There are four groups of such proposals, labeled as: better children, better performance, ageless bodies, and happy souls. The Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, which distinguishes between therapeutic and non-therapeutic genetic manipulation, does not reject non-therapeutic genetic manipulation (genetic enhancement is such manipulation), but it does prescribe some requirements for its moral acceptance. However, these requirements are general and not very useful for determining specific moral limits for genetic enhancement of man. There are neither ready standards nor criteria for establishing those limits. The role of philosophers (theologians) then, is to ascertain those limits. It is possible to do that on the basis of virtue ethics in its version elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas. His description of human perfection is of great help in establishing the morally acceptable limits of the genetic enhancement of man. Aquinas’s intuitions are confirmed by the observations of contemporary psychology.
It stands to reason that a criterion is needed that can serve as a common denominator for weighing or assessing different values or ideals. Dignity is offered as a possible candidate, to be presented from religio-legal and cross-cultural vantages. A definition will be offered for dignity and its parts defended throughout the paper. The approach is not only not rigorously analytic – there are no case studies – but is instead a presentation of topic areas where we should expect to find the concept of dignity to be relevant. Utilizing a rights-moral and duties-ethical framework, it is in essence an argument for further elevating the prestige of dignity so that it might provide a widely-accepted groundwork for ethics and morality. .
This article outlines the premises and promises of a modern comeback of Stoicism, particularly the question of reinterpretation of the original doctrine, the contemporary intricacies of the principle of “following nature,” and the foundations that modern Stoicism establishes for global responsibility.
For some time now moral psychologists and philosophers have ganged up on Aristotelians, arguing that results from psychological studies on the role of character-based and situation-based influences on human behavior have convincingly shown that situations rather than personal characteristics determine human behavior. In the literature on moral psychology and philosophy this challenge is commonly called the “situationist challenge,” and as Prinz (2009) has previously explained, it has largely been based on results from four salient studies in social psychology, including the studies conducted by Hartshorne and May (1928), Milgram (1963), Isen and Levin (1972), and Darley and Batson (1973). The situationist challenge maintains that each of these studies seriously challenges the plausibility of virtuous personal characteristics by challenging the plausibility of personal characteristics more generally. In this article I undermine the situationist challenge against Aristotelian moral psychology by carefully considering major problems with the conclusions that situationists have drawn from the empirical data, and by further challenging the accuracy of their characterization of the Aristotelian view. In fact I show that when properly understood the Aristotelian view is not only consistent with empirical data from developmental science but can also offer important insights for integrating moral psychology with its biological roots in our natural and social life.
W swoim tekście skupiam się na praktycznym zagadnieniu kształtowania postaw moralnych wśród przedstawicieli polskiego sektora bankowego w obliczu wymagań, jakie stawia przed nimi Sektorowa Rama Kwalifikacji dla Sektora Bankowego (SRKB). Wstępne rozważania dotyczą refleksji nad stanem dyskursu etycznego w polskim sektorze finansowym oraz wyjaśnieniu, czym jest SRKB. W drugiej części pracy zostaną poddane analizie kodeksy i zachęty, których aktualnie używa się, by kształtować postawy moralne w praktyce zawodowej, m.in. w sektorze bankowym. Po wykazaniu pewnych braków tych narzędzi w części trzeciej wskażę możliwe formy rozwiązania pojawiających się problemów adekwatne do wymagań stawianych przez SRKB. W tej części przedstawię podejście do budowania postaw moralnych oparte na arystotelesowskiej etyce cnoty, która w klasycznym rozumieniu często jest przeciwstawiana interesowym motywacjom ekonomicznym. Postaram się pokazać, że nie musi tak być i przy pewnych założeniach koncepcja Arystotelesa może być zgodna z działaniami rynkowymi. W szczególności jego koncepcja mądrości praktycznej – phronesis – może w istotny sposób poprawić i uzupełnić funkcjonujące mechanizmy i pomóc w budowaniu postaw moralnych opisanych w SRKB.
EN
In my text, I focus on the practical issue of shaping a moral character among representatives of the Polish banking sector in the face of the requirements that Sectoral Qualifications Framework for Banking (SQFB16) puts before the employees of this sector. Preliminary considerations are devoted to reflection on the ethical discourse within Polish financial sector and clarification what SQFB is? In the second part of the work I will analyze codes of ethics and incentives which are currently used to shape moral attitudes in professional practice, including in the banking sector will be analyzed. After demonstrating some shortcomings of these tools in the third part, it will indicate possible forms of solving emerging problems and tools appropriate to the requirements of SQFB. In this part, I will try to present an approach to building a moral character based on the Aristotelian virtue ethics. The virtue ethics in the classical sense is often contrasted with an interest, selfish economic motivation. I will try to show that it does not have to be that way and with certain assumptions, Aristotle’s concept may be consistent with market activities. In particular, his concept of practical wisdom – phronesis can significantly improve and complement existing mechanisms and help in building moral character in the finance sector introduced by SQFB.
Recently, constructivism has become one of the most important movements in metaethics. According to metaethical constructivism, moral judgements do not refer to moral facts but are constructed as solutions to practical problems. At the same time this claim is not seen as incompatible with cognitive realism. A variant of metaethical constructivism, developed in opposition to the dominant Kantian branch (Ch. Korsgaard), alludes to Aristotle’s practical philosophy. In this article I raise two issues. Firstly, I present a new version of the Aristotelian constructivism in metaethics, more elaborate than the previous proposals (M. LeBar). Its fundamental element is the concept of the coherence of emotional response seen as a complex cognitive-affective state. Secondly, I argue that the acceptance of the Aristotelian version of metaethical constructivism entails the need to accept constructivism in the area of the theory of knowledge, which is contrary to the metaethical premises of constructivism.
PL
Jednym z najważniejszych prądów we współczesnej metaetyce stał się w ostatnim okresie konstruktywizm. Konstruktywizm metaetyczny przyjmuje, że sądy moralne nie odnoszą się do faktów moralnych, ale są konstruowane jako rozwiązania problemów praktycznych. Jednocześnie przyjmuje, że teza ta nie stoi w sprzeczności z realizmem poznawczym. Jedną z odmian konstruktywizmu metaetycznego, rozwijaną w opozycji do dominującego nurtu kantowskiego (Ch. Korsgaard) jest wersja nawiązująca do filozofii praktycznej Arystotelesa. W artykule podejmuję dwie kwestię. Po pierwsze przedstawiam nową, bardziej rozbudowaną w stosunku do dotychczasowych propozycji (M. LeBar) wersję Arystotelesowskiego konstruktywizmu w metaetyce. Jest podstawowym elementem jest koncepcja koherencji reakcji emocjonalnych rozumianych jako złożone stany afektywno-kognitywne. Po drugie, staram się wykazać, że przyjęcie arystotelesowskiej wersji konstruktywizmu metaetycznego oznacza konieczność przyjęcia konstruktywizmu w zakresie teorii wiedzy, co pozostaje w sprzeczności z założeniami tego nurtu w metaetyce.
Compared to other approaches, it is virtue ethics that puts greatest emphasis on moral education. This results from its focus on moral agent and his or her moral condition as the main object of ethical enquiry. The aim of this paper is to outline the moral education within the framework of virtue ethics. I intend to explain how such education embraces the cognitive (acquiring moral beliefs), affective (proper harmonization of emotions), and behavioral elements. In the first part of the article, I present the concept of ethical virtue to contrast it with certain misunderstandings which might lead to unnecessary fear of introducing the category of virtue into moral education. In the second part, I respond to various objections raised against virtue ethics, the most important being the objection of indoctrination and undermining autonomy of the educated. Another objection to which I pay special attention is the objection that there is no one catalogue of virtues but many different catalogues praised by different cultures, which especially poses a problem in multicultural societies. I am also trying to show the advantages of virtue education over other, nondirective approaches to moral education.
XX
Wśród teoretyków moralności największe znaczenie edukacji moralnej przypisują etycy cnót. Wynika to z ich koncentracji na sprawcy działania, jego moralnej kondycji jako głównego przedmiotu dociekań etycznych. Celem mojego artykułu jest odpowiedź na pytanie, na czym polega edukacja moralna w duchu etyki cnót. Wyjaśniam, w jaki sposób obejmuje ona elementy kognitywne (kształtowanie moralnych przekonań), afektywne (odpowiednie uporządkowanie uczuć i emocji) i behawioralne. W pierwszej części mojego artykułu kreślę właściwe ujęcie cnoty etycznej, dzięki czemu zwracam uwagę na jeden z głównych błędów w jej rozumieniu, którego efektem może być niepotrzebna obawa przed jej aplikacją do różnych koncepcji edukacyjnych. W drugiej części podejmuję próbę odparcia głównych zarzutów kierowanych pod adresem etyki cnót, przede wszystkim indoktrynacji i pogwałcenia autonomii wychowanków oraz wielości katalogów cnót. Staram się także wykazać przewagę edukacji moralnej poprzez cnoty nad tzw. niedyrektywnymi metodami moralnej edukacji, stanowiącymi jej konkurencję.
This paper concerns the prospects for an internal validation of the Aristotelian vir-tues of character. With respect to the more contentious trait of patriotism, this approach for validating some specific trait of character as a virtue of character provides a plau-sible and nuanced Aristotelian position that does not fall neatly into any of the catego-ries provided by a recent mapping of the terrain surrounding the issue of patriotism. According to the approach advocated here, patriotism can plausibly, though qualifiedly, be defended as a virtue, by stressing its similarities to another loyalty-exhibiting trait about which Aristotle has quite a bit to say: the virtue of friendship.
The paper elucidates a work of Early Modern Swedish literature, entitled Polska Kongars Saga och Skald [Saga and Song of Polish Kings] and published anonymously at the royal printing house in Stockholm in 1736. This book is remarkable in several respects. In 51 chapters it portrays the rulers of Poland, from the legendary founder of the nation, Lech I, up to Stanisław Leszczyński, still in power in early 1736. The chapters are composed in a similar way, each of them containing an engraving of the monarch, a historical sketch in prose, and a concluding comment in verse. The paper starts off by discussing the attribution of Polska Kongars Saga och Skald, an issue on which Swedish and Polish scholars have held divergent views. The dispute is settled here by identifying the author as the Stockholm clergyman and occasional poet Johan Göstaf Hallman (1701–1757). The main focus of the paper, however, is an investigation of the work’s verse comments. It is argued that the delineation of Poland’s sovereigns is used primarily as a stock of exempla, being explained in terms of virtues and vices in the poems closing the individual chapters. In particular, the chapters on the medieval rulers Bolesław V (Bolesław Wstydliwy) and Ludwik I (Ludwik Węgierski) are scrutinized. As moralizing comments on the historical events, these chapters employ verse fables by Jean de La Fontaine, rendered in Swedish. With his faithful verse translations of “Le Loup & l’Agneau” and “L’oeil du Maître”, Hallman enriches the initial phase of La Fontaine reception in Sweden, which took place, it is shown, several decades after the earliest reception of Fables choisies, mises en vers in Polish. Of even greater significance, though, is the fact that the two French fables, both of them highly aestheticized according to the taste of Classicism, in the context of Poland’s history are given a clearly moral-didactic function by the Swedish clergyman. Hallman thereby inverts the most groundbreaking contribution of La Fontaine to European fable history.
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