Virtuous Living (1 of 13)
by Joseph Rowlands
Today I'd like to talk about virtues. Specifically, I'd like to better explain what virtues are and how they should be used. To do this, I will identify a distinction between two very different kinds of virtues. I call this distinction, "Active vs. Passive Virtues". I'll explain both of these in more detail, and try to show that the Active form of the virtues is the right approach.
Before discussing this distinction, I want to briefly discuss virtues in general, and how they are typically thought of. I'll explain how Objectivist virtues differ from other kinds of virtues, and identify the major virtues in Objectivist ethics. I'll also comment on a few important characteristics of virtues.
What is a virtue?
In the most general use of the term, a virtue is a policy of moral action. In other words, a moral habit. It's not simply a moral action, but a regular pattern of such actions. The moral actions become part of your character. It becomes an identifiable quality of your actions. A standard by which you act, and which you are judged.
An example of a virtue is honesty. You might say that an honest man is a man who never lies. He is committed to never deceiving others, and it shows in his actions. He may become trustworthy to others, and gain a reputation as someone who can be counted on to speak the truth.
Now, being virtuous means really being committed to that type of action. A man who lies occasionally, but speaks the truth for the most part, is not an honest man. Not in the sense of him being virtuous. To be virtuous, it must be a consistent policy of action.
There may also be a question of intention when understanding virtues in the generic sense of the term. Is a man who always tells the truth because he fears he'll be caught really an honest man? He wants to lie, he just doesn't have the guts to do it. Different ethical theories might come to different conclusions on this topic. But the point I want to make here is that there is a whole question of what the purpose of virtues is.
Objectivism and Virtues
Ayn Rand said "'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it."
This doesn't explain the Objectivist position on virtues very well, but it does make a couple of very important points, which I'll walk through.
The first point is that virtues are actions aimed at achieving values. Before when discussing what virtues were, I said it was a policy of moral actions. But the question is, what makes an action moral or not? In some ethical systems, there may not be an answer to this. The action is just moral. Live with it.
Objectivism, though, shows that virtues are the means by which values are sought. They are moral because of the values that are achieved through them. They are goal-directed actions, and they are judged and understood by the ends they are attempting to achieve.
This leads to the second point. Why is it that certain policies of action can be said to be moral in the first place? It's easy to see how any single action can be judged by the ends it achieves. But why can we classify an entire set of actions as beneficial? Don't we need to judge each action individually?
Obviously no. We're able to classify a kind of action as moral because we're able to abstract moral principles. We're able to identify how a range of actions leads to particular values. Principles are wide-reaching abstractions that help us grasp the world by taking huge numbers of concretes, and putting them into a single, understandable, bite-sized piece of information.
This identifies the next important part of the Objectivist theory of virtues. Every virtue is based on a moral principle. There is some underlying causal connection between a virtue as a means, and a value as the ends. Every Objectivist virtue must recognize an abstract moral principle. This principle is the moral justification of the virtue.
As an aside, this approach to virtues is uncommon. Most ethical system hold virtues as rules, instead of principles. David Kelley once wrote about the difference between a rule and a principle. A moral principles says "In order to achieve this, you must do that". A moral rule says "You must do that". The difference is telling. Objectivist virtues are all means to ends, and the means are never divorced from the values they are seeking. The virtue must be accepted with reason, or it cannot be practiced. Other ethical systems require blind obedience to rules, where there is no necessary thought or understanding.
So under a different ethical system, you might hear the moral rule "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife". You can rest assured that this nonsense has no place in Objectivist ethics.
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