Frankena - A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics

1
Frankena - A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics

• A virtue is a disposition, quality, habit etc..
  Not a principle or rule. It is an ethic of BEING.
• An ethics that focuses on principles or duty is
  an ethic of DOING
• Frankena argues that both are necessary
• Traits of character must include the disposition
  to act and
• We need principles to know what traits to
  encourage.

2
How are we to judge an action?

• Are actions to be judged right/wrong on the basis
  of
• Results?
• The Principle the action exemplifies?
• Or a trait of character?

3
Frankena's answer

• An action is to be judged right or wrong by
  reference to a principle or set of principles
• An act may also be said to be good or bad
  praiseworthy or blameworthy and this moral
  quality will depend on the agent's motive,
  intention or disposition in doing it.

4
Restated The difference is between an ethics of
being and an ethics of doing.

• What is the relationship between an ethics of
  principles doing and the development of
  dispositions being?
• Frankena views them as complementary aspects of
  the same morality in which principles are basic.
• Praise and blame doesn't come from adherence to
  principles, but the rightness or wrongness of
  actions does.

5
Role of Moral Ideals or why principles are
primary

• Moral ideals are motivations to live a certain
  way being
• He names two Cardinal Virtues BENEVOLENCE
  JUSTICE.
• He argues that all of the virtues can be derived
  from moral principles
• He states that "traits without principles are
  blind"
• It is hard to see what traits we should cultivate
  without principles. p. 433

6

• If our morality is to be more than a
  conformity to internalized rules and principle,
  if it is to include and rest on an understanding
  of the point of these rules and principles, and
  certainly if it is to involve being a certain
  kind of person and not merely doing certain kinds
  of things, then we must somehow attain and
  develop an ability to be aware of others as
  persons, as important to themselves as we are to
  ourselves, and to have a lively and sympathetic
  representation in imagination of their interests
  and of the effects of our actions on their
  lives."
• Frankena, p. 437