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Philippa Foot's Virtue Ethics Has an Achilles' Heel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Scott Woodcock
Scott Woodcock
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Abstract

My aim in this article is to argue that Philippa Foot fails to provide a convincing basis for moral evaluation in her book Natural Goodness. Foot's proposal fails because her conception of natural goodness and defect in human beings either sanctions prescriptive claims that are clearly objectionable or else it inadvertently begs the question of what constitutes a good human life by tacitly appealing to an independent ethical standpoint to sanitize the theory's normative implications. Foot's appeal to natural facts about human goodness is in this way singled out as an Achilles' heel that undermines her attempt to establish an independent framework for virtue ethics. This problem might seem to be one that is uniquely applicable to the bold naturalism of Foot's methodology; however, I claim that the problem is indicative of a more general problem for all contemporary articulations of virtue ethics.

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Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , Summer 2006 , pp. 445 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2006

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References

Notes

1 The classic articulation of this line of criticism can be found in Anscombe, G. E. M.'s essay “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 26–42.Google Scholar Though hardly a definitive account of contemporary virtue ethics, Anscombe's paper remains the original statement of dissatisfaction with modern ethical theories that focus excessively on criteria of moral rightness.

2 It is, of course, a controversial issue deciding whether theories like Kantian ethics and consequentialism already have the resources to adequately account for character evaluations or whether these theories must be supplemented with, or replaced by, new components drawn from virtue ethics. What is not controversial is the fact that the revival of virtue ethics has demonstrated that insufficient attention had been paid to questions of virtue in contemporary discussions of moral theory. One can therefore safely assert that virtue ethics has provided a helpful reminder for other ethical theories to be more explicit about accommodating character evaluations and the virtues. Two prominent examples of philosophers who have taken this advice to heart without abandoning their prior theoretical commitments are: O'Neill, Onora, “Kant's Virtues,” in How Should One Live?, edited by Crisp, Roger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 77–97Google Scholar; and Railton, Peter, “How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 8 (1988): 398–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Annas, Julia, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Hursthouse, Rosalind, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981)Google Scholar; McDowell, John, “Virtue and Reasons,” Monist, 62 (1979): 331–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Virtues and Reasons, edited by Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G. and Quinn, W. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 149–79Google Scholar; and Slote, Michael, Morals from Motives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Foot, Phillipa, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Though long anticipated, the book draws upon elements from her influential lectures and previous articles. See especially “Rationality and Virtue” in Norms, Value and Society, edited by Pauer-Studes, H., Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 15, 1 (1995): 1–14.Google Scholar

5 Foot, , Natural Goodness, p. 44.Google Scholar

6 Foot admits that she accepted this Humean view of practical rationality in her earlier “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives” (Philosophical Review, 81, 3 [1972]: 305–16).Google Scholar She now renounces this view and laments that she failed to give a proper account of the relation between rationality and morality in that article precisely because she was still under the influence of Humean ideas of practical rationality.

7 See Quinn, Warren, “Putting Rationality in Its Place,” in Virtues and Reasons, pp. 181–208.Google Scholar

8 Foot, Natural Goodness, p. 18.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 46.

10 Ibid. p. 31.

11 Foot adopts the term “Aristotelian categorical” from Michael Thompson's essay, “The Representation of Life” in Virtues and Reasons, edited by Hursthouse, Rosalind, Lawrence, Gavin, and Quinn, Warren (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 247–96.Google Scholar

12 Foot, , Natural Goodness, p. 39Google Scholar; original emphasis.

13 Ibid., p. 51.

14 Ibid., p. 43.

15 Ibid., p. 76.

16 I am describing Foot's non-human examples as uncontroversial to be charitable and to avoid deviating from the main line of my argument here. In fact, however, I think that Foot's claims about the natural goodness of living things are erroneous whether they are about humans, wolves, birds, plants, or any other living thing. I am just not persuaded that we can speak meaningfully about anything but what Foot refers to as secondary goodness, which is goodness that is predicated on some instrumental relationship to a living entity (ibid., p. 26). What can it mean for a plant to be defective for reasons that do not refer to an instrumental relationship with any living entity, including the plant itself? one might be persuaded that plants and non-sentient animals possess a form of goodness that is independent of human goals and desires, but it is another thing entirely to think that such entities exhibit goodness or defect independently of their own interests, i.e., goodness or defect that is instantiated simply by an entity having characteristics that are consistent with the natural history of its general type of living thing. Nevertheless, I will set aside this criticism for the time being and provisionally accept Foot's assertion that non-living entities such as rocks and rivers possess only secondary goodness, whereas the natural (primary) goodness of living things such as birds or plants is intrinsic and immediately obvious.

17 The exception here is where Foot states, “[l]ack of capacity to reproduce is a defect in a human being” (ibid., p. 42). For someone who has published in the field of bioethics, Foot is conspicuously unaware of the fact that this statement has offensive implications. This is likely due to the fact that Foot is not yet dealing with explicitly “moral” normative questions and that the statement occurs in a context where she is contrasting a lack of reproductive capacity with the choice to be childless or celibate. Nevertheless, some foreshadowing of her qualification (which occurs much later in Chapter 5) of this statement would help to make it more palatable for readers familiar with the psychological burdens faced by persons (more often women, though unfairly so) who lack the capacity to reproduce.

18 Ibid., p. 66.

19 Ibid., p. 16.

20 Ibid., p. 43.

21 Ibid., p. 66.

22 Moreover, it is not clear that Foot is correct in her assessment that this is the way we commonly apply the word “good” to humans. She is wise to back away from the view that we commonly evaluate humans in terms of fulfilling a biological life cycle, but the praise we give to sports figures, fashion models, and math geniuses suggests that our evaluations of human goodness are not exclusively restricted to the rational will rather than traits for which persons are not responsible.

23 See, for example, Dolnick, Edward, “Deafness as Culture,” Atlantic, 272, 3 (1993): 37–53Google Scholar; or Davis, Lennard J., Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body (New York: Verso, 1995).Google Scholar

24 See Dolnick, , “Deafness as Culture,” p. 38.Google Scholar

25 See Longmore, Paul K., Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Oliver, Michael, The Politics of Disablement (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wendell, Susan, The Rejected Body (New York: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar

26 For a succinct articulation of this view, see Hull, David, “On Human Nature,” in The Philosophy of Biology, edited by Hull, David and Ruse, Michael (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 383–97.Google Scholar For a longer articulation of this view, see Dupre, John, The Disorder of Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

27 At one point Foot attempts to distance herself from the details of evolutionary biology by distinguishing between what she refers to as a function in the current life cycle of a species and an adaptation in the sense that refers to the features of an organism that are historically responsible for its evolutionary success. “To say that some feature of a living thing is an adaptation is to place it in the history of a species. To say that it has a function is to say that it has a certain place in the life of the individuals that belong to that species at a certain time” (Natural Goodness, p. 32n).Google Scholar This keeps Foot from getting bogged down in controversies regarding what we ought to classify as an adaptation rather than an exaptation or a spandrel. (For a short summary of these terms, see West-Eberhard, Mary Jane, “Adaptation: Current Usages,” in Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, edited by Keller, E. Fox and Lloyd, E. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992], pp. 13–18.)Google Scholar But this does not absolve Foot of the responsibility to pay attention to the biological details that relate to current assessments of function and normalcy in human nature.

28 The last case, bringing a child into the world who will have a disability, could arguably be immoral if the disability were severe enough to cause the child extreme suffering (see Steinbock, B. and McClamrock, R., “When Is Birth Unfair to the Child?” The Hastings Center Report, 24, 6 [1994]: 15–21.)Google ScholarPubMed This is a tricky issue into which I do not want to enter. I assume only that there is nothing inherently wrong with deciding to have a child who will be born with a disability.

29 Foot, , Natural Goodness, pp. 48–50, 81–89.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 42.

31 The promise is not merely implied. In the first chapter of the book, while distinguishing her account of practical rationality with the neo-Humean account, Foot informs us, “no one can act with full practical rationality in the pursuit of a bad end” (ibid., p. 14).

32 Ibid., pp. 43–45.

33 Ibid., p. 44.

34 Ibid., p. 23.

35 To scratch the surface, see the following sources: Axelrod, R. and Hamilton, W. D., “The Evolution of Cooperation,” Science, 211 (1981): 1390–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Boyd, Robert and Richerson, Peter, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Ridley, Matt, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Penguin Books, 1996)Google Scholar; Skyrms, Brian, The Evolution of the Social Contract (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sober, Elliot and Wilson, David Sloan, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

36 See, for example, Hirshleifer, David and Rasmusen, Eric, “Cooperation in a Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with ostracism,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 12 (1989): 87–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilson, D. S. and Dugatkin, L. A., “Group Selection and Assortative Interactions,” The American Naturalist, 149 (1997): 336–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am using the term “group selection” loosely here in the sense that I do not want to enter the complex debate about using the group as a technical unit of selection. I am assuming only that some form of group-mediated behaviour is required for altruism to be sustained in sizeable populations, a claim accepted by even those theorists who reject the idea of using the group as a formal unit of selection.

37 Michael Slote identifies something like this possibility for Foot's methodology in his review of her book, but he characterizes his objection as one based on a Nietzschean form of aggression that might be said to be a pervasive feature of human life. See his “Review of Natural Goodness,” Mind, 112 (2003): 130–39.Google Scholar

38 See Milgram, Stanley, Obediance to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper Collins, 1983).Google Scholar

39 See, for example, the bizarre case of cultural pressures that have led to the farming of monster yams on the Micronesian island of Ponapae (outlined in Boyd, and Richerson, , Culture and the Evolutionary Process, pp. 269–71).Google Scholar For a more general discussion of imitation and other forms of social transmission in humans, see ibid., chaps. 4–8, as well as Durham, William H., Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, and Dugatkin, Lee Alan, The Imitation Factor (New York: The Free Press, 2000).Google Scholar

40 See Boyd, R. and Richerson, P. J., “Punishment Allows the Evolution of Cooperation (or Anything Else) in Sizable Groups,” Ethology and Sociobiology, 13 (1992): 171–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Foot, , Natural Goodness, pp. 47–49.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 61.

43 In fact, Foot's own example of a “good” male peacock having a colourful tail admits as much. We may find the tails of male peacocks aesthetically pleasing, but they are an outlandish liability for the individuals who carry them around to impress female peacocks. There is some irony, then, in the fact that Foot picks this trait as a representative example, since the peacock's tail is known in the philosophy of biology as the classic case of a runaway process where the pressures of sex selection cause a population to favour a trait far beyond its benefit to the members of the species who possess it. See Fisher, R. A., The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (London: Clarendon Press, 1930).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 I realize that the term “starting point” here is vague. I am, however, intentionally avoiding the far more perspicuous term “foundation” to prevent confusion regarding metaethical issues that are not immediately relevant. In other words, the problem for virtue ethics I am articulating here is one that exists whether one adopts a foundationalist or coherentist moral epistemology. It applies to any theory that begins with evaluations of virtue (or character) as a normative foundation in the sense that evaluations of actions, rules, and other normative concepts are indirectly derived from prior considerations of virtue (or character). The distinction between this type of normative foundationalism and metaethical foundationalism is important because the former is required for virtue ethics to constitute a meaningfully distinct ethical theory, whereas the latter is largely beside the point. Unfortunately, this distinction is often blurred in the attempt to defend normatively loaded accounts of how the virtues are defined. See, for example, McDowell, 's “Two Sorts of Naturalism” and Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics (pp. 164–66Google Scholar and chaps. 9–10). See also Hursthouse's reply to Brad Hooker's objection that virtue ethics collapses into rule-consequentialism: “Virtue Ethics vs. Rule-Consequentialism: A Reply to Brad Hooker,” Utilitas, 14, 1 (2002): 41–53.Google Scholar

45 Hursthouse, , On Virtue Ethics, p. 7.Google Scholar

46 Hooker, Brad, “The Collapse of Virtue Ethics,” Utilitas, 14, 1 (2002): 22–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurka, Thomas, Virtue, Vice and Value (oxford: oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Gregor, Mary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Vol. 4:397–99Google Scholar; Pettit, Philip, “The Consequentialist Perspective,” in Three Methods of Ethics, edited by Baron, M., Pettit, P., and Slote, M. (oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 92–174Google Scholar; Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, chap. 3; and Williams, Bernard, “Evolution, Ethics and the Representation Problem,” in Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 100–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Perhaps the next two most pressing issues for virtue ethics are: (a) the fact that most articulations of the view are egoistic in structure and therefore seem to miss the point when explaining what is fundamentally wrong about doing injustice to others, and (b) the fact that most articulations of virtue ethics must assume that being virtuous constitutes a benefit to the virtuous agent. For a discussion of the first issue, see McKerlie, Dennis, “Aristotle and Egoism,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 36 (1998): 531–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The second issue is discussed in Hooker, Brad, “Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?,” in How Should One Live?, edited by Crisp, R. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Sumner, L. W., “Is Virtue Its own Reward?” Social Philosophy and Policy, 15 (1998): 18–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 After seeking a rational justification for the virtues, Rosalind Hursthouse reveals the level of optimism required for flourishing-based virtue ethics to function when she claims that “believing that human nature is harmonious is part of the virtue of hope” (On Virtue Ethics, pp. 264–65).Google Scholar In other words, Hursthouse must rely on a picture of human nature that is mediated by hope in order to defend the view that natural human flourishing will generate a well-defined and internally harmonious set of virtues. Unfortunately, a standing commitment to the virtue of hope seems plausible only after Hursthouse has set up a false dichotomy between hope in the harmony of human nature and moral nihilism (ibid., pp. 252–64). Surely there is some middle ground here where what it means to be a good human, qua member of the human species, is normatively acceptable in some respects but not acceptable in others, a result that does not imply moral nihilism. Instead, the middle-ground view of human nature simply implies that our characteristic human traits are only contingently good in a normative sense, so it implies that some primary normative basis other than a direct appeal to what is characteristically human is needed to specify the content of the virtues.

49 I would like to thank Brenda Baker, Elizabeth Brake, Trudy Govier, Tom Hurka, Ann Levey, Mark Migotti, and Dennis McKerlie for a useful discussion that led to the writing of this article. I would also like to thank Sam Cowling, Scott Howard, Monte Johnson, Taneli Kukkonen, Colin Macleod, and Corey MacIver for helpful comments on earlier drafts.