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Virtue Ethics vs. Rule-Consequentialism: A Reply to Brad Hooker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Rosalind Hursthouse
Rosalind Hursthouse
Affiliation:
University of Auckland, [email protected]
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Abstract

In On Virtue Ethics I offered a criterion for a character trait's being a virtue according to which a virtuous character trait must conduce to, or at least not be inimical to, four ends, one of which is the continuance of the human species. I argue here that this does not commit me to homosexuality's being a vice, since homosexuality is not a character trait and hence not up for assessment as a virtue or a vice. Vegetarianism is not up for such assessment either, for the same reason, but, as a practice, may well be required by the virtue of compassion, and sacrificing one's life for an animal or alien may be required by courage. The clause about the continuance of the human species in my criterion does not specify a foundational value, because, following McDowell, I reject foundationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 41 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1 All page references within the text are to Brad Hooker, ‘The Collapse of Virtue Ethics’, this volume.

2 Hursthouse, Rosalind, On Virtue Ethics, Oxford, 1999, pp. 13 fGoogle Scholar .

3 Re-reading the relevant bits of On Virtue Ethics, I was embarrassed to discover that this is an all-too-understandable mistake.

4 I was so clear in my own mind that this was what I meant that I relied on the context and the examples to convey it from p. 199 (where I first introduce it) almost until p. 248 where I at last make it explicit, distinguishing the first and third (as relating to the individual possessor) from the second and fourth ends.

5 Hooker agrees with me ‘that there could – in certain circumstances – be a duty to procreate’ (37).

6 Hursthouse, p. 165.

7 Hooker and I also agree in rejecting a full-scale commitment to the doctrine of the unity of the virtues.

8 ‘[A]n ethics of virtue is not a code or a general moral claim but a set of abstract theses about how certain concepts are best fitted together for the purposes of understanding morality.’ Watson, Gary, ‘On The Primacy of Character’, repr. Virtue Ethics, ed. Statman, D., Edinburgh, 1997, p. 57Google Scholar.

9 Foot, Philippa, ‘Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, XV (1995)Google Scholar, ‘Rationality and Virtue’, Norms, Values, and Society, ed. Pauer-Studer, H., Amsterdam, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar , and, of course, Natural Goodness, Oxford, 2001Google Scholar.

10 See Hursthouse, pp. 205–7.

11 Hursthouse, pp. 204, 213.

12 I am grateful to Brad Hooker for acquainting me with earlier versions of his thought-provoking paper, and to him and the editor of Utilitas for encouraging me to respond to it. Thanks, too, to Alex Barber for helpful comments.