Driver suggests that virtue ethics is intuitively appealing because we often deliberate about moral problems by reflecting on what admirable people would do. Do you agree?

Question

Driver suggests that virtue ethics is intuitively appealing because we often deliberate about moral problems by reflecting on what admirable people would do. Do you agree that such reflection is useful when resolving moral dilemmas?

Answer 1

Reflecting on admirable people may help us solve moral dilemmas. However, we would first need to clarify what we mean by "admirable people." We could list many ways in which a person can be called admirable, but we will confine ourselves to two for the sake of brevity. First, he can be called admirable based on his appearance alone (e.g., Mark is a good-looking guy who has a high paying job and a nice car). The admiration we feel for Mark and others like him is only based on external material factors. Yet, although these factors are attractive, they do not tell us anything about whether or not Mark is a moral person. Despite these external appearances, for all we know Mark could be anything from the paragon of virtue to a malicious thief. However, a person can also be called admirable based on an understanding of the interior dispositions of his character added to his external appearance (e.g., in our experience of Frank over the past ten years, we know that he shows up to work on time every morning). The appearance of Frank showing up for work on time every day is one thing. But our understanding of the fact that he has shown up on time every day for ten years is another thing, which demonstrates some more admirable about Frank. In other words, Frank does not simply appear to be a prudent person, he truly is a prudent person because he possesses the interior disposition of timeliness that on consistent display to us year in and year out. If Frank in his appearing to be timely--just as with Mark in his good looks, high-paying job, and nice car--were not in addition understood to be timely over a long period of time, he would not be rightfully considered an admirable person.

In sum, an admirable person is someone who we understand, through the succession of appearances over a long period of time, to display an interior disposition of good character. Such a person can indeed inspire us as an example when we grapple with moral dilemmas. However, someone who simply appears to have good traits or talents is not necessarily an admirable person that can help us grapple with moral dilemmas, since such things without an understanding of the person's character over time tell us nothing below the surface of immediate appearance.