Having been introduced to moral virtues, we need to consider how they fit into flourishing lives. Some moral philosophers distinguish personal virtues and social virtues. They contend that personal virtues are what contribute to your flourishing, but social virtues are what are morally obligatory. This proposal suggests that personal virtues help you to flourish and social virtues help you to do what is morally obligatory. But, we will find problems with this distinction and how it is used, when we consider social inequalities. Lisa Tessman argues that this distinction is gravely misleading. Consider these empirical facts: some groups of people have unjustly acquired some privileges from other people (a subordinated class of people) and these privileges make it easier for members of the dominate group to cultivate personal virtues. But, if a person in the dominate group pursues their own flourishing by cultivating these personal virtues without serious attention to their own privileges (that were unjustly acquired), then they will pursue their own flourishing that is incompatible with moral goodness. Consequently, this personal flourishing would be immoral. So, we need to consider moral virtues in the context of social histories, and doing so will help us to wed together moral virtues, moral goodness and flourishing. By the end of class you will:
1. Understand Aristotle’s proposed external conditions for a flourishing human life.
2. Be be to explain how social histories of oppression and unjust privileges challenge Aristotle’s eudaemonistic virtues ethics.
3. Be able to revise and improve on Aristotle’s virtue ethics.
Consider the following questions, write your responses in your journal, and talk about them with a friend:
1. What are some examples in which someone does what is morally virtuous and that virtuous action undermines their personal flourishing? What lessons can we draw from this example?
2. What is the ‘addition’ that Lisa Tessman proposes in order to improve on Aristotle’s account of the relation between one’s moral virtues and one’s flourishing?
3. What might be misleading in supposing that your moral obligations are only toward other people, and not also toward yourself? What would it imply if your personal moral virtues were in fact somehow social in nature?
4. What are some social histories that would help you to learn if you have benefitted from the oppression of a class of people? What should you do in light of knowing about these (unjust) social conditions for your having developed moral virtues?
5. David Brooks draws attention to moral vocabulary, and contrasts that with vocabulary from sociology. How might Brooks’s discussion be helpful? How might his discussion fall short?