Virtues and vices

The concept of a virtue can make an important contribution to a philosophical account of ethics, but virtue theory
should not be seen as parallel to other ethical theories in trying to provide a guide to action.
Modern accounts of the virtues typically start from Aristotle, but they need to modify his view substantially, with
respect to the grounding of the virtues in human nature; the question of what virtues there are; their unity; and
their psychological identity as dispositions of the agent. In particular, one must acknowledge the historical
variability of what have been counted as virtues.
Aristotle saw vices as failings, but modern opinion must recognize more radical forms of viciousness or evil. It
may also need to accept that the good is more intimately connected with its enemies than traditional views have
allowed. Virtue theory helps in the discussion of such questions by offering greater resources of psychological
realism than other approaches.

1 Virtues and theory

Ethical theories are standardly presented as falling into three basic types, centring respectively on consequences,
rights and virtues (see Consequentialism; Deontological ethics; Rights; Virtue ethics). One way of understanding
this division into three is in terms of what each theory sees, at the most basic level, as bearing ethical value. For
the first type of theory, it is good states of affairs; for the second, it is right action; while virtue theory puts most
emphasis on the idea of a good person, someone who could be described also as an ethically admirable person.
The last is an important emphasis, and the notion of a virtue is important in ethics; but its importance cannot be
caught in this way, as the focus of a theory which is supposedly parallel to these other types of theory.
Consequentialist and rights theories aim to systematize our principles or rules of action in ways that will,
supposedly, help us to see what to do or to recommend in particular cases. A theory of the virtues cannot claim to
do this: the theory itself says that what one needs in order to do and recommend the right things are virtues, not a
theory about virtues. Moreover, the thoughts of a virtuous person do not consist entirely, or even mainly, of
thoughts about virtues or about paradigms of virtuous people. Indeed, they will sometimes be thoughts about rights
or good consequences, and this makes it clear that thoughts about the good person cannot displace these other
ethical concepts, since a good person will have to use some such concepts. Virtue theory cannot be on the same
level as the other types of theory.
An emphasis on virtues is important to moral philosophy for other reasons. Although it need not exclude
cognitivism, it shifts attention from morality as a system of propositions or truths to its psychological (and hence,
eventually, social) embodiment in individual dispositions of action, thought and emotional reaction. It draws
attention to the variety of reasons for action and judgment that may play a part in ethical life, beyond the
theorists favourites, duty and utility (see Moral motivation 1-3; Morality and identity 4; Morality and
emotions). Such reasons will not typically embody virtue concepts themselves, or, still less, involve reflection on
the agents own virtues. But virtue theory can help to explain how considerations such as she needs it, for
instance, or he relied on what you said, can function as an agents reasons. An approach through the virtues also
leaves room for the important idea that ethically correct action may be only partly codifiable and may involve an
essential appeal to judgment (see Moral judgment 4; Universalism in ethics 3).

2 Beyond Aristotle: ground; content

The first systematic investigation of the virtues was made by Plato, in such works as Gorgias and the Republic,
and it was extremely significant, for instance in setting the problem of the unity of the virtues (see 3). Plato also
posed in a particularly challenging form questions about the value of virtues to their possessor. The classical
account of the virtues, however, to which all modern treatments refer, is that of Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics)
(see Aristotle 22-5). Just because of the power and the influence of this account, it is easy to underestimate the
extent to which a modern theory needs to distance itself from Aristotle. A modern account is likely to agree with
Aristotle that virtues are dispositions of character, acquired by ethical training, displayed not just in action but in
patterns of emotional reaction. It will agree, too, that virtues are not rigid habits, but are flexible under the
application of practical reason. But there are at least four matters on which it is likely to disagree with Aristotle,

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

which may be labelled ground; content; unity; and reality.

Ground. Aristotle held that the virtues (for which the word in his language means only excellences - see Aret)
had a teleological ground, in the sense that they represented the fullest development of a certain kind of natural
creature, a nondefective male human being. No one now is going to agree with Aristotle that there are creatures
who are biologically human beings but who are excluded from this full development by their nature as women or
as natural slaves. Having abandoned his views about women and slaves, modern thinkers face the harder question
of how far they agree with Aristotle about the natural basis of the virtues. This in turn raises the question of how
strongly Aristotles own teleological view should be taken. On one interpretation, he had a comprehensive
functional conception of the contents of the universe, with each kind of creature fitting into a discoverable overall
pattern. On such a conception, substantial parts of the theory of the virtues will be discoverable by top-down
systematic inquiry which will tell us what sorts of creatures human beings are, and hence what their best life will
be (see Perfectionism; Teleological ethics). Other interpreters give a more moderate account of Aristotles
enterprise, according to which his intentions will be honoured by a hermeneutical inquiry into what we, now,
regard as the most basic and valuable aspects of human beings.
Content. What is undeniably lacking from Aristotles thought, as from that of other ancient thinkers, is an
historical dimension. Some modern virtue theorists share this weakness. Aristotles account is in several respects
different from any account of the virtues one would give now, with respect both to what it puts in and what it
leaves out. He gives a particularly important place to a quality called megalopsuchia, greatness of soul, which
has a lot to do with a grand social manner and which bears even less relation to a contemporary ethic than its
name, in itself, might suggest. A modern person, asked for the principal virtues, might well mention kindness and
fairness. Fairness bears a relation to an important Aristotelian virtue, justice, but the latter is defined to an
important extent in political and civic terms, and gives a fairly restricted account of fairness as a personal
characteristic. Kindness is not an Aristotelian virtue at all. Moreover, there is no account of an important modern
virtue, truthfulness; what Aristotle calls the virtue of truth is (surprisingly, as it seems to us) concerned exclusively
with boasting and modesty.
There has been obvious historical variation in what is seen as the content of the virtues. Aquinas, who notably
developed Aristotles account, of course modified it to accommodate Christianity, holding in particular that
besides the moral virtues, there were theological virtues, which have God as their immediate object (see
Theological virtues). The pagans were not in a position to display these, but so far as the moral virtues were
concerned, they could be truly virtuous in the light of natural reason. However, there was still something imperfect
about their virtue even at this level since, Aquinas held, the whole of ethical life is properly grounded in the virtue
called charity, which has a divine origin (see Charity).
For Hume (1751), on the other hand, Aristotles account and other pagan sources served to support an ethics of the
virtues that was precisely designed to discredit and exclude Christianity (see Hume, D. 4). The historical
variation, both in philosophical formulations and in cultural realizations of the virtues, raises wider issues of how
theories of the virtues are to be understood. The conceptions of human nature and human circumstances that
underlie such theories are open to wide reinterpretation in the face of changing values, and the Aristotelian
presupposition that an understanding of human nature could yield a determinate account of the virtues - even if
that idea is interpreted relatively unambitiously - looks unrealistic. There are of course constants in the psychology
and circumstances of human beings that make certain virtues, in some version or other, ubiquitous: in every
society people need (something like) courage, (something like) self-control with regard to anger and sexual desire,
and some version of prudence. These platitudes, which are stressed by those who look to a substantive universal
virtue theory, severely underdetermine the content of such a theory. This is shown by the very simple
consideration that the constant features of human life are indeed constant, but the virtues that have been recognized
at different times and by different cultures vary considerably.

3 Beyond Aristotle (continued): unity; reality

Unity. Aristotle inherited from Plato, and ultimately from Socrates, an interest in the unity of the virtues (see
Socrates 5). Socrates seems to have held that there was basically only one virtue, which he called wisdom or
knowledge. The conventional distinctions between the various virtues - justice, self-control, courage and the rest were taken to mark only different fields of application of this power. Aristotle did think that there were separate
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

virtues, but nevertheless his view came almost to the same thing as Socrates, since he thought that one could not
have one virtue without having them all. One could not properly possess any one virtue unless one had the
intellectual virtue which is called in Aristotles language phronsis (often translated as practical wisdom, but
better rendered as judgment or good sense); but, Aristotle held, if one had this quality, then one had all the
virtues.
It is not hard to see the general idea underlying this position. Generosity is linked to justice - someone who gives
only what justice demands is not being generous. Similar points can be made about the interrelations of some other
virtues. However, it is important to the theory of the virtues that they provide psychological explanations as well
as normative descriptions, and from a realistic psychological point of view it is hard to deny (as many ancient
Greeks other than Socrates and Aristotle agreed) that someone can have some virtues while lacking others. In
particular, the so-called executive virtues of courage and self-control can be present without other virtues;
indeed, they themselves can surely be deployed in the interests of wicked projects. The refusal to acknowledge this
may simply represent an ethical reluctance to give moral accolades to bad people.
The fact that the virtues can, to some degree, be separated from one another itself helps to give point to virtue
theory. Some modern ethical theories do imply that there is basically only one moral disposition. Utilitarianism, at
least in its direct form, places everything on impartial benevolence (see Utilitarianism; Impartiality); and though
Kant himself did have a theory of the virtues, Kantianism insists on the primacy of a sense of duty (see Kant, I.
9-11; Kantian ethics). An advantage of virtue theory is that it allows for a more complex and realistic account of
ethical motivation.
Relatedly, it can acknowledge psychological connections between the ethical and other aspects of character,
accepting that peoples temperaments have something to do with how they conduct themselves ethically. For the
same reason, virtue theory is implicitly opposed to sharp boundaries between the moral and the nonmoral, and
is likely to acknowledge that there is a spectrum of desirable characteristics, and that no firm or helpful line can be
drawn round those that are specifically of moral significance. Aristotle did not even try to draw such a line: his
own terminology distinguishes only between excellences of character and intellectual excellences, and one of the
latter, phronsis, is itself necessary to the excellences of character. Hume, who, unlike Aristotle, was surrounded
by moralists who wanted to draw such a line, goes out of his way to mock the attempt to draw it, and his
deliberately offensive treatment of the subject is still very instructive.
Reality. Aristotle conceived of the virtues as objective dispositional characteristics of people which they possess in
at least as robust a sense as that in which a magnet possesses the power to attract metals, though people, unlike
magnets, have of course acquired the dispositions - in the way appropriate to such things - by habituation (see
Moral education). Modern scepticism, however, to some extent supported by social and cognitive psychology,
questions whether we can take such a nave view of what it is for someone to have a virtue. There are at least two
different sources of doubt. One is the extent to which peoples reactions depend on situation: it is claimed that they
will act in ways that express a given virtue only within a rather narrow range of recognized contexts, and if the
usual expectations are suspended or even, in some cases, slightly shifted, may not act in the approved style.
The other doubt concerns ascription. When we understand peoples behaviour in terms of virtues and vices, or
indeed other concepts of character, we are selecting in a highly interpretative way from their behaviour as we
experience it, and the way in which we do this (as, indeed, we understand many other things) is in terms of
stereotypes, scripts, or standard images, which may range from crude characters to sophisticated and more
individuated outlines constructed with the help of types drawn, often, from fiction. The available range of such
images forms part of the shifting history of the virtues. At different times there have been pattern books of virtue
and vice, and one of the first was the Characters written by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle (see Theophrastus;
Examples in ethics).
Even assuming such ideas to be correct, it is not clear exactly to what extent they have a negative impact on virtue
theory. Everyone knows that virtues do not express themselves under all circumstances, and also that agents may
be very rigid in their ability to understand how a situation is to be seen in terms of virtues. Again, with regard to
ascription, it is very important that if it is true that we construct our interpretations of another persons character in
terms of a stock of images, it is equally true that the other person does so as well. The point is not so much that
there is a gap between the interpreter and the person interpreted, but rather that all of us, as interpreters of
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

ourselves and of others, use shared materials that have a history. There are lessons in such ideas for ethics
generally and for virtue theory, but they need not be entirely sceptical. The points about the situational character of
the virtues and about their ascription serve to remind us that an agents virtues depend in many different ways on
their relations to society: not simply in being acquired from society and reinforced or weakened by social forces,
but also in the ways in which they are constructed from socially shared materials.

4 Vices, failings and evil

Aristotle named a variety of vices, each of which was basically constituted by the absence of the restraining or
shaping influence of virtue, together with the operation of some natural self-centred motive. Thus cowardice was
the disposition, in the absence of courage, to give in to fear; self-indulgence and irascibility the dispositions to give
in to bodily pleasure and to anger. In this range of what may be called failings, actions that are expressions of
vices do have distinctive motives, but those are not in themselves distinctively bad motives: it is rather that natural
motives are expressed in ways in which they would not be expressed by a virtuous person. There are other failings
in which the agents motivation is distinctively deplorable, because it is constituted by the exaggeration, parody or
perversion of a virtue: an ostentatious disposition to distribute gifts or favours, in place of generosity, or, to take a
modern example, sentimentality in place of kindness. Aristotle notices some failings of this type, but, in line with
his doctrine of the mean, he oversimplifies their psychology under an unexamined category of excess.
A peculiar case, in Aristotles treatment, is justice. At the level of actions, at least, it might be thought that there
were no distinctive motives to injustice; a person can act unjustly from a variety of motives, and indeed Aristotle
mentions the possibility that a coward might treat others unjustly, by getting an unfair share of safety. If this is
generalized, an unjust person might be understood not as one with some characteristic motive, but rather as one
who is simply insensitive to considerations of justice. However, Aristotle does introduce a distinctive motive for
injustice - greed or the desire to have more than others. An unjust person, then - as opposed to someone who has
some other vice as a result of which he acts unjustly - is, for Aristotle, a particular greedy type, one who might
roughly be recognized in modern terms as a crook.
Aristotle also notices another kind of failing or deficiency, a lack of perception or feeling for others, but this is
typically registered by him only as an extreme characteristic, lying off the scale of the ethical, in the form of a
brutality or beastliness which virtually falls out of the category of the human. The fact that he does not have
anything to say about the more domesticated forms of such a failing, very familiar to us, is a corollary to his not
recognizing a virtue of kindness.
It follows from Aristotles holistic and teleological conception of virtue as the fulfilment of the highest human
capacities that vices should be basically failings, instances of a lack or an absence. This hardly leaves room for a
notion of the vicious: the nearest that Aristotle gets to such an idea is the figure of an obsessional and unscrupulous
hedonist. We possess, only too obviously, notions of viciousness deeper and more threatening than this. They point
to a concept conspicuously lacking from Aristotle (though to a lesser extent, perhaps, lacking from Plato) - the
concept of evil (see Evil).
This leads decisively beyond the conception of vices as failings, even very serious failings. Among evil or vicious
motivations, a basic type is cruelty, the desire to cause suffering, a disposition which, as Nietzsche pointed out,
contrasts markedly with brutality: it has to share, rather than lack, the sensitivity to others suffering that is
displayed by kindness. In the most typical modes of cruelty, agents derive their pleasure from the sense of
themselves bringing about the pain or frustration of others, and their cruel behaviour is directly an attempted
expression of power. Rather different from this, though close to it, is maliciousness, as it might be called, a
motivation in the style of envy, where the desire is merely that other peoples happiness should not exist. Persons
in this state of mind may be pleased if others come to grief, even though they do not bring it about themselves.
Alberich, in Wagners Gtterdmmerung, says, Hagen, mein Sohn! hasse die Frohen! - hate the happy; such a
hatred can have many expressions, only some of which involve the specifically active pleasures of cruelty.
Sometimes, cruelty may not only share, as it must, the perceptions that kindness uses, but model itself negatively
on kindness, calculating what a kind person might want to do, in order to parody or subvert it. It then takes on the
character of perversity. This style of reversal can be applied to virtues other than kindness. There is
counter-justice, the disposition to frustrate the ends of justice, not simply in ones own interests, or to hurt or
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

frustrate a particular person whom one hates or envies, but to take pleasure in the frustration of justice as such and
the disappointments inflicted on those of good will. At the limit, this can constitute an almost selfless aesthetic of
horribleness, one of the less obvious forms that may be taken by the satisfactions of Miltons Satan, with his
resolve that evil should be his good.

5 Links between virtue and vice

Unlike the failings recognized by Aristotle, these evil motivations are more than mere negations. It is important,
however, that this need not be taken as a metaphysical claim: one need not be committed to a Manichean view (or
even the very various compromises with such a view that have been negotiated by orthodox Christianity), to the
effect that human nature or the world itself contains some perversely destructive principle (see Manicheism). One
might, for instance, hold, as some optimistic programmes of psychotherapy do, that vicious and cruel motivations
are, indeed, perversions, produced by a failure of love or other deficiency in the individuals upbringing. This is an
encouraging position, inasmuch as it holds out the hope of a world free of such motivations, but it does not think
that such motivations, while they exist, are to be understood simply in terms of the lack of a shaping or restraining
influence. It would accept that vicious motivations were specially and inventively active.
Other psychological and social views are less hopeful. It is not simply that they see no ground for Utopian hopes
that the world could ever be freed from vicious motivations. Some of them detect deeper ways in which virtue, and
more generally the good, depend on their opposites. At the most superficial level, there are contemporary versions
of the point made in Mandevilles Fable of the Bees (1714) (see Mandeville, B. 2): many benefits, including
ethical benefits, have come from the development of commercial society, but there is no known way of replacing
greed as a means of sustaining it. At another level, there is no doubt that valuable human achievements, for
instance in the arts and sciences, have come about only because of a certain indifference to values of justice and
benevolence, both at an institutional level and in the lives of those who have brought about these achievements.
(Here, as so often, moralists have to face the question whether or not they are relieved that the values which they
think should prevail have not always done so.)
At the deepest level, however, it is not a question simply whether nonethical values may often require the neglect
or denial of morality, but whether morality itself does not require it. One of the metaphysicians illusions,
Nietzsche said (1886), is the belief in opposing values. In fact, he thought, moral values will always turn out to
implicate their opposites - historically (in terms of how new moral values come to exist), socially (in terms of how
they sustain themselves), and psychologically (in terms of how they are learned and of how they derive their
energy).
Even if we accept the force of the Nietzschean suspicions, this need not damage, but rather encourages, the project
of thinking about morality in ways that give an important place to virtues and vices. A theory of virtues, handled in
a truthful way, offers better hope of being psychologically realistic than other prominent pictures of the ethical life
do. If, further, it extends its realism to the motivations of immorality as well, and does not treat them as mere
negations of the moral dispositions, it will better understand morality itself. It will be more successful in this than
other theories of morality, which usually pass over in silence the forces that oppose it, or register them simply as
objects of moral disapproval, or treat them as the products of a (typically unexplained) cognitive failure.
See also: Help and beneficence; Human Nature; Justice; Mencius; Moral judgment 4; Nietzsche, F.; Prudence;
Self-control; Truthfulness
BERNARD WILLIAMS

References and further reading

Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W.D. Ross, revised by J. Urmson, ed. and revised by
J. Barnes in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
(Generally accepted as the most considered statement of his position. For secondary works, see Broadie (1991)
and Sherman (1989) below.)
Baier, A.C. (1991) A Progress of Sentiments: reflections on Humes Treatise, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.(A thoughtful consideration of Humes moral philosophy, useful on the relations between
virtue and sentiment.)
Broadie, S. (1991) Ethics with Aristotle, New York: Oxford University Press.(A notably subtle and
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

philosophically helpful commentary.)

Crisp, R. and Slote, M. (eds) (1997) Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(A helpful collection of
papers.)
Flanagan, O. (1991) Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.(Relates the moral psychology of various ethical positions to empirical material.)
French, P.A., Uehling, T.E. and Wettstein, H.K. (eds) (1988) Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.(A useful collection of papers
on contemporary virtue theory.)
Hume, D. (1751) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Enquiries Concerning Human
Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H. Nidditch,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3rd edn, 1975.(A more compact, though also less searching, account than book III of
A Treatise on Human Nature (1739-40). Appendix IV discusses the idea of moral virtue.)
MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.(An influential, negative,
assessment of modern moral ideas in contrast to Aristotelian and medieval virtue theory.)
Mandeville, B. (1714) The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F.B. Kaye, Indianapolis, IN:
Liberty Fund, 1988.(The work was first intended as a political satire, but has been seen as offering a serious
case for private vices turned into public benefits.)
Nietzsche, F. (1886) Jenseits von Gut und Bse, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Beyond Good and Evil, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1990.(Considers, among many other things, the faith in opposing values.)
Nietzsche, F. (1887) Zur Genealogie der Moral, trans. C. Diethe, On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.(A powerfully influential study, phenomenological rather than historical, of
moral values - including, importantly, the passion for truthfulness which motivates the work itself.)
Plato (c.395-387 BC) Gorgias, trans. D.J. Zeyl, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.(His most
dramatic and radical enquiry into scepticism about the virtues.)
Plato (c.380-367 BC) Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1992.(His fullest account, political as well as ethical, of the nature and value of the
virtues.)
Sherman, N. (1989) The Fabric of Character: Aristotles Theory of Virtue, Oxford: Clarendon Press.(A useful
philosophical and interpretative discussion.)
Westberg, D. (1994) Right Practical Reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press.(A discussion of practical reason and
virtue in Aquinas.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)