Topics Ethics

Question I have been thinking about the nature of "virtue" as it relates to culture and subcultures. My thought is that a clear way of defining a culture would be to identify the set of virtues that are respected. This would be appropriate with respect to understanding certain political leanings as well. For example, I suspect that many Repubicans would place the virtue of "Constancy" high on their lists, while many Democrats would place "Tolerance" highly. This leads to my question, Has any philosopher proposed a universal set of virtues? There are a couple of ways of looking at this. First, is there a set of virtues that is considered to be universal in that every culture recognizes and appreciates the same set? The second approach is whether there is a larger, yet still finite, set from which one could identify specific virtues that define a specific culture?

Accepted:
January 28, 2006

Comments

There seems to be a set of virtues that every culture recognizes and appreciates, but they may not rank these virtues in the same way. For example, given the appropriate account, it is hard to conceive of a functioning culture that does not regard prudence, temperance, and courage as personal virtues, that is, as virtues that every member of that society would like to have. However, different people in a society and different cultures might rank these three virtues differently, some ranking prudence higher than courage and some the reverse.

Similarly, there also seems to be a set of moral virtues that every culture recognizes and appreciates, but they may not rank these virtues in the same way. For example, given the appropriate account, it is hard to conceive of a functioning culture that does not regard truthfulness, dependability, fairness, and kindness as moral virtues, that is, as virtues that every member of that society would like the other members of the society to have. However, different people in a society and different cultures might rank these virtues differently, some ranking fairness higher than kindness and some the reverse.

Many philosophers have put forward these virtues as universal, but they have not all put forward the same accounts of these virtues. I have put them forward in my book, Morality: Its Nature and Justification. I do not think that there are virtues that are recognized only in a singly culture, but I do think that some cultures rank the virtues differently. Not only do they rank within the personal virtues and the moral virtues differently, they also rank the personal virtues as compared to the moral virtues differently. It may be that these different rankings may serve to distinguish one culture from another, although that is unlikely.

Once one realizes that the virtues can be ranked differently, it does not seem that there is any need to have completely idiosyncratic virtues for different societies.

You might also want to look at Martha Nussbaum's "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach," in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).