Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

to have our own brand of utopia! So, very much geared towards the individual once again.

Is there a morality derived from virtue ethics? In the last chapter we considered virtue ethics as either the acquisition of good character traits as an end in itself, or as a means to an end — the end usually being happiness. So, for example, Aristotle’s ethics were concerning the perfection of the individual man. Some men, plus all women and slaves, could not even hope to achieve this perfection. So — whilst Aristotle discusses a perfect state — it is an individual ethic for a chosen few that would get us there. As we saw in the last chapter, Alasdair MacIntyre (arguably, an Aristotelian, although he may eschew the term virtue ethics) suggests individual life narratives as a way towards a viable ethic. Little mention of co-operation, societies, cultures, eco-systems, the planet. In the last chapter we saw virtue ethics as involving life taken as a narrative and aiming at some over all good. As we’ve seen, Rawls tries to incorporate this idea into his system, to some extent. However, many folk don’t consider their lives in a narrative form, the way Rawls and others have suggested. But a narrative thread can be applied retrospectively. It’s trivially true that all lives have a narrative in terms of a sequence of events (such as a CV). And perhaps this is enough to make sense of the proposals in terms of a theory of justice at least — if not for virtue ethics. Perhaps the crucial thing (for morality) is whether we examine our life’s narrative and see it as a guide for future action, or indeed, go further and try to construct a future story for ourselves. And also — and in line with some of the comments above — we

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