Are Virtues No More than

Dispositions to Obey
Moral Rules?
Walter Schaller (1990)
Introduction to Ethics
Professor Douglas Olena
 The General Question

297 Some, including Alasdair MacIntyre

suggest that virtues properly occupy center
stage in morality and that “moral rules” can
only be understood by reference to the virtues.
Others say that moral rules “are the primary
concept of the moral life” and the virtues are
derived from them, for morality is concerned
with right and wrong conduct and duty.
 Specific Questions
297 definitions
aretaic: virtue or excellence
deontic: related to duty or moral obligation
Problems:
Do judgments about the goodness or
virtuousness of persons presuppose prior
judgments about the rightness of actions?
“Is it possible… to judge that an action is selfish,
or unkind, or disrespectful, but not wrong…
or does the fact that an action manifests as a vice
imply that it also violates some moral rule?”
 Thesis:
297 “I shall argue that the prevailing or
Standard View of the connection between
virtues and duties is false.”
The Standard View states that moral virtues are
understood in terms of duty to obey moral
rules.
But some virtues are recalcitrant. They do not
fit in the standard view, do not correspond to
duties the way the standard view requires.
 The Standard View
297 The three thesis:
1. Moral rules require persons to perform or omit
certain actions.
These rules can be performed by people who lack
the virtues.
2. The virtues are dispositions to obey the moral
rules.
At the core of the virtue of benevolence is a
disposition to perform those actions that fulfill the
duty of beneficence.
 The Standard View

297 The three thesis:

3. The moral virtues have only instrumental or
derivative value:
Individuals who possess the virtues are more
likely to do what is right — i.e. to obey the moral
rules — than are people who lack such
dispositions.
 A Compliant Virtue
In many virtues, the claim about the standard
view holds well enough.
For the Moral Rule that we ought always to tell
the truth, the virtue of truthfulness is perfectly
adequate to satisfy the second and third
theses: that the truthfulness is a disposition to
tell the truth, making the duty to tell the truth
easy for the person with the virtue of
truthfulness.
 Deviant Virtues

298 “How accurate is the Standard View? Does

it withstand scrutiny when applied to the three
particular virtues.”
The virtue of benevolence
The virtue of gratitude
The virtue of self-respect
 Deviant Virtues: Beneficience
299 Beneficence is an imperfect duty giving us
a certain latitude in actually acting on it. It does
not actually tell us how much we are obligated
to help, or when we must help.
For a non-benevolent individual, helping a
person who needs it is a calculation, but that
calculation may ignore (because of the
imperfect duty) a person we can help but
choose not to.
However a person with the virtue of
benevolence will help the person.
 Deviant Virtues: Beneficience

The virtue of benevolence in this case is a

guide to the application of the rule. It is the
primary reason for fulfilling the duty in terms
of what might be called common sense.
The duty of beneficence itself does not contain
the guidance required, or the discernment to
apply the moral rule.
 Deviant Virtues: Gratitude

300 On the standard view it should be possible

to
1. formulate a “rule for conduct” obedience to
which will fully satisfy the duty
2. for persons who lack the virtue, to satisfy the
duty (by obeying the rule from the motive of
duty)
 Deviant Virtues: Gratitude
Even though you can formulate a rule for
beneficence, to guide someone who is without
the virtue to fulfill the requirements of it.
However, to perform the duty of gratitude, one
must be grateful. You can’t create a rule that
will make a person grateful.
Duty cannot serve as a substitute motive
without altering the nature of the action being
performed.
 Deviant Virtues: Gratitude

It is not that one can not act in a thankful

manner if one isn’t thankful, but it is insincere.
The duty of gratitude cannot be stated
satisfactorily as a moral rule for action.
The value of grateful acts is derived from the
value of the virtue of gratitude and not
conversely.
 Deviant Virtues: Self-Respect

The virtue of self-respect does not conform to

the first thesis of the Standard view for the
same reason that gratitude does not.
An action exhibiting self-respect arises from
the attitude of self-respect not from some
duty.
That duty of self-respect is explained as a duty
to seek to cultivate the virtue of self-respect.
 Deviant Virtues

The duties of beneficence, gratitude and self

respect are best interpreted not simply as
duties to perform certain actions, but as duties
to cultivate a virtue, to develop certain
character traits.
 Moral Rules & Virtues

Neither moral rules nor virtues stand alone at

the heart of moral theory.
Though ethics is fundamentally about practice,
that doesn’t mean that attitude is secondary
element in the equation.