The best books on Moral Character

recommended by Christian B Miller

Why do apparently 'good' people sometimes behave
deplorably? Christian B Miller, professor of philosophy
at Wake Forest University, selects five books that
explore the subject of moral character and warns us to
be cautious of making inferences about the underlying
motives of others – and ourselves.

Christian B Miller is the A C Reid Professor of Philosophy at

Wake Forest University and philosophy director of the Beacon
Project (moralbeacons.org).
His main areas of research are meta-ethics, moral psychology,
moral character, action theory, and philosophy of religion. He is
the author of three books: Moral Character: An Empirical Theory
(2013), Character and Moral Psychology (2014), and The
Character Gap: How Good Are We? (2017), all published by
Oxford University Press.

Buy
1
The Nicomachean Ethics
by Aristotle
Buy

2
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo
Buy
3
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Buy

4
Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and
Classification
by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman
Buy

5
The Little Engine That Could
by Watty Piper

What is moral character?

Our moral character is how we are disposed to think, feel, and
act when it comes to moral matters. So, for example, a person’s
moral character might lead him to think about ways he can cheat
from his company and not get caught. Another person’s moral
character might lead her to donate to a number of charities which
focus on famine relief.
Moral character traits comes in two main varieties. There are the
moral virtues such as honesty, compassion, and justice. A deeply
honest person, for instance, is expected to usually avoid
cheating, lying, and stealing, and to do this for the right reasons
and motives across a wide variety of situations including the
courtroom, office, and bar. There are also the moral vices such
as dishonesty, cruelty, and injustice. I’m sure we can come up
with examples of how those work.
In my own research, I tend to focus on the moral traits, but it is
important to stress that they are just one aspect of our multi-
faceted characters. Curiosity, cleverness, open-mindedness, and
warmth are all traits of character, but they do not fall squarely
under the heading of morality.
What’s the difference between moral behaviour and moral
character?
Great question. There is a big difference. Suppose there are
police officers hanging around a grocery store, and you watch
Jones do his shopping, pay for everything in his cart, and not
steal anything from the store. His behaviour is morally
blameless; from afar it looks like he is an honest person. But of
course we can’t jump to that conclusion. For all we know about
Jones, he could be a serial thief who only refrains this one time
because he knows the police are watching. Good behaviour
typically does not guarantee good moral character.
So there is more to being virtuous than good moral behaviour –
and the same is true for the vices as well. Here is another
example. A friend might be visiting you in the hospital. Suppose,
though, that she is really there only to not feel guilty, or to get
rewards in the afterlife, or to seek out your praise. Then these
would not be virtuous motives for the visit. They are self-centred,
with the focus being on how she can use the visit merely as a
means to benefit herself in some way. But a compassionate
person is motivated by the good of others, regardless of whether
she benefits in the process or not.
The lesson from both of these examples is that good behaviour
is a necessary component of good moral character. But it is not
all there is. Virtuous motives and reasons are also required too.
And likely other things as well.
It seems proven time and time again that apparently
‘good’ people are capable of terrible things. Is it possible
to accurately judge another person’s moral character?
I agree with this observation about apparently ‘good’ people, and
indeed it is a major theme in my new book The Character Gap. I
don’t think, though, that we should go so far as to say that it is
not possible to accurately judge other people’s moral character.
The lesson for me is that we should be much more cautious in
the judgments we tend to make.
Given what I said before about motivation, it follows that we
should already be very cautious. Even when we see people acting
admirably, unless we can make a reasonable inference about
their underlying motives, we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions
about what their character is like.
This question now gives us a further reason to be cautious. As
we know from classic studies in psychology — which have sadly
been played out in the real world — you can put seemingly
‘normal’ or ‘good’ people in certain unfamiliar situations and find
that they behave deplorably. Thus in the most famous of the
Milgram studies from the 1960s, the majority of participants
giving a test to a learner would turn a shock dial all the way up
to the lethal level under pressure from an authority figure.
Similarly in the bystander effect studies from the 1960s and 70s,
when a stranger was with them who didn’t do anything to help,
participants tended to not do anything to help in various
emergencies, such as hearing someone break a bone, get a
serious electric shock, or be bullied. These were, and still are,
very surprising results, and are not in line with how we tend to
predict most people would act.
But three things can still be said in favour of our judgments of
moral character. First, they seem to be more accurate the better
we know someone. Studies back this up. My wife, for instance,
knows all about my character flaws. Secondly, in light of the
psychological research, we can start changing our assumptions
about how good people are, and come to understand what they
are likely to do in situations where there is pressure to obey an
authority figure or where strangers are not doing anything to
help. So this research can help us improve the accuracy of our
judgments. And finally, with cases of repeated bad behaviour in
particular, negative judgments of moral character seem quite
reasonable. Take, for instance, judgments about Harvey
Weinstein or Larry Nassar. In the financial world, Ken Lay or
Bernie Madoff could be used to make the same point.

You mentioned virtues and vices – perhaps that brings us

to your first book choice, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
Does Aristotle still have something relevant to say on
moral character in the modern age?
Just about everyone I know who works on character would say
yes. This is apparent most of all in my field of philosophy. For
many years, ethics was dominated by two influential traditions:
Kantian ethics with its emphasis on rules, and utilitarianism with
its emphasis on good consequences. Around the 1970s there was
increasing discontent among philosophers with these two
approaches. Rather than develop a completely novel approach,
though, there was a call for a return to the emphasis on character
and virtue that one finds in the writings of Plato and especially
Aristotle. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, James Wallace, and
Alastair MacIntyre were some of these influential voices. This
movement culminated in what I consider to be the leading
expression of an Aristotelian approach to ethics, namely Rosalind
Hursthouse’s book On Virtue Ethics, published in 1999. Today
virtue ethics is taken very seriously by most philosophers and
has established itself as a legitimate third option to Kantian
ethics and utilitarianism.
But Aristotle’s influence extends far more broadly today than just
philosophical ethics. Writings about character in other fields,
such as religion and literature, often wrestle with his ideas. The
same is true with books on character for more popular audiences,
such as Thomas Lickona’s Character Matters, David Brooks’s The
Road to Character, and Tom Morris’s If Aristotle Ran General
Motors.
Having said this, writers will differ as to which parts of Aristotle’s
Ethics they think are relevant today and which parts are not.
Speaking just for myself, let me mention a few which I think are
still important. One is that being virtuous is central to our human
flourishing – what he called eudaimonia. Another is that being
virtuous is not just a matter of behaving well but also of acting
for the right reasons and motives, as we already discussed
earlier. A third is that habituation and practice are crucial to
becoming a better person. You can’t flip a switch and make
yourself virtuous overnight. There is also the idea that in addition
to moral virtues, there are intellectual virtues, such as wisdom
and understanding, and we should pay attention to both of them.
Sorry, I am just mentioning things that come to mind, rather
than presenting them in any kind of logical progression.

“Virtue ethics has established itself as a legitimate third

option to Kantian ethics and utilitarianism”

I can think of two more ideas at the moment. One is that

weakness of will is a major obstacle to becoming a virtuous
person, and we need to understand how it works and what can
be done to overcome it. We have all been there, I trust — I know
I shouldn’t do something, but I give in to temptation and do it
anyway. And the last idea I want to mention is that, according to
Aristotle, it is hard to become virtuous, and hard to become
vicious too. The character of most people is somewhere in the
middle. This has been a central theme of my own work, and I
think that contemporary psychology has actually vindicated
Aristotle here.
At the same time, there are some of Aristotle’s ideas about
character that find little support anymore. For instance, he held
that in order to have one virtue like honesty, you have to have
all of them. This famous “doctrine of the unity of the virtues” is
hard to accept.
This meaning something along the lines of: the virtues
mutually imply each other. Could it not be the case that
‘virtuousness’ is one, overarching character trait, that one
either has or doesn’t have?
I have no problem talking about whether someone is ‘virtuous’
overall, where this is a function of whether they have or do not
have the individual virtues like courage, temperance, and
fortitude. It would be a pretty high standard to meet, I suspect,
since having just one of the vices or some other serious character
blemish would keep you from being virtuous. I don’t see how you
could be virtuous overall, and have the vice of dishonesty, for
instance.
To complicate things just a bit, individual virtues come in
degrees. Someone can be honest, say, but not as honest as
Abraham Lincoln. So presumably ‘virtuousness’ would come in
degrees too. And so there would be a threshold below which
one’s character would not count as virtuous at all, but above
which there is a whole spectrum of degrees of being virtuous.
An important question in my own research has been whether
most people are – as a matter of fact – virtuous or not. I look to
carefully conducted experiments in psychology for answers,
experiments that specifically involve morally relevant situations.
I then draw my conclusions based on what hundreds of such
studies collectively indicate. As I summarise in The Character
Gap, the emerging picture is one of mixed character, not
virtuousness. Or so I say. There are just too many situations
where participants have acted in ways that don’t fit with the
behaviour of a virtuous person.

Let’s turn to your next choice, a classic work of fiction:

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. What made you choose this
book?
First I should say that there are so many incredible works of
fiction that engage with issues of moral character. The writings
of Dante, Jane Austen, and George Eliot, for instance, would all
be great choices as well!
I went with Les Misérables because it so vividly illustrates two
ideas about character which are central to my thinking. The first
is that our characters can change over time. If we struggle with
dishonesty, or lust, or pride, we do not have to always struggle.
We see this in the case of Jean Valjean. There is a key moment
in the book when change in his moral character is set into
motion, a moment which also illustrates the second idea, namely
that role models can be powerful sources of character change.
When Valjean is caught stealing from the bishop and is brought
before him by the gendarmes, the bishop does something we
rarely see in life. He forgives Valjean. By making up a story for
the gendarmes about how he had given Valjean the silver and by
chastising Valjean for not taking the candlesticks too which were
also supposed to be a gift, the bishop is able to get Valjean
released. As I read the book, with this powerful display of
forgiveness and compassion, Valjean’s life – and especially his
moral character – is transformed.
But of even greater importance to me is the impact this scene
can have on us the reader. I know that in my own case I was
deeply moved by what the bishop did, even though he was a
fictional character. I saw something beautiful there, and wanted
to have it in my own life too.
Can you tell me a bit more about role models?
There has been a lot of research recently on the impact of good
role models, and two emotions are thought to play a big role.
The first is admiration. I deeply admired the bishop’s act of
forgiveness. But that is not enough to effect change in me. After
all, I also admired what the US men’s curling team did in winning
the Olympic gold medal. But that hasn’t changed my life in any
way.
Along with my admiration for the bishop came feelings of
emulation. I wanted to be more like the bishop, not in every way
of course – I have no desire to become a bishop, for instance! –
but when it came to matters of compassion and forgiveness.
Although I might not have thought about it in those terms, I
wanted my character to more closely resemble his character. And
I suspect I am not the only reader who has felt that way.

“Admiration and emulation work slowly and gradually

on our characters over time”

Good role models might not act so dramatically or have such an

immediate impact on us as the bishop’s forgiveness did on Jean
Valjean. But admiration and emulation can also work slowly and
gradually on our characters over time.
Your next book choice is another work of fiction.
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It’s considered a
philosophical novel, dealing with such themes as ethics
and free will. How does it illuminate the concept of moral
character?
I should first confess that The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite
work of literature, so I am sure it would end up on a number of
different ‘best books’ lists. In the case of moral character, I don’t
think it is a stretch to include it here, for at least two reasons.
The first is that the moral character of the three brothers is so
central to the novel itself. Dmitri, for instance, exhibits
intemperance and impulsiveness. Ivan is deeply thoughtful but
also marred by pride. Alyosha models faith, hope, and charity.
Importantly, though, none of them is just a two-dimensional
crude representation of a particular virtue or vice. They are all
complex characters who evolve over the course of the novel and
sometimes act contrary to their dominant tendencies. Dmitri
struggles to resist some temptations, for instance, and
sometimes Alyosha experiences doubt. Just as with the rest of
us, they have both good and bad sides to their characters, even
if they might be closer to the virtue or vice ends of the spectrum.
Secondly, as you noted, there are a host of deep philosophical
questions at work in the book, questions about, say, the
existence of God, the nature of morality without God, and the
role of free will. These all tie into moral character as well. To take
just one issue, if there is no divine realm whatsoever and if this
life is all we have, then Ivan raises the question of whether there
is any objective standard of moral right and wrong. That would
include an objective standard for virtue and vice too. This also
raises questions about the point of trying to become a better
person in this life, and about whether there is as much
motivation to do so as there is from a religious perspective. Also
on the table is whether someone like Ivan can become a virtuous
person, or whether a religious outlook is necessary for virtue.
Now I think there are important things that could be said from a
secular perspective in defense of an objective morality and living
a virtuous life. My only point here is that The Brothers Karamazov
succeeds in raising these and many other big questions.

Thanks. Your next choice is very different: Peterson and

Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues. This is a
handbook that intends to classify 24 particular ‘character
strengths,’ divided among six broader categories it calls
‘virtues.’ How did they approach this, and what
significance does the approach have?
First let me say why I shifted gears from Dostoevsky to
contemporary psychology. My thought in putting together this
list was to pick some central fields – like philosophy, literature
and, in this case, psychology – and try to choose the best one or
two books I could in those fields. That’s different, and I think
more manageable for me, than trying to come up with a top five
across the board.
Even though I am a philosopher, much of my work on character
draws heavily from psychology, and I spent years leading The
Character Project which tried to foster interdisciplinary work
between the two fields. When it comes to books in psychology,
of which there are not many, since it is such an article-driven
field, Peterson and Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues
has been extremely influential. It was published in 2004, and
was key to launching the entire positive psychology movement.
Today that movement has a major journal, a leading institute,
the VIA Institute, and hundreds of publications coming out every
year. It’s impact has been felt in majors ways in education and
health too, among other fields. Much of the work today continues
to be informed by the 2004 book.

“There can be controversy over whether a given

character trait is a virtue or not. For instance, humility
has had something of a chequered past in the West”

The key to the framework Peterson and Seligman provided is the

list of 24 character strengths, which I would normally call virtues.
It includes traits like kindness, fairness and hope. In order to
come up with their list, they drew upon the help of over 50
experts on character, and poured over the writings of religions
and philosophies worldwide. They even included the traits one
finds in Hallmark greeting cards and Pokémon characters! Then,
using 10 different criteria they devised, they were able to cut
down their huge list of character traits to this list of 24. It has
become something of a standard taxonomy for studying
character ever since.
One reason why it is especially helpful is that there can
sometimes be controversy over whether a given character trait
is a virtue, or as they would say, ‘character strength,’ or not. For
instance, humility has had something of a chequered past in the
West, with Aristotle not much of a fan and Christianity quite the
opposite. Given the scholarship that went into producing the list
of 24 character strengths, there is a strong case for at least
taking each of them seriously.
Having said this, I don’t want to give the impression that their
framework is perfect. In fact, I have a forthcoming paper in the
Journal of Positive Psychology arguing for some pretty serious
revisions to the whole thing. But that doesn’t take away from the
immense influence that Peterson and Seligman’s book has had.
Are Peterson and Seligman suggesting that these are
subjective qualities, and are a conceptual way of thinking
about personalities? Or do they mean these are discrete,
measurable traits like intelligence?
The second option. In fact, Peterson, Seligman, and their
collaborators came up with a survey measure for all 24 character
strengths, the VIA-IS. It has ten items for researchers to use in
measuring each strength, so 240 total items. Either this entire
survey or shorter variations of it have been widely employed for
years by researchers in positive psychology. One area of interest
has been to see what correlations exist between how people rate
themselves on a given character strength, and other important
variables like subjective well-being, mood, health, exercise,
criminal behaviour, and so forth.
And are our scores in these qualities or strengths
something that we can improve upon through training?
Positive psychologists would tend to say yes. Our characters are
not fixed in stone. They are malleable, although change is slow
and gradual and it may take months if not years in order for
people to show significant improvement. To the extent that the
VIA-IS is a good measure of character strengths, then it should
be able to track these changes over time. And keep in mind that
change can happen in either direction, so people can gradually
become worse, morally speaking, too.
One of the most interesting and important areas of empirical
research on character today, I believe, has to do with designing
interventions to try to move people’s characters in a more
positive direction. For instance, there has been some work done
on how gratitude journals, where you record what you are
thankful for in your life, can increase one’s degree of gratitude.
I would love to see a lot more work done on designing very
practical initiatives to foster character improvement.
Can you tell me briefly about the aims of positive
psychology?
I am not an expert on positive psychology, but I think it is fair to
say that at the turn of the century, Seligman, Peterson, Mihaly
Czikszentmihalyi, and others thought psychology was overly
concerned with problems, diseases, and flaws. In the process, it
was neglecting other areas of human concern that deeply
mattered to people, such as virtue, happiness, flow,
psychological health, flourishing, purpose, and meaning. Positive
psychologists, from what I understand, don’t want to downplay
the importance of research on things like neuroticism or
depression, but they also want to see more work being done in
these other, more positive areas as well.
Let’s move onto your final book. The Little Engine That
Could. The original version of this classic children’s story
was published in 1930. Why did you pick this book?
Again, I want to emphasise that my approach has been to think
about some different fields and genres, and try to pick a top book
or books on moral character from each. For my last choice, I was
thinking about children’s literature, science fiction, and fantasy.
Ordinarily I probably would have said The Chronicles of Narnia
or The Lord of the Rings. But I have three young children, so we
are not there yet. Instead, I chose The Little Engine That Could
because it is one of our family favourites, and because it is all
about moral character.
At the beginning of the story, a little train is on its way to deliver
toys and food to the good little boys and girls on the other side
of the mountain, an example of kindness and generosity. But
then the train breaks down, and the dolls and toys ask for help
from other trains that come by. Sadly, they get turned down
again and again. The Shiny New Engine says he is way too fancy
to pull the likes of them, an example of elitism and arrogance.
The Freight Engine says no because he is too important to help
dolls and toys, an example of pride. The Rusty Old Engine is
much too tired to even try, an example of defeatism. The dolls
and toys are about to lose hope, when along comes the little blue
engine. She has never done a big job like this before. But she is
powerfully moved by the hearts of the dolls and toys, and by the
thought of the children on the other side of the mountain not
receiving the delivery. So while telling herself, “I think I can, I
think I can,” she successfully wills herself up the mountain, and
everyone is overjoyed.
Here we see many virtues on display. Empathy, compassion, and
kindness for other people. Hope that she can accomplish a very
difficult task. Courage to overcome her fears. Fortitude, self-
reliance, and determination to finish the job and not give up.
Gratitude for what the little blue engine has done. Character is
everywhere in the story.
As it must be in life too. I wonder: what strengths do you
see yourself as exhibiting, and which are you working on?
How have you personally put some of the lessons of the
texts we have discussed into practice?
I’d be nervous talking about my character strengths. I’m not sure
I have many – any? – and my own theory in The Character Gap
predicts that I don’t have any either! Weaknesses are easier. I
struggle with pride, for instance, and with comparing myself to
others and judging people unfairly. I could use a lot more
courage in my character too.
Coming back to our earlier discussion, role models have had a
big role to play in shaping my own moral character, and they
have helped me to work on these areas of weakness in particular.
These models include fictional examples like Victor Hugo’s
bishop. They include historical examples like Jesus, Lincoln, and
Tubman. They include prominent examples from today, like Paul
Farmer. And of course they include people close to my life, such
as my family and closest friends. I admire and strive to emulate
all these people, and in the process they show me that I have a
long way to go.

Interview by Cal Flyn

March 30, 2018
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