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Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

David Carr
David Carr
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt to sustain this distinction – considered in this paper – maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions – in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason – this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 31 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2009

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