37 - The problem of character

Summary

In the recent literature there has been a widely discussed attack on using what I will call “traditional” character traits in ethical theorizing. These character traits include the classic moral virtues such as compassion, honesty and courage, along with the classic moral vices such as cruelty, dishonesty and cowardice. The main philosophers leading this attack have been Gilbert Harman (in a series of papers dating back to 1999), and John Doris in several papers and most importantly in his Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (2002). In this chapter, I first summarize the main line of argument used by Harman and Doris against Aristotelian virtue ethics in particular. In the following section I present what seems to me to be the most promising response to their argument. Finally I briefly review and assess the other leading responses in the now sizable literature that has developed in this area.

THE HARMAN/DORIS ARGUMENT

In this section I shall focus on Doris's line of argument as it is more thoroughly developed. His target is what he calls a globalist conception of character, which is one that accepts the following two theses:

1. (a) Consistency. Character traits are reliably manifested in trait-relevant behaviour across a diversity of trait-relevant eliciting conditions that may vary widely in their conduciveness to the manifestation of the trait in question.

2. (b) Stability. Character traits are reliably manifested in trait-relevant behaviours over iterated trials of similar trait-relevant eliciting conditions (Doris 2002: 22).