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Character, Virtue and Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Andreas Esheté
Andreas Esheté
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In recent years, much uncertainty and outright scepticism surrounds the notion of character. In the arts—painting, the novel, drama, film—the notion of character has receded into the background. The loss of character is especially conspicuous in those artistic forms in which it traditionally occupied centre-stage: drama, the novel, films. The withdrawal of character from the arts has in fact become a topic of debate in the theory and criticism of the arts. In the arts themselves, the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of attaining character is a common subject. Since ordinary sentiments are readily reflected in the fine arts, it is natural to suspect that character is not held in high regard in everyday life. Even if we take a dim view of the suggestion that the arts mirror ordinary sentiments with little distortion, a decline in the importance of character is evident in other humane disciplines: history is a striking example. Indeed, if we attend to our major social institutions—the family, the courts, the bureaucracy—it would be difficult to point to any in which the question of character is more than a peripheral concern. Indeed, it appears that the appraisal of character is of central concern in modern society only when the individual is in some way beyond the pale: in institutions of punishment, rehabilitation, mental health.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 57 , Issue 222 , October 1982, pp. 495 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1982

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References

1 An illuminating study of Socratic and Platonic views on virtue is Terence Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

2 Important exceptions are: P. T. Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Philippa Foot, ‘Virtues and Vices’, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 1–18.

3 A discussion of the self-mastery notion of freedom can be found in Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 14–15. For the most part my discussion of freedom follows Harry G. Frankfurt,’Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, Journal of Philosophy 68 (January 1971); and Wright Neely, ‘Freedom and Desire’, Philosophical Review 83 (January 1974). Though I came across it after these remarks were written, the view I outline is closest to that urged in Gary Watson, ‘Free Agency’, Journal of Philosophy 72 (April 1975).

4 Georg Henrik von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 147. A similar view is suggested in H. A. Prichard, Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?’, Moral Obligation (Oxford University Press, i960).

5 J. L. Austin, ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961), 146 n.

6 H. A. Prichard, op. cit. 12 n.

7 For a dispositional analysis, see R. S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). The view that virtues are dispositions is rejected in Georg Henrik von Wright, op. cit.; Richard B. Brandt, ‘Traits of Character: A Conceptual Analysis’, American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (January 1970); M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Virtues in Action’, The Philosophy of Socrates, Gregory Vlastos (ed.) (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1971). 506

8 For the objection raised in this paragraph, I am indebted to Richard B. Brandt, op. cit. 34.

9 Op. cit. 31.

10 Op. cit. 33.

11 Op. cit. 35.

12 Op. cit. 35.

13 Here I have drawn upon Philippa Foot, ‘Moral Beliefs’, Theories of Ethics, Philippa Foot (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1967), 95f.

14 Richard B. Brandt, op. cit. 30.

15 For a discussion of deception that does not involve telling falsehoods to others or concealing facts from them, see D. W. Hamlyn, ‘Self-Deception’, The Aristotelian Society Suppl. Vol. 45 (July 1971), 46f.

16 George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, I. S. Orwell and I. Angus (eds) (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968), 456.

17 I have received helpful criticisms from many who have heard or read earlier versions. I am especially grateful to Joshua Cohen, Philippa Foot, Michael Friedman, Alan Garfinkel, H. Paul Grice, David Hills and Anthony Kronman for encouragement and advice.