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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In this paper I want to explore, and suggest a theoretical explanation of, an apparent asymmetry governing some of our most basic ethical judgments. I also want to use this asymmetry to probe into the relative plausibility of ‘moral character’ and ‘volition’ based accounts of moral responsibility. Briefly, my argument will be that, with suitable modifications, the latter type of account succeeds just where the former, the more Aristotelian approach, breaks down.
Consider, first, a series of acts exemplifying the same vice.A person, say, is repeatedly late or is consistently selfish. Now our tendency here, surely, would be to view such acts as increasingly blameworthy — increasingly worthy, one might say, of some form of punishment (or, perhaps better to say, worthy of increasingly severe punishments) — as they are repeated.
2 Although the argument in this paper is couched in terms of the exhibition of virtues and vices, it seems clear enough that it is applicable as well to broader notions of ‘doing good’ and ‘doing bad' — as long as the latter are understood in such a way that these are internally connected to an act's being praise- or blameworthy. Sometimes, in fact, I do speak in these broader terms.
3 Here, notice, a mark of this equality might be that it would not be judged any better to prevent the third than to prevent the first of these. But, again, I would observe that this notion of ‘wrong’ (or ‘objectively wrong’), whatever its merits, does not connect up nearly as closely with our intuitions about deservingness of blame and punishment as a notion of wrongness which does not abstract from the motivation of an individual act. Thus, notice, too, that while it would arguably be just as good to prevent an accidental killing as to prevent a murder, it hardly follows that an accidental killing and a murder are equally blameworthy or deserve equal punishment.
4 Here, and in the ensuing discussion, I do not particularly distinguish between ‘repeated’ and ‘in-character’ acts. Notice, though, an act can be in character without one's having done that thing very often (or possibly ever) before. (A servant, for instance, may have been plotting a vengeful attack on his master for years; when the attack comes, it may qualify as ‘in character’ — even though others may not recognize it to be so.) Conversely, an act may be done repeatedly yet not be in character, as when a person is repeatedly late (but with perfectly good excuse). Likewise, what would otherwise count as a display of good character may only be a series of ‘good deeds’ performed under circumstances which diminished the agent's credit for them (as when they were performed under duress).
5 Among the leading words of this movement in contemporary ethics are Pincoff's, Edmund Virtues and Quandaries (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press 1986)Google Scholar; Taylor's, Richard Ethics, Faith and Reason (Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1985)Google Scholar and Macintyre, Alasdair After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1981)Google Scholar.
6 ‘Desire and Emotion in the Virtue Tradition,’ Philosophia 19 (1991), 151
7 This view is better described as generically ‘volitional’ rather than ‘Kantian’ insofar as it is only Kantian in its emphasis of the importance of the agent's manifested effort to do good. It need not, for instance, endorse Kant's particular conception of moral goodness as reflecting one's acting out of moral duty.
8 Arguably, the line between an inadequately attended to vice and a vice in reference to which one exhibits indifference may very well be blurred. For one may very well be, to an extent, aware of one's past flaws yet fail to attend to what it is about them which makes them particularly bad and thus come to exhibit a kind of indifference to them — but an indifference which is profoundly bound up with (culpable) ignorance.
9 Compare in this regard William Rehnquist's opinion in the US Supreme Court case of Rummel v. Estelle [445 U.S. 263 (1980)] which concerned the constitutionality of a Texas statute imposing life imprisonment for a third felony conviction. Rehnquist's argument, basically, is that even if Rummel's third offense did not itself merit such a punishment, the fact that it was his third felony conviction demonstrated that he was ‘simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as established by its criminal law.’ Here I register my agreement only with the notion that we are justified in punishing him not only for his present act in itself, but for this act considered in the light of his apparent refusal to correct his earlier criminal tendencies.lf, however, we take fully seriously Rehnquist's language, his talk of Rummel's ‘incapacity’ to conform to the law, the justification of his incarceration presumably would be along more utilitarian than retributivist lines.
10 It has been suggested to me in this connection that what the foregoing discussion really points to is that our asymmetry between the added seriousness of repeated offenses and the absence of this in the case of good acts is derivative of a more basic moral fact: namely, the different characters of our responsibilities with respect to past vice and past virtue. In our moral system, the idea would be, we are simply not required to reflect upon (and thereby strive to ‘build upon’) the good that we have done — in the way that we are called upon to reflect upon (and thereby strive to correct) the bad that we have done. No doubt, this difference is related to the one under discussion here in my paper. But notice that even if we were thus obligated to build upon our good deeds, the asymmetry under discussion would change — but it would not cease to exist. For under this imagined moral regime, one presumes that repeat doers of the same good deed (e.g., giving the same percentage of their income each year to charity) would tend to be viewed not as better and better, but actually becoming worse (more and more lackluster). For the idea of such an ethic would be that because one ought to be doing better (more and more good), doing the same degree of good merits increasingly negative responses. For our asymmetry no longer to exist would require something else: namely, that one gained a kind of credit from one's previous performance of that same act. It is unclear, however, how such a credit could issue from one's having properly reflected on one's past good deeds.
11 This is not an unusual situation in our moral system. Where one is expected to do x, one's choice of what would otherwise be a permissible act y is still treated as a kind of implicit rejection of x. In other cases, though, it is quite gratuitous to treat the implicit rejection of x as part of what one is considered to have willed in choosing y. This is, I would suggest, one possible moral underpinning of a well-known feature of our legal system: that we tend to hold persons culpable for their omissions only when there exists some specific prior duty to do the act in question (the lifeguard as opposed to the ordinary passerby).
