Throughout its history, philosophical ethics has paid little, if any, attention to the issue of moral exemplars, that is, to the idea that there are people who are morally admirable, who are exemplary and who motivate others to emulate them. Nor has it paid attention to the fact that part of our education and moral development occurs through the imitation of moral models that we consider admirable. None of the great theories in moral philosophy has given a place to this idea, or if they have, they have given it a very secondary place. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski not only wants to rescue this idea for moral philosophy, but also presents a theory that is based on the idea of moral exemplars and ‘that serves the same purposes as deontological, consequentialist, and virtue theories’ (3). In fact, what is most impressive of her book is that it builds a complete and innovative ethical theory that aims to be at the level of traditional ethical theories and that has the purpose of helping us to make moral decisions and, ultimately, of helping us to become morally better people.
A moral theory tries to simplify, systematize and justify our moral judgments and practices. In simplifying, the theory leaves aside the complexity of our moral lives to focus on an aspect that is considered central; for Zagzebski, that aspect is the admiration we feel for certain moral exemplars. From there, she formulates a foundationalist theory, that is, a theory that holds that the structure of the justification of our moral judgments and practices must refer to a single point of origin: the direct reference to moral exemplars through the emotion of admiration. By providing a foundation for all morality in the idea of exemplarity, Zagzebski argues that all our moral concepts can be defined in terms of exemplarity. Thus, ‘[a] virtue is a trait we admire in an exemplar. It is a trait that makes a person like that admirable in a certain respect […] A duty in a set of circumstances C is an act an exemplar demands from both herself and other of itself and of others. She would feel guilty if she did not do it, and she would blame others if they do not do it’ (21). In this way any moral concept can be defined from the reference to an exemplar.
Exemplarism is a theory with a non-conceptual foundation: the emotion of admiration that we sometimes feel for someone does not need to have a conceptual content. Admiration is not a kind of evaluative judgment, as some cognitivist theories of emotions claim. According to Zagzebski, we recognize moral exemplars without depending on whether we already have a description of what makes someone admirable. Admiration helps us to detect or identify excellence and to see someone as admirable; in other words, it gives us a privileged epistemic access to certain virtuous character traits of the moral exemplar. It is a characteristic of our moral lives that is prior to any theoretical notion we have of morality. ‘We can admire a courageous act or a kind act in advance of having the concept of courage or kindness’ (60). In fact, we can have more confidence in the admiration we feel for people like Confucius, Socrates or Jesus Christ than the one we have in theoretical concepts about what is good in pleasure, why it is right to do our duty or about human flourishing, which are the criteria used by rival ethical theories. Founding the theory on the admiration of moral exemplars gives it a better basis because this is a very common and accessible feature of our moral lives.
A chapter of the book is devoted to analyzing admiration, given that it is at the basis of the theory and since only recently has it received the attention it deserves among emotions. It is an interesting question whether admiration is always an emotional reaction, and not just some kind of superlative value judgment, as it sometimes seem to be, but the author assumes that it is always an emotion. There are different types of admiration and it is important for the theory to distinguish between the one that refers to natural traits of character and a different one that refers to acquired traits, ‘but the emotion directed towards native talents feels different from the emotion directed toward acquired excellence’ (37). The latter is the one that is relevant to morality and to the theory. However, Zagzebski does not refer to any empirical explanation that accounts for this supposed phenomenological difference. The difference is undoubtedly important, but one wonders to what extent is it possible to demarcate the fuzzy spectrum that goes from natural talents to acquired ones as clearly as Zagzebski would like.
Zagzebski models her theory of the admiration of moral exemplars on the theory of direct reference developed by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke. According to this theory, the meaning of natural kind terms is not determined by descriptions that explain what it is to know the meaning of those words. Their meaning is determined by the direct reference to specific exemplars of those objects to which those terms refer. So, we usually know what ‘water’ means by simply pointing, for example, to the liquid that runs through the bathroom faucet. Of course, at a deeper level, which can be determined by the experts in the matter, ‘water’ refers only to H2O and not to any liquid XYZ that, even if it looks like water, it is not. The experts will tell us which is the deep physical structure to which the term ‘water’ refers. Analogously, we identify moral exemplars without presupposing descriptions, but simply by direct reference, via admiration. It is enough to be able to point to the moral exemplar to know what the fulfillment of duty is, or what altruism or virtue are. Just as we can identify water without any further description, we can identify excellence without having to explain what it consists in. Admiration does not presuppose a specific description, not even the possession of concepts, such as those of virtue, altruism, fulfillment of duty, and so on.
The theory of direct reference implies a commitment to a certain type of essentialism, at least in the case of natural kind terms. There are essential characteristics of what water or gold are. Zagzebski thinks that this essentialism is replicated in her theory: ‘If we think that being H2O is an essential property of water, we might also think that having certain properties such as compassion, justice and wisdom are essential to being a good person’ (18). But, to keep the symmetry with the theory of direct reference, should we not rather think that there are essential characteristics that fix the reference, for example, of words such as ‘compassion,’ ‘justice’ or ‘wisdom’ and not precisely ‘good person’?
Zagzebski devotes a chapter to an examination of models of moral exemplars: the hero, the saint and the sage. She analyzes, respectively, the examples of Leopold Socha, a man who rescued Jews in Ukraine during World War II; Jean Vanier, a Canadian who has founded a community for people with mental disabilities, which gives them a home in a family environment; and Confucius, the Chinese sage of the sixth century BC. We identify these three types of moral exemplar sometimes through narratives (as it is the case, for example, with the stories of the lives of the saints) and at other times through personal experiences (although few people have a personal relationship with an exemplar). But there is a third type of observation: controlled empirical studies. Recent studies of neuropsychology, for example, tell us that there is a level at which people who are exemplars share a certain deep psychological structure. As it happens with the theory of direct reference, in which scientists can help us establish the reference of natural kind terms, for exemplarism, neuroscientists can also help us to confirm the judgments we make from certain narratives or from personal experience and that we use for identifying moral exemplars.
Zagzebski is aware that sometimes people admire the wrong person. If this is so, then probably all our ethical perspectives will be misguided. Many teenagers admire frivolous celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, millions of Germans admired Hitler or admire populist politicians, and there are many other examples. This may be due to several reasons: one is that this admiration may be based on false beliefs; when these disappear, admiration also disappears. On other occasions, this kind of admiration does not survive critical reflection over time, as when adolescents reach maturity and stop admiring the frivolous celebrity. Finally, empirical research about the biases that our admiration can have may also help us reflect critically on our admiration. But, one might wonder, isn't this critical reflection sometimes done from the point of view of a misguided ethical perspective, from the biases and prejudices that come with admiring the wrong person? Zagzebski seems to be very optimistic about the power of critical reflection; but admiration, just like any other emotion, may sometimes be cognitively impermeable and, therefore, recalcitrant. For instance, many people admire Donald Trump despite what seem to be obvious failings; their admiration somehow seems not to respond to these problems.
Zagzebski builds her theory from extraordinary cases of moral exemplarity, such as those of Jesus Christ, Francis of Assisi or Teresa of Calcutta. No one doubts the exemplarity of these cases, however, given that these are extraordinary cases, it is possible that to most of us they will be far from our daily lives and that we will end up not identifying with them. Oftentimes we tend to emulate closer and more familiar moral models, such as our parents or teachers because we identify virtuous character traits in them and that is why they are exemplary.
However, there are more worrying aspects about some of the central theses of Zagzebski's theory. The foundation of the theory lies on the emotion of admiration; this emotion helps us to identify excellence in moral exemplars. What is not so clear is why this emotion has this capacity that, apparently, other emotions do not have — although she recognizes that just as admiration is usually a reliable emotion, we trust other emotions such as indignation, horror, sympathy, gratitude, love, compassion, disgust and contempt. Nonetheless, some might argue that empathy, for example, also gives us privileged epistemic access to psychological states and character traits of other people, motivates us to act even more immediately and more commonly in our moral behaviour, and some could even consider it as the true foundation of morality. The case could be made for some other, if not all, emotions, but the relevant question is: if admiration gives us a privileged epistemic access to certain character traits or aspects of the psychological lives of others, what prevents other emotions from having it? Why give this privileged character to admiration among all emotions? Interestingly, Zagzebski does not delve into the question of whether contempt also gives us a privileged epistemic access to vicious character traits and what the role of anti-exemplars in morality is, that is, examples that we should not emulate and that any virtuous person should reject — to her credit, she actually acknowledges that the topic of contempt has to be developed in future research.
I also want to mention a concern about the status of the theory vis à vis the ethics of virtue. Moral exemplarism was originally proposed by Zagzebski as a variant of virtue ethics.Footnote 1 She first defined right and wrong actions in reference to the emotions, motives and dispositions of virtuous and vicious agents. However, over time her project gained autonomy with respect to virtue ethics, to the extent that it now seeks to rival it. The virtue concepts can be reduced, as I said before, to features that we admire in an exemplar. Also, it is not a eudaimonistic theory, since its central concepts are not posed in terms of the moral agent's flourishing. However, I suspect that the virtue theorist may question Zagzebski's story by saying, for example, that while admiration helps us to detect virtues, they actually precede admiration. We value the virtues because they are character traits that help us flourish as human beings, and we admire moral exemplars because they posses those character traits in an outstanding way. But the true foundation of the theory, the virtue theorist may claim, lies in the virtues, not in the admiration of moral exemplars. Admiration is undoubtedly important, but it is always subordinated to the existence of virtues. On a practical level, not much of importance may hang on this debate, but, theoretically, the autonomy of exemplarism from virtue ethics is played out there.
Finally, and related to this last point, although virtue ethics broadened the scope of morality with respect to the restricted mode in which Kantianism and consequentialism saw it, Zagzebski considers it a virtue of exemplarism that it broadens this scope even more (231). However, it seems to broaden it so much that the limit between the moral and the non-moral gets lost: exemplarism does not seem to have a clear criterion of delimitation of the sphere of morality. To use an example used by Zagzebski herself (24), if someone admires the virtues of Julia Child for her cooking and feels the desire to emulate her and even becomes a great cook, we may explain this with the exemplarist theory, but in what sense is that moral? How do we delimit the scope of the moral from the non-moral with this theory? Exemplarism broadens the scope of morality in such a way that much of our behaviour of emulation of examples turns out to be moral, contrary to our perspective of common sense morality, according to which neither what Julia Child does nor my desire to emulate her are moral. Zagzebski makes the distinction between two types of emotions: awe and admiration. While the latter refers to moral examples, the former refers to non-moral behaviour. But is it not a mere stipulation to say that one feels awe at what Julia Child does and that what one feels is not true admiration, because this can only be felt for moral exemplars? Many of us actually admire Julia Child's way of cooking and try to imitate her, but that does not make us more moral, but at best, better cooks.
Moral exemplarism is a novel theory and, like any new theory, there are still aspects of it that must be developed. No doubt we will not wait long to see these developments, as well as its applications in different areas. In fact, we are already beginning to see them. Very soon we will also see the reactions of rival theories and their critiques of exemplarism. However, even though one may disagree with specific points of the theory, or with the project itself, the work of constructing a new moral theory that has been carried out by Linda Zagzebski is, by itself, admirable.
