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Is anyone ever really virtuous?
Apr. 25th, 2005 08:01 pmOr are we just skilled at certain things--some of which people strongly approve of?
If virtue is about doing things well, then even when some of those things are, e.g. being generous, or being sympathetic, the virtue is still essentially a skill. And a skill need not be for the sake of someone else, or for "the good." Virtue can look awfully aesthetic on this picture--the picture where we're just supposed to perceive as much depth as possible in a situation and act on it smoothly. Hence the comparisons to performances of various kinds. And perhaps that's right, given that there isn't a "Good," but only the best thing to do in innumerable kinds of infinitely complicated situations. "Emersonian perfectionism" is also aesthetic: "It is, I surmise, because a moral judgment of a state of affiars . . . has a perceptual dimension and assesses pleasure and pain, and because it is informed by sensibilities in various stages of perceptiveness and impressionability, that moral judgment is sometimes held to have an aesthetic dimension. Perfectionists, judging the world and themselves in it, may seem to dwell in this dimension or realm" (Cavell, Preface, Conditions Handsome & Unhandsome).
Not that it's really important whether we reduce the term "virtue" in this manner. It has overly peculiar connotations (Greek, Christian), anyway. It seems like defining what is virtuous and valuable is a large part of the realm of moral discourse. And, though I want to be a realist (a Wittgensteinian realist), some room must be made to decide what the virtuous thing is in a given situation, and maybe to decide in general what is more virtuous than what. My current concern with the (Wittgensteinian) realist view is how to incorporate some degree of autonomy, room at least for someone (like Emerson) to retreat from society to discover what is truly valuable.
If virtue is about doing things well, then even when some of those things are, e.g. being generous, or being sympathetic, the virtue is still essentially a skill. And a skill need not be for the sake of someone else, or for "the good." Virtue can look awfully aesthetic on this picture--the picture where we're just supposed to perceive as much depth as possible in a situation and act on it smoothly. Hence the comparisons to performances of various kinds. And perhaps that's right, given that there isn't a "Good," but only the best thing to do in innumerable kinds of infinitely complicated situations. "Emersonian perfectionism" is also aesthetic: "It is, I surmise, because a moral judgment of a state of affiars . . . has a perceptual dimension and assesses pleasure and pain, and because it is informed by sensibilities in various stages of perceptiveness and impressionability, that moral judgment is sometimes held to have an aesthetic dimension. Perfectionists, judging the world and themselves in it, may seem to dwell in this dimension or realm" (Cavell, Preface, Conditions Handsome & Unhandsome).
Not that it's really important whether we reduce the term "virtue" in this manner. It has overly peculiar connotations (Greek, Christian), anyway. It seems like defining what is virtuous and valuable is a large part of the realm of moral discourse. And, though I want to be a realist (a Wittgensteinian realist), some room must be made to decide what the virtuous thing is in a given situation, and maybe to decide in general what is more virtuous than what. My current concern with the (Wittgensteinian) realist view is how to incorporate some degree of autonomy, room at least for someone (like Emerson) to retreat from society to discover what is truly valuable.
