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Virtue Ethics
In this fresh evaluation of Western ethics, noted philosopher Richard Taylor argues that philosophy must return to the classical notion of virtue as the basis of ethics. To ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, ethics was chiefly the study of how individuals attain personal excellence, or "virtue," defined as intellectual sophistication, wisdom, strength of character, and creativity. With the ascendancy of the Judeo-Christian ethic, says Taylor, this emphasis on pride of personal worth was lost. Instead, philosophy became preoccupied with defining right and wrong in terms of a divine lawgiver, and the concept of virtue was debased to mean mere obedience to divine law. Even today, in the absence of religious belief, modern thinkers unwittingly continue this legacy by creating hairsplitting definitions of good and evil.
Taylor points out that the ancients rightly understood the ultimate concern of ethics to be the search for happiness. Extolling Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , Taylor urges us to reread this brilliant and still relevant treatise, especially its emphasis on an ethic of aspiration.
Taylor points out that the ancients rightly understood the ultimate concern of ethics to be the search for happiness. Extolling Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , Taylor urges us to reread this brilliant and still relevant treatise, especially its emphasis on an ethic of aspiration.
- GenresPhilosophy
144 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2002
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78 people want to read
About the author
Richard Taylor
24 books23 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database named Richard Taylor.
Richard Taylor was an American philosopher known for his dry wit and Socratic approach, and an internationally-known beekeeper. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and taught principally there as well as at Columbia and the University of Rochester, from which he retired in 1985.
Richard Taylor was an American philosopher known for his dry wit and Socratic approach, and an internationally-known beekeeper. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and taught principally there as well as at Columbia and the University of Rochester, from which he retired in 1985.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 1, 2013
A fantastic book for people who enjoy philosophy. It has an incredibly elitist tone which I found very refreshing.
In essence, it argues for virtue ethics, an approach to ethics developed by many ancient thinkers, primarily Aristotle.
To summarize Taylor:
(1) Modern ethical thought has gone off the rails, because the entire way of thinking about ethics and metaethics that is embodied in the western philosophical tradition is conceptually dependent on a religion we no longer believe in. When christianized, the west believed in a lawgiver to whom one was obligated, but after largely losing their faith that such a lawgiver exists, we assumed that sense could still be made of, for example, moral *obligations* which are not owed to ANYONE in particular, but just sort of free-floating.
(2) The approach we should have to the vast majority of ethics is essentially that ethics is custom, full stop. Ethical arguments (say, about gay marriage) are just arguments about what customs would be beneficial to adopt. There is no additional mystery. This is (says Taylor) more or less how the ancients saw ethics, and is quite correct.
(3) However, there is a highly neglected dimension of ethics that was developed by Aristotle but often has been ignored since: the importance of personal excellence. Here, Taylor defends what will sound to moderns a very elitist vision: Personal excellence is really, seriously good. Not every person is capable of it. It requires both mental and physical ability, unavailable to the majority of people. We have diluted down the term "good person" to the point of meaninglessness - a "good person" is now one who does little harm. By contrast, Taylor says, the ancients (correctly) saw that good people were rare, admirable, and had made concrete, serious achievements.
In essence, it argues for virtue ethics, an approach to ethics developed by many ancient thinkers, primarily Aristotle.
To summarize Taylor:
(1) Modern ethical thought has gone off the rails, because the entire way of thinking about ethics and metaethics that is embodied in the western philosophical tradition is conceptually dependent on a religion we no longer believe in. When christianized, the west believed in a lawgiver to whom one was obligated, but after largely losing their faith that such a lawgiver exists, we assumed that sense could still be made of, for example, moral *obligations* which are not owed to ANYONE in particular, but just sort of free-floating.
(2) The approach we should have to the vast majority of ethics is essentially that ethics is custom, full stop. Ethical arguments (say, about gay marriage) are just arguments about what customs would be beneficial to adopt. There is no additional mystery. This is (says Taylor) more or less how the ancients saw ethics, and is quite correct.
(3) However, there is a highly neglected dimension of ethics that was developed by Aristotle but often has been ignored since: the importance of personal excellence. Here, Taylor defends what will sound to moderns a very elitist vision: Personal excellence is really, seriously good. Not every person is capable of it. It requires both mental and physical ability, unavailable to the majority of people. We have diluted down the term "good person" to the point of meaninglessness - a "good person" is now one who does little harm. By contrast, Taylor says, the ancients (correctly) saw that good people were rare, admirable, and had made concrete, serious achievements.
July 12, 2022
Taylor provides a modern, spirited defense of the ancient concept of virtue and its relevance to moral philosophy. When reading contemporary summaries of ethical philosophy, it's not uncommon to see moral systems divided into three main groups: consequentialism, duty-based, and virtue ethics. The last one is not at all like the first two, which occupy themselves with questions of how one should act in various situations in order to do the morally right thing. Meanwhile, virtue ethics essentially seems to say, "just be a good dude, with good qualities, and you're all set". It always seemed to be an apples and oranges in comparison with the first two systems. Is the idea that, if you are virtuous, you will (essentially by definition) do the "right thing" in the various situations dreamed up in discussions of the first two systems? Always seemed a little circular to me.
Thankfully, Taylor tells me I'm not crazy. Virtue ethics is a fundamentally different thing. He provides excellent historical context, arguing that modern philosophical ethics--concerned with notions of right and wrong--would have been incomprehensible to the ancients, who viewed such questions as essentially settled by custom. That is, you simply follow the rules of the land. Done. Taylor claims that our modern-day obsession with questions of right and wrong originated with the advent of Christianity: even though modern philosophers who study erudite issues of deontological ethics might be irreligious (as Taylor argues many are), their moral systems share the same genealogy as religious morality. Even worse, without the supernatural undergirding issues of right and wrong, Taylor argues that these systems are actually empty: they've jettisoned God (who ultimately underwrites the moral code) but kept the Christian obsession of right and wrong, black and white. Taylor is critical of these systems, arguing that in their emptiness they are arbitrary, and doomed to failure.
Taylor then goes on to re-advance many of the (allegedly) forgotten arguments of the founders of virtue ethics. He argues that contemporary readers, who consult Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" (as I did) as a text about moral right and wrong, are condemned to miss the point entirely. The book is instead about how to live a virtuous life, which is what the Greeks were primarily endeavoring to understand. In this vein, "the good" is synonymous with "virtuous": just as a good surgeon has various qualities that make them good (a steady hand, expansive knowledge of anatomy, and so on), so too are there qualities that make someone a good "person". First, though, one has to tangle with the question: what is a person *for*? What is the function of a person? This must be answered, or else there is no way to distinguish good from bad.
The Greeks believed that the role of a person is to be a rational, thinking being. After all, this is what sets us apart from all other things. For sure a decent argument 3000 years ago. But today? For one, there is no such clear line dividing man from other animals; for sure many other animals are sentient, thinking beings. Even still, supposing that man alone had the capacity for rational thought, it is but one quality that generally sets us apart from other organisms (and why comparison with other organisms should serve as the basis by which we decide the purpose of a thing seems arbitrary). And there's the word: arbitrary. Virtue ethics, as a guide for those qualities to be nurtured and grown in the quest for intellectual excellence, seems arguably as arbitrary as other moral systems.
Personally, I think many of the virtues expounded by the Greeks are right on, and should be emulated. But to say that someone who lacks an interest in such personal enlightenment is somehow dysfunctioning, or is a "bad person", seems silly to me.
Deciding how to act in order to do the "right thing" I believe can be made meaningful in the absence of religion. One must do essentially what Mill does: choose, perhaps arbitrarily, some aspect or quality of life generally deemed good (Mill chose happiness, broadly and probably insufficiently well-defined) and establish an optimizing principle. Mill's systems is wonderfully practical, does not purport to imply anything about (nor does it need as a basis) any metaphysical mumbo jumbo, and hence can be critiqued in practice. Taylor seems rash in his dismissal of these systems, and unnecessarily so, as they are apples to Taylor's oranges.
In summary, this text was thought-provoking and helpful for putting virtue ethics in contradistinction to other popular moral systems. But it was not convincing as a modern guide for how we should live our lives. If that's even a meaningful query, I'm not sure anyone has the answer. Maybe Oprah.
Thankfully, Taylor tells me I'm not crazy. Virtue ethics is a fundamentally different thing. He provides excellent historical context, arguing that modern philosophical ethics--concerned with notions of right and wrong--would have been incomprehensible to the ancients, who viewed such questions as essentially settled by custom. That is, you simply follow the rules of the land. Done. Taylor claims that our modern-day obsession with questions of right and wrong originated with the advent of Christianity: even though modern philosophers who study erudite issues of deontological ethics might be irreligious (as Taylor argues many are), their moral systems share the same genealogy as religious morality. Even worse, without the supernatural undergirding issues of right and wrong, Taylor argues that these systems are actually empty: they've jettisoned God (who ultimately underwrites the moral code) but kept the Christian obsession of right and wrong, black and white. Taylor is critical of these systems, arguing that in their emptiness they are arbitrary, and doomed to failure.
Taylor then goes on to re-advance many of the (allegedly) forgotten arguments of the founders of virtue ethics. He argues that contemporary readers, who consult Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" (as I did) as a text about moral right and wrong, are condemned to miss the point entirely. The book is instead about how to live a virtuous life, which is what the Greeks were primarily endeavoring to understand. In this vein, "the good" is synonymous with "virtuous": just as a good surgeon has various qualities that make them good (a steady hand, expansive knowledge of anatomy, and so on), so too are there qualities that make someone a good "person". First, though, one has to tangle with the question: what is a person *for*? What is the function of a person? This must be answered, or else there is no way to distinguish good from bad.
The Greeks believed that the role of a person is to be a rational, thinking being. After all, this is what sets us apart from all other things. For sure a decent argument 3000 years ago. But today? For one, there is no such clear line dividing man from other animals; for sure many other animals are sentient, thinking beings. Even still, supposing that man alone had the capacity for rational thought, it is but one quality that generally sets us apart from other organisms (and why comparison with other organisms should serve as the basis by which we decide the purpose of a thing seems arbitrary). And there's the word: arbitrary. Virtue ethics, as a guide for those qualities to be nurtured and grown in the quest for intellectual excellence, seems arguably as arbitrary as other moral systems.
Personally, I think many of the virtues expounded by the Greeks are right on, and should be emulated. But to say that someone who lacks an interest in such personal enlightenment is somehow dysfunctioning, or is a "bad person", seems silly to me.
Deciding how to act in order to do the "right thing" I believe can be made meaningful in the absence of religion. One must do essentially what Mill does: choose, perhaps arbitrarily, some aspect or quality of life generally deemed good (Mill chose happiness, broadly and probably insufficiently well-defined) and establish an optimizing principle. Mill's systems is wonderfully practical, does not purport to imply anything about (nor does it need as a basis) any metaphysical mumbo jumbo, and hence can be critiqued in practice. Taylor seems rash in his dismissal of these systems, and unnecessarily so, as they are apples to Taylor's oranges.
In summary, this text was thought-provoking and helpful for putting virtue ethics in contradistinction to other popular moral systems. But it was not convincing as a modern guide for how we should live our lives. If that's even a meaningful query, I'm not sure anyone has the answer. Maybe Oprah.
February 19, 2023
The best introduction to virtue ethics I know, much better than reading MacIntyre's book. Very polemical.
Taylor advocates the basic argument of Anscombe's paper Modern Moral Philosophy, though with much more clarity and concision. Namely, he argues that the concept of moral obligation is only meaningful if such obligation are believed to derive from a divine lawgiver. Since most modern philosophers try to exclude God from their ethics, their concept of obligation is meaningless. As such, we should return to a concept which does not rely upon the idea of a divine lawgiver, that expressed by the Ancient Greeks.
Taylor emphasises some characteristics of Ancient Greek virtue ethics which its modern proponents ignore, particularly their stated belief in the inequality of men and their opposition to humility.
Taylor advocates the basic argument of Anscombe's paper Modern Moral Philosophy, though with much more clarity and concision. Namely, he argues that the concept of moral obligation is only meaningful if such obligation are believed to derive from a divine lawgiver. Since most modern philosophers try to exclude God from their ethics, their concept of obligation is meaningless. As such, we should return to a concept which does not rely upon the idea of a divine lawgiver, that expressed by the Ancient Greeks.
Taylor emphasises some characteristics of Ancient Greek virtue ethics which its modern proponents ignore, particularly their stated belief in the inequality of men and their opposition to humility.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews