VIRTUE ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL ROLES

1 VIRTUE ETHICS ANDPROFESSIONAL ROLESJUSTIN OAKLEYM onash UniversityDEAN COCKINGC harles Sturt University The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge ,UK West th Street, New York, , USA Stamford Road, Oakleigh, , AustraliaRuiz de Alarc n , Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town , South Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University published Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, CambridgeTypefaceBaskerville MT / . [ ]A catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryLibrary of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataOakley, Justin, VIRTUE ETHICS and PROFESSIONAL ROLES / Justin Oakley, Dean bibliographical references and index.

2 PROFESSIONAL ETHICS . I. Cocking, Dean, II. Title.. dc hardbackContentsPrefacepage ixAcknowledgementsxiiIntroduction The nature of VIRTUE ETHICS The regulative ideals of morality and the problem offriendship A VIRTUE ETHICS approach to PROFESSIONAL ROLES Ethical models of the good general practitioner PROFESSIONAL virtues , ordinary vices PROFESSIONAL detachment in health care and legal practice Bibliography Index vii The nature of VIRTUE ethics1 The current renewal of philosophical interest in the virtues is one of themost noteworthy developments in contemporary ethical theory. Thefirst signs of this revival appeared in , when Elizabeth Anscombecalled for the restoration of Aristotelian notions of goodness, character,and VIRTUE as central concerns of moral initial reac-tions to Anscombe s call were modest, interest in the virtues gatheredmomentum during the s, largely because of the work of philoso-phers such as Philippa Foot, Bernard Williams, and Alasdair philosophical literature on the virtues is now vast, and there is agreat variety of different views which advertise themselves as forms ofvirtue of those who hold such views argue that virtueethics can lay serious claim to rival Kantianism and utilitarianism ascomprehensive normative ethical theories.

3 But what exactly is virtueethics? What are the central claims which the variants of VIRTUE ETHICS 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were read at the Consequentialism, Kantianism, and VirtueEthics conference at Monash University, at an Ethox seminar at Oxford University, at KyotoUniversity, and at a seminar in Tokyo organised by the utilitarian studies research group in would like to thank those audiences for useful discussion on those occasions. We are especiallygrateful to John Campbell, John Cottingham, Brad Hooker, Per Sandberg, and ChristineSwanton, for their very helpful comments on previous versions, and to Kazunobu Narita for hisdetailed critique of a late draft of this E. M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy ,Philosophy , .13A comprehensive bibliography of material on VIRTUE ETHICS can be found in Robert B.

4 Kruschwitzand Robert C. Roberts,The virtues : Contemporary Essays on Moral Character, Belmont, Wadsworth, . For good recent collections of papers on VIRTUE ETHICS , see Roger Crisp (ed.),How Should OneLive? Essays on the virtues , Oxford, Clarendon Press, ; Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.), VIRTUE ETHICS , Oxford, Oxford University Press, ; Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, andHoward K. Wettstein (eds.),Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume : Ethical Theory: Character andVirtue, Notre Dame, Notre Dame University Press, ; and Daniel Statman, VIRTUE ETHICS : ACritical Reader, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, . See also the survey articles on virtueethics by Gregory E. Pence, Recent Work on the virtues ,American Philosophical Quarterly , ;and Gregory Trianosky, What is VIRTUE ETHICS all About?

5 ,American Philosophical Quarterly , .Pence summarises and compares certain key texts in the recent history of VIRTUE ETHICS , whileTrianosky offers a more systematic guide to the different forms of VIRTUE ETHICS , in terms of arange of common targets which unite various writers in the , and how is VIRTUE theory distinct from other, more familiar ethicaltheories?There is a somewhat bewildering diversity of claims made by philos-ophers in the name of VIRTUE ETHICS . Many of those claims are put in neg-ative form, and are expressed in terms of an opposition to an ETHICS ofprinciples , or to an impartialist ETHICS , or to abstract ethical theory ,or simply to an ETHICS of action . Unfortunately, this negative emphasishas resulted in VIRTUE ETHICS becoming better known to many by what itis against, rather than by what it is for.

6 Of course, given that the revival ofvirtue ETHICS has been sparked by dissatisfaction with standard Kantianand utilitarian ethical theories, it is not surprising that those negativeclaims have gained prominence. However, to focus only on those claimsin an outline of VIRTUE ETHICS and its variants would be inadequate, forthis would not sufficiently distinguish it from other approaches such asan ETHICS of care, and various forms of feminist ETHICS which are alsooften advanced in terms of a rejection of similar features of orthodoxethical theories. While VIRTUE ETHICS does share certain common targetswith these and other ethical theories, it can be more clearly distinguishedfrom them by its positive VIRTUE ethicistsdoenunciate their positive claims, however, thereis often a lack of clarity and specificity which does not help infixing thetheory s distinctive content.

7 Thus, when VIRTUE ethicists suggest how thetheory can overcome many of the perceived vices of Kantianism andutilitarianism, there is often a failure to articulate VIRTUE theory in wayswhich make clear how or why its features cannot simply be appropriatedby more sophisticated or ecumenical forms of these more familiar ethicaltheories. For example, many regard VIRTUE ETHICS emphasis on an agent scharacter in justifying right actions as a feature which distinguishes virtueethics from other ethical theories. However, while the VIRTUE ETHICS move-ment has helped bring considerations of character to the fore in contem-porary ETHICS , it is not alone in emphasising the important connectionsbetween right action and an agent s character. For recent influential ver-sions of Kantianism and consequentialism have also moved towardsendorsing the idea that the morally good person would have a certainsort of , while many writers on VIRTUE ETHICS assume thatarguments for the importance of character necessarily lend support to a VIRTUE ETHICS and PROFESSIONAL roles4 See, for example, Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment , and other essays in herThe Practice of Moral Judgment, Cambridge, , Harvard University Press, ; and Peter Railton, Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality , in Samuel Scheffler (ed.)

8 ,Consequentialism and its Critics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, . virtues -based approach to ETHICS , the moves by contemporary Kantiansand consequentialists to recognise the importance of character in evalu-ating actions indicate that this broad assumption is unjustified. Whatvirtue ethicists need to show, in addition to the importance of character,is what makes avirtue ethicsform of character-based ETHICS distinctive, andwhy such an approach is to be preferred to character-based forms ofKantianism and consequentialism. Thus, in order to show how virtueethics resists assimilation to a form of Kantianism or utilitarianism, oneneeds to bring out which features of VIRTUE ETHICS could not consistentlybe endorsed by someone who holds one of those this chapter we set out the basic features of VIRTUE ETHICS , by pre-senting a systematic account of its main positive claims, and by showinghow these claims help to distinguish it from other approaches.

9 We alsodevelop certain aspects of this basic VIRTUE ETHICS approach, introducingthe concept of a regulative ideal , and demonstrating how this concepthelps to clarify and strengthen VIRTUE ETHICS . At the end of the chapter,we consider several criticisms of VIRTUE ETHICS which are commonly madeby philosophers, and we discuss how VIRTUE ETHICS might be defendedagainst these criticisms. There are at least sixclaims which seem to be essential features ofanyvirtue ETHICS view. The first and perhaps best-known claim, which iscentral to any form of VIRTUE ETHICS , is the following:(a) An action is right if and only if it is what an agent with a virtu-ous character would do in the is a claim about the primacy ofcharacterin the justification of rightaction. A right action is one that is in accordance with what a virtuousperson would do in the circumstances, and what makesthe action right isthat it is what a person with a virtuous character would do ,as Philippa Foot argues, it is right to save another s life, where life is stilla good to that person, because this is what someone with the VIRTUE ofbenevolence would do.

10 A person with the VIRTUE of benevolence wouldact in this way because benevolence is a VIRTUE which is directed at thegood of others, and to have the VIRTUE of benevolence, according to Foot,The nature of VIRTUE ETHICS 5 For an explicit statement of this claim, see, , Rosalind Hursthouse, VIRTUE Theory andAbortion ,Philosophy and Public Affairs , ,p.. See Aristotle,Nicomachean ETHICS .. a .is to be disposed to help others in situations where we are likely to becalled upon to do , as Rosalind Hursthouse argues, it is rightin certain circumstances to reveal an important truth to another, eventhough this may be hurtful to them, because a person with the VIRTUE ofhonesty would tell the truth here. For example, if my brother asks mewhether his wife is being unfaithful, and I happen to know that she is, Iought to answer him truthfully because this is what a person with thevirtue of honesty would do , in regard to justice, Footargues that I ought to repay you the money I have borrowed, even if youplan to waste it, because repaying the money is what a person with thevirtue of justice would , as we noted above, the primacy given to character in (a) mightalso seem to be endorsed by recent influential forms of Kantianism, con-sequentialism, and utilitarianism, which invoke one of these theories togive content to the notion of a virtuous person.