Virtue Ethics: Rosalind Hursthouse

Ye, Kening

Prompt #1

Rosalind Hursthouse is a renowned moral philosopher who champions virtue ethics, one of the three major approaches in normative philosophy. In contrast to deontology and consequentialism, virtue ethics is an agent-centered approach that answers the question of “what should I be?” while does not provide clear rule or ethical answers on why one should/should not act. (Guidry-Grimes, 1/31/2013) Virtue ethics empathizes the role of moral character embodied by the moral agent for assessing his/her ethical behavior and character. In other word, we think what would a virtuous moral agent will act under given circumstance, and he/she typically does what is virtuous and avoid what is vice. The principles of virtue ethics are
Most importantly, in virtue ethics, although virtues and vices are given many vocabulary or ways to describe, there is no rule that specify what the type actions belongs to virtues or vices. For example, compassion can be a virtue or a fault depending on specific scenario (Hurtshouse, 126). Therefore, it is important to recognize that determination of virtuous character and what action would deem virtuous is not always forthright and clear. (Hurtshouse, 127) Having established what virtue ethics is, Hursthouse argues that the concept of moral status is unnecessary and irrelevant for applied virtue ethics. Both deontology and consequentialism, two other branches of normative ethics, are heavily depended upon the moral status concept which essentially divides everything into two classes: things with moral status that are within our “circle of concern” and worthwhile of moral
Hursthouse has pointed out several issues related to the moral status arguments. It is hard to draw a fine line for determining what deem moral status. Things without moral status can become of our moral concern if they have sentient value and moral worth to those we concern thus they become valuable to us. If to expand “the circle of concern” to all sentient animals, it becomes over-simplified and problematic for our moral decision making as beings with moral status can make “competing claims” that may require us to further distinguish their features in order to justify our decision making (Hursthouse, 123). In addition, it is criticized as speciesim if to only keep human beings with moral status. Although Hurtshouse compares and contrasts the characteristics of speciesim and familysm, and concludes that giving moral preference for our species, namely human beings, is “sometimes wrong but sometimes right” (Hursthouse, 122), another issue is that we sometimes cannot avoid to evaluate the significance of moral worth among members of moral status. In short, the common consensus is that all humans are within “the circle of concern”. The moral status arguments not only give human being strong preference over nonhuman beings but also have instilled priority in decision making for moral agents. As Hursthouse argue, attaching the concept of moral status does not contribute to virtue ethics but only adds complications. If to apply the moral