SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

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SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

Dispositional Foundations and Implications for Moral Psychology and Friendship

SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER

DISPOSITIONAL FOUNDATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND FRIENDSHIP

CANDACE L. UPTON

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“Recent experimental results in social psychology seem to indicate that people do not have the sort of global character traits required for classical virtue ethics. Some theorists have concluded that we should give up all talk of virtue and character. Some have suggested that it is enough if there are more particularized situational traits. Some have argued that virtues are idealized character traits that can still be pursued as ideals even if they never actually exist. In her new book, Candace L. Upton argues that all such reactions are based on misun- derstanding the way in which character traits are behavioral and motivational dispositions.

She concludes that we can and must continue to accept a virtue ethics with global character traits while understanding what sorts of conditions can interfere with their realization. This book is a significant advance.” —GILBERT HARMAN, Princeton University

“We may want to think of character traits as entirely general, but Candace L. Upton marshals strong arguments for a more subtle and complex view. Character traits often emerge as situation-specific and fine-grained.” —JOEL KUPPERMAN, University of Connecticut

Philosophical tradition holds that character traits are global; if you possess a particular character trait, you will perform trait-related behavior across a broad range of situations.

In Situational Traits of Character: Dispositional Foundations and Implications for Moral Psychology and Friendship, a groundbreaking study at the intersection of ethics, moral psychology, and metaphysics, Candace L. Upton offers an intriguing alternative to this philosophical tradition. By appealing to both normative considerations and the metaphysics of dispositions, Upton argues that character traits should be understood situationally. After developing and defending her situational account of character traits, Upton uses this account to adjudicate the debate over the compatibility of the demands of consequentialism with those of genuine friendship in favor of the friendly consequentialist.

CANDACE L. UPTON is assistant professor of philosophy at University of Denver.

For orders and information please contact the publisher LEXINGTON BOOKS

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TRAITS

OF CHARACTER

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L E X I N G T O N B O O K S A division of

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Traits

of Character

D ISPOSITIONAL

F OUNDATIONS AND

I MPLICATIONS FOR M ORAL

P SYCHOLOGY AND

F RIENDSHIP

Candace L. Upton

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A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Upton, Candace L., 1968–

Situational traits of character : dispositional foundations and implications for moral psychology and friendship / Candace L. Upton.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-3284-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7391-3286-9 (electronic) 1. Character. 2. Situation ethics. I. Title.

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AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S i x

I N T RO D U C T I O N x i

1 GLOBAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER 1

2 TRAITS AS DISPOSITIONS 25

3 SITUATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER 47 4 SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 73

5 SITUATIONAL TRAITS AND THE

FRIENDLY CONSEQUENTIALIST 89

B I B L I O G R A P H Y 10 9

I N D E X 113

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I am grateful to the University of Denver and the University of Den- ver Philosophy Department for providing me the time and support to complete this book. Thanks to Naomi Reshotko.

I am grateful to the following for permission to reprint material pre- viously published elsewhere:

A section of chapter 1 and a section of chapter 3 are each reprinted with modifications from “Virtue Ethics, Character, and Normative Receptivity,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (2008): 51–66. Reprinted with permission from Koninklijk Brill N.V.

A section of chapter 3 is reprinted with modifications with kind per- mission from Springer Science + Business Media: Philosophical Stud- ies, “A Contextual Account of Character Traits,” vol. 122, 2005, 133–51, Candace L. Upton.

A section of chapter 4 is reprinted with modifications with kind per- mission from Springer Science + Business Media: The Journal of Value Inquiry, Review of John Doris’s Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, vol. 39, 2005: 507–12, Candace L. Upton.

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Three sections of chapter 5 are reprinted with modifications from:

Candace L. Upton, “Context, Character, and Consequentialist Friendships,” Utilitas, vol. 20, no. 3, 334–47, 2008 © Cambridge Jour- nals, published by Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission.

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O

ne thesis that virtually all virtue ethicists converge upon holds that the virtues, or traits of character, benefit their possessor.

An agent possessing the trait of compassion would, consistent with our pre-theoretic understanding of compassion, help others in need.

Over the course of her lifetime, the compassionate agent might perform a few large-scale compassionate acts, or she might perform a bevy of small-scale compassionate acts. But her acts of compassion would not impinge on the overall quality of her life, ability to pursue her interests, ability to develop and maintain a range of social ties, and would embody several, if not all, of the other virtues. Fur- ther, the compassionate agent often experiences pleasure from her compassionate acts, insofar as they are compassionate, and her compassionate acts and outlook can produce or contribute to a sense of satisfaction, a psychologically and physically healthy psyche and body, and a morally meritorious life. These factors afford the virtuous agent the self-esteem, confidence, sensitivity, courage, social connections, and moral strength to pursue the goals she deems valuable, to live a life that harmonizes with her unique physical and psychological makeup, and to further refine her virtuous traits. In a manner such as this, the virtues benefit their possessor.

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A second thesis, which virtue ethicists embrace even more widely than the first, holds that the virtues are global. A moral agent possesses a global trait of character, GT, just in case (1) she possesses the mental features relevant to GT, (2) she would respond, both behaviorally and attitudinally, in a GT-appropriate way, such that her responses yield from those mental features that are relevant to GT, and (3) she would respond in a GT-appropriate way across a broad range of normal situations. The globally compassionate agent would care about others, believe that helping others is important, she would reason appropriately about specific cases in which she responds compassionately, and so on. And the mental features grounding the trait of compassion would issue in appropriately compassionate responses. What is distinctive to the global trait of compassion, however, insofar as it is global, is that the globally compassionate agent would respond compassionately across a broad range of normal situations. She might encounter a disabled stranger who has been deposed from her wheelchair, a friend whose spoiled child continually misbehaves, or a sibling whose marriage is in a state of decay. The virtuous agent would respond appropriately to each of these very different kinds of situation. In fact, her compassion guides her to respond appropriately across the full extent of morally transparent, morally dubious, or morally ambiguous situations she does or could encounter.

The link between the two virtue ethical theses—that traits of character benefit their possessor and that traits of character should operate globally—manifests itself explicitly. In order maximally to benefit their possessor, the virtues must operate globally. For example, appropriate compassionate responses often require that an agent break free of, or at least struggle to cope with, her shyness around others and fear of embarrassment for the purpose of approaching strangers. If an agent responds compassionately only to others with whom she shares close emotional bonds, however, she effectively boycotts two central sources of personal benefit that proper operation of the virtues can beget. When she succumbs to the pressures of her shyness and fails to help a stranger, not only will she not experience the pleasure of helping another, but she might either ex-

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perience guilt for responding wrongly or rationalize her inappropri- ate response, thus further stultifying her virtue-related sensibilities.

Further, the agent who responds compassionately only to her friends and family hobbles her own ability to develop the social ties which may play a significant role in her sense of connection, com- munity, and well-being. Many significant benefits can flow into the life of the agent whose compassion targets only her close emotional correspondents, but a fuller, richer life, enhanced by a spectrum of emotional, intellectual, and physical activity, can bring the agent who develops global traits closer to a life of flourishing.

However, while the virtues, conceived globally, are reasonably taken to benefit their possessor, traits of character ought not to be conceived of in exclusively global terms. Moral agents enter into the process of developing and maintaining global traits of character with a multiplic- ity of legitimate purposes, one of which might be to enhance and in- tensify the quality of the relationships, activities, and projects com- prising their lives. At the same time, a variety of complementary purposes accompany the employment of virtue ethical concepts and terminology. Moral agents whose moral aspirations fall within the domain of virtue ethics need the concepts and terminology of traits of character in order to describe their own or others’ excellent, adequate, or blemished virtue-related behavioral or attitudinal tendencies, morally to assess their own or others’ virtue-related tendencies, to provide an informational foundation upon which they can base rational behaviors and responses to others’ virtuous or less-than-virtuous tendencies, and to induce others to behave in a morally appropriate way.

However, I will argue that traditional global notions of character, despite all their subtleties and complexities, are not sufficiently subtle and complex to enable moral agents to deploy their conceptual and ter- minological attendants in pursuit of a life of flourishing.

Instead, I will argue that moral agents who endeavor to live a life of flourishing should adopt a virtue ethical treatment of character that includes situational traits of character. A moral agent possesses a situational character trait ST just in case (1) she possesses the mental features that are appropriate to the global correlate of ST, and (2) her morally appropriate responses would not extend across

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a broad range of normal situations. The situationally compassionate moral agent possesses all the mental features that she would need to possess to be globally compassionate. But the situationally compassionate agent would not always, although she may in many cases, respond the way she morally ought to. Still, however, she is compassionate with respect to those situations in which she would behave compassionately; if she would display proper compassion toward her coworkers but not toward strangers, she is coworker- compassionate but not stranger-compassionate.

The moral agent who endorses character attributions such as temperate-around-friends-and-family and moderate-except-when- drinking-alcohol has available to her a robust source of trait-related conceptual material that enriches her ability to describe her own or others’ trait-based behavioral and attitudinal tendencies, morally to assess herself and others, to accrue trait-related information about herself and others, on which basis she can draw explicit inferences about how to respond in the specific situations she encounters, and to encourage others to respond in a morally appropriate manner.

It would be hasty for the virtue ethicist to conclude, however, that situational traits of character ought to replace global traits of character. For global traits exhibit a number of valuable features that justify their retention within a virtue ethical framework: global traits enjoy a prominent history within Western ethical thinking, they lay the foundation for the metaphysical basis of an approach to ethical value and decision-making that is allegedly distinct from its more commonly ac- cepted act-based and outcome-based approaches, and they can provide a virtuous ideal of attitude and behavior, albeit abstract, toward the development of which the moral agent can guide her moral decisions, choices, and actions. Given the shortcomings of global traits, though, situational traits are necessary to prevent global traits’ becoming largely expendable in the practical domain within which rational moral agents plan their courses of action and the courses of their lives, improve upon their own moral shortcomings, and respond to the perfect and imperfect aspects of the world around them.

Chapter 1 of this book begins by displaying the full anatomy of global traits of character as they appear in Aristotle’s primary work

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on virtue, along with a number of additional pronounced historical and contemporary virtue ethical figures. I focus on the three central features of traditional Aristotelian virtue: the mental features which virtuous agents ought to possess, the morally appropriate responses in which virtuous agents’ mental features should issue, and the broad range of normal situations across which virtuous agents should display morally appropriate responses.

Chapter 2 launches the first argument in favor of situational traits by dissecting the historically entrenched classification of traits of character as a kind of disposition. In particular, I argue that the most plausible understanding of dispositions holds that they are contextual: a vase is fragile-in-certain-circumstances, a plastic ball buoy- ant-in-certain-circumstances. If global character traits are dispositions, then, if no relevant normative factors categorically distinguish character traits from dispositions, it follows that character traits should be construed situationally.

Chapter 3 advances two normative arguments in support of situational traits of character. First, trait attributions are necessary for performing several important virtue-related functions, including functions involving appraisal, information-yielding, and prediction.

Trait attributions satisfying these functions can enable the virtue ethicist to cultivate her own and others’ virtue, and these functions must be executed by employing trait attributions. Global traits display a structural complexity that is insufficient for the virtue ethicist who employs their attributions greatly to morally improve upon her own and others’ responses to the situations she encounters. Sit- uational traits, however, display a fine-grained structural complexity that enables the virtue ethicist morally to improve in a significant way and, hence, the virtue ethicist should countenance situational traits. Second, I argue that unless the virtue ethicist endorses situational traits of character, she is forced to attribute the trait of justice in an intuitively unjust way.

In chapter 4, I argue that my situational account of character traits is distinct from, and superior to, the only other well-developed extant account of non-global traits. An extensive collection of social psychological findings indicates that most people display behavior

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that we would not expect from moral agents who are globally virtuous; global traits do not appear accurately to describe most of the population. John Doris concludes that virtue ethicists should embrace non-global traits, which he calls “local traits.”¹For, he argues, a normative ethical theory whose trait attributions coincide with the empirical state of affairs can better enable moral agents to improve their moral reasoning, moral decisions, and moral behavior. But I argue that Doris’s local account of traits suffers from a series of vitiat- ing objections. Two of the most central of these objections hold that Doris’s local traits are not theoretically linked to global traits; and, hence, do not merit classification as traits, and that Doris’s (empirical) justification for local traits dissolves if the empirical situation with respect to the character traits agents exemplify shifts.

The primary purpose of chapter 5 is to establish that endorsing situational traits is no insignificant deed from which no important philosophical implications follow. In particular, I argue that situational traits of character bear fruit in an unexpected form. A firmly entrenched objection to consequentialist versions of normative ethical theory holds that a damaging psychological and conceptual tension precludes the consequentialist’s ever becoming a genuine friend: the consequentialist would abandon her suboptimal friendships, while the genuine friend would not. After tracing the development of this objection, I recommend a modified, trait-based, objection for the friend of genuine friendships. Even this more sophisticated trait-based objection, however, assumes a global understanding of character traits. Provided a more realistic account of friendship than its proponents have long assumed, application of the situational account of character traits demonstrates that genuine friendship and consequentialism are psychologically and conceptu- ally harmonious with one another. If application of situational traits can resolve a debate over the compatibility of consequentialism and friendship, its application to yet further philosophical debates might yield similarly congenial results.

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NOTE

1. John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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T

he list of ancient through contemporary moral philosophers falling within the Western analytic tradition who appeal to, and provide accounts of, traits of character is extensive. Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, Murdoch, Anscombe, Foot, Rawls, Annas, Hursthouse, Swanton, and myriad others all employ traits of character, in one fashion or another, as a substantial ele- ment of their moral philosophical thinking.¹In this chapter, I provide a general conception of the nature and role of character traits within the Western analytic philosophical tradition. By way of in- troducing an account of character traits that is almost univocal within this tradition, I begin by presenting a broad range of philosophical disagreements surrounding the nature and proper role of character traits. Second, I lay out a tripartite account of character traits that captures those features of character that lie at the core of traditional Western analytic virtue ethical approaches to moral deliberation, reasoning, and decision-making. Finally, I reflect on the traditional, historically entrenched account of character traits and their role in the practical realm of their cultivation, and our justification for thinking that other moral agents possess character traits.

GLOBAL TRAITS OF

CHARACTER

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DISPUTED FEATURES OF CHAR ACTER TR AITS

A wide berth of disagreement over the general theoretical, normative, and metaethical role of character traits, and the specific nature of character traits and their interrelations, permeates the Western succession of trait-related moral philosophical thought. Virtue ethicists typically hold that character traits play the central role within their theoretical or nontheoretical² understanding of moral value, moral reasoning, and moral decision-making, such that an appeal to character traits should answer all the principal questions the astute moral enquirer should propose. Traits of character, according to such virtue ethicists, should somehow provide a ground for normativity that yields virtue ethics’ real obligations, they should stand firmly at the core of any account of the rightness of actions and goodness of persons, and they should guide the moral agent to choose morally appropriate actions and responses.

Deontologists and teleologists who appeal to character traits, however, can allow traits of character appropriately to play only an instrumental role within their ethical theory. Mill, who is reasonably considered the paradigm teleologist, suggests that developing character traits might best enable the moral agent to act in accord with those rules which history has shown best to promote the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for the greatest number of people possible;³ appeal to the intrinsic value of pleasure and the intrinsic disvalue of pain, and the normative reasons they gener- ate, ultimately provides answers to all substantive moral questions.

And Kant, who is reasonably taken to be the paradigm deontolo- gist, argues that the moral agent should always act only upon those maxims which she can will to be universal law, or always act so that she treats humanity always as an end and never merely as a means;⁴appeal to the rational will provides the conceptual material from which correct responses to substantive moral questions issue. If character traits were to play any notable role within Kant’s deontological ethics, they would be resigned to an instrumental role, wherein possession of a trait of character enables us better to perform right actions.⁵

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Virtue ethicists and other theoretical (and nontheoretical) ethicists also fail to converge on an account of which mentally rooted behavioral dispositions actually qualify as traits of character. Aristotle includes bravery, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanim- ity, “the virtue concerned with small honors,” mildness, friendliness, truthfulness, wit, and justice.⁶In sharp contract, Nietzsche includes solitude, playfulness, depth, fatalism, taking risks, aestheticism, style, and exuberance as traits of character.⁷

A further source of disagreement among ethicists who endorse and employ traits of character concerns the interrelations among traits of character. Aristotle holds that the virtues, or traits of character, are unified; for a moral agent to possess one character trait, she must possess them all. Other moral philosophers diverge from Aristotle’s claim about the unity of the virtues, some arguing that it is possible for a moral agent to possess one, and only one, virtue, while others argue that possessing one virtue might preclude an agent’s possessing any other. Similarly dealing with the interrelations amongst the virtues, a long-standing Western philosophical and theological tradition that is rooted in Plato and directly attributable to Aquinas maintains that four of the virtues, courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom, are necessary for possessing any of the other virtues.⁸

Controversy among friends of character traits also persists at the practical level. Virtue ethics’ foes insist that, while any legitimate ethical approach to moral reasoning, decision-making, and choice should yield firm and precise direction, with respect to the question of which act an agent ought to perform, virtue ethics is unable appropriately to guide the action of moral agents, owing to its highly general and often vague prescriptions such as: Be honest.

A multitude of additional disagreements over traits of character permeates the ethics literature. Importantly, however, within this accumulation of divergence, a solid core of convergence remains:

three conceptual features of character traits unite virtually all proponents of the virtues. Aristotle discusses these three core features of character traits at length, in great detail, with insightful attention to specific cases, and with the incisive sensitivity that characterizes

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the astute observer of human beings, their psychological states, and their abundant variety of behavior. Since Aristotle’s writings on character traits manifest the most highly developed understanding of traits’ three core features, I take his view to typify what I call the

“traditional account of character traits.” However, my goal in the re- mainder of this chapter is not to reconstruct Aristotle’s account of character traits down to the last detail; I am sanguine with the possibility that my presentation of traditional traits of character di- verges from Aristotle’s in some of its complexities. Further, to the extent that his successors’ views on character traits presuppose and build upon the three core features of traits, I also take their views to exemplify the traditional account. Many, if not most, of Aristotle’s successors would take their views on character to be nontraditional, but I intend this classification to hold only with respect to whether the traits of character a moral philosopher endorses include the three core features.

THE MENTAL GROUND

Traditional accounts of character hold that three features are central to a character trait: traditional character traits are mentally grounded, dynamic, and global.⁹First, to possess a character trait, S must possess a set of stable mental features that ground the trait. A brave person, for example, must possess a range of beliefs, desires, reasons, willpower, attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities.¹⁰ She must believe that certain things are valuable and worth protecting even at the cost of her quality or even quantity of life. She must desire to protect these valuable things and exact the willpower needed actually to do so. She must reason, deliberate, and emotionally and attitudinally respond in certain char- acteristic ways, and she must be sufficiently perceptually sensitive to identify situations that call for bravery. These stable mental features, which together comprise the virtuous person’s frame of mind, ground the trait by providing the central core from which virtuous action issues.

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The mental features grounding the virtuous person’s bravery are dispositional in nature, such that when she is neither present in a situation that calls for a brave response nor actually manifesting her bravery, she still carries with her the trait of bravery. The beliefs, desires, reasons, and other mental features constituting the ground of an agent’s trait of character enable the agent to respond appropriately in the different kinds of ethically tinted situations that she encounters. For example, a brave agent might be unknowingly approaching a fierce dog that is snarling at a terrified child. Not yet aware of the potentially dangerous situation, the agent is brave since she carries the mental features that ground bravery. Once she iden- tifies the snarling dog as a threat to the child, her general belief that some things are worth protecting issues in the particular belief that the child in her presence is worth protecting; her general desire to protect things that are valuable issues in the desire to protect this child; her general willpower to respond appropriately in the face of her own fear issues in her occurrent exerted willpower, in this particular situation, to aid this particular child; and so on. While the virtuous agent’s general dispositional virtuous frame of mind issues in particular mental features that are relevant to a specific situation she encounters, there is no reason for thinking that this process oc- curs at the conscious level, with the general dispositional frame of mind issuing in occurrent mental features, no reason for thinking that this is an intellectual process, and no reason for thinking that this process involves reasoning from general principles.

One feature of a trait’s grounding mental features that markedly increases the complexity of the concept of a trait, raises questions about the semantic content of a trait concept, and possibly precludes providing a detailed analysis of the notion of a trait is the following: Owing to their radically different emotional, experiential, and intellectual histories, the two sets of trait-grounding mental features necessary for any two agents to possess a particular trait of character might differ. Caring about others is putatively necessary for any agent’s being compassionate. But an emotionally traumatic family history might trigger intensely painful memories in one agent such that it is unreasonable to expect her to care intensely, or at all,

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about others who are in need of her help. The traumatized agent might be obligated to seek therapy in an effort to ameliorate her emotional responses but, still, shouldering this obligation does not obviously preclude her also being compassionate, provided she possesses the appropriate desires, beliefs, reasoning patterns, and so on, and provided that it is at least possible that she come to care about others.

It is unclear how radically two virtuous agents could differ in their trait-grounding mental features. Consider the generally char- acterized list of mental features relevant to possessing a trait of character that I articulated at the outset of this section: A brave person, for example, must possess a range of beliefs, desires, reasons, willpower, attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities. It is highly implausible that one brave agent could possess only the beliefs, desires, reasons, and willpower relevant to bravery, while another brave agent possessed only the attitudes, emotions, patterns of deliberation, and perceptual sensitivities relevant to bravery. However, some heretofore unspecified differential spread between the sets of mental features grounding two agents’

character traits might yield either a conception of character whose complexity precludes the possibility of articulating an analysis of that conception, or a conception of character whose application is never univocal.

Two potential problems arise if the virtue ethicist is committed to a conception of character that regularly results in a non-univocal application: the semantic content of such a concept would shift upon each differing application, rendering the concept indeterminate in content, and the virtue ethicist hoping to establish virtue ethics as a distinct approach to ethics is precluded from executing this task by positing the virtues as carriers of intrinsic (or extrinsic) value, since the virtues would not share any one metaphysically unifying feature and, hence, would lack the metaphysical centrality necessary to carry normativity and yield any real moral obligations.¹¹

Irrespective of these potentially serious concerns which, inci- dentally, affect both global and situational notions of character if they affect either, I hereafter refer to the characterological ground

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of an agent’s trait as the frame of mind appropriate to the trait; this locution makes reference to the presumed fact that certain specifi- able mental features befit her psychological and physiological history, that these features are necessary for her possessing a trait of character and, hence, that she should possess these mental features. Owing to moral epistemological reasons whose defense ex- tends far beyond the scope of this book, I am no friend of the Aris- totelian notion of practical wisdom, whose possession allegedly enables a virtuous agent to know which act is right to perform and also, presumably, to know which mental features constitute the appropriate frame of mind for her character traits. Still, it is within the bounds of reasonableness that there is a fact about which particular mental features should function as our characterological ground, and that extensive experience, sensitivity, and reflection can steer us ever closer to knowing what our own appropriate virtuous frame of mind ought to be.

A further disagreement among virtue ethicists concerns whether the virtuous person who is in a virtuous frame of mind is morally perfect, such that either she would never respond, either behaviorally or attitudinally, to a situation she encounters in a less than wholly virtuous way, or such that she would never possess mental features whose content is negatively tinged, such as disgust, fear, or nervousness. While I will briefly treat the question whether the virtuous can ever respond non-virtuously, my special concern deals with whether the virtuous can ever possess negatively tinged mental features that are external to their virtuous frame of mind, whose content seems to strain our intuitive sense that the agent does, indeed, possess the virtue in question, and whose presence requires the putatively virtuous agent to struggle to respond virtuously. Suppose S is in a just frame of mind but that she is also, in a particular case, disgusted by the individuals to whom virtue demands she behave justly; after a bout of struggle with her disgust, she overcomes her adverse emotion and behaves justly. But two strands of thought differ on whether her harboring disgust in conjunction with her just frame of mind precludes her being just.

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Aristotle is traditionally understood as claiming that the agent who must struggle against her negatively tinged emotional states in order to behave virtuously is only continent, not virtuous.¹² But even if this reading of Aristotle is appropriate, Aristotle’s reason for separating the continent from the virtuous is unclear. He appears simply to assert that virtue precludes any struggle against right behavior: “. . . someone who does not enjoy fine actions is not good; for no one would call him just, e.g., if he did not enjoy doing just actions, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions, and similarly for the other virtues” (1099a18–20).¹³But, while the continent person’s struggle to act virtuously might seem to indicate that she does not enjoy acting rightly, her struggle might indicate merely that she desires to produce right action but also houses competing desires to produce action that is not consistent with also producing right action. Further, the moral agent whom Aristotle deems continent might enjoy acting rightly despite, or perhaps even partly because of, her having to struggle with herself to produce right action.

The second understanding of Aristotle’s view on the relation between virtue and imperfection holds that the virtuous person might house, in addition to the frame of mind that grounds her particular virtue, negatively tinged mental features whose nature and intensity cause the agent to struggle to respond virtuously in particular situations that she encounters. Aristotle details several cases in which virtuous people perform wrong actions. First, he claims that an agent who is generous can fail to spend what is right but, yet, still be generous. The generous man, says Aristotle, “is more grieved if he has failed to spend what it was right to spend than if he has spent what it was wrong to spend” (1121a5–7). Further, Aristotle claims that “acting unjustly does not necessarily imply being unjust”

(1134a16–17). These passages allow us explicitly to conclude only that the generous agent need not always respond in a perfectly generous manner and that the just need not always respond in a perfectly just manner. But Aristotle provides no principled reason for thinking that response-related imperfection is possible only for generosity and justice. It is not unreasonable to conclude that, for any of the virtues, it is possible for an agent to possess a virtue but, yet,

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not always respond in a manner that is perfectly appropriate to that virtue.

Further, it is not unreasonable to conclude from these passages that, for Aristotle, the virtuous person can perform wrong actions or respond inappropriately to a situation, yet still retain her virtue. For, according to Aristotle’s doctrine of the unity of the virtues, a moral agent possesses all the virtues just in case she possesses one virtue.

Hence, the generous agent who does not always respond perfectly generously is also an honest, temperate, and just agent, and the just agent who does not always respond perfectly justly is also honest, temperate, and generous, and so on. It is not implausible to attribute to Aristotle the view that virtuous moral agents can sometimes manifest behavioral and attitudinal responses that are less than perfect.

In addition to allowing response-related imperfection in the virtuous agent, Aristotle also seems to allow for virtuous agents who possess negatively tinged mental features whose presence requires the virtuous agent to struggle to respond virtuously. Aristotle offers a case in which a just agent carries with him a negatively tinged struggle-producing mental feature. He claims that “a man might even lie with a woman knowing who she was, but the origin of his act might not be deliberate choice but passion. He acts unjustly, then, but is not unjust; for example, a man is not a thief, yet he stole, nor an adulterer, yet he committed adultery; and similarly in all other cases” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1134a19–23).

Owing to being in a state of passion, Aristotle’s just agent responds unjustly. But it is less morally contentious to hold that a just agent, owing to being in a state of passion, can respond unjustly than to hold that, owing to being in a state of passion, a moral agent must struggle to respond justly. Hence, while Aristotle does not explicitly advance a case in which a virtuous agent must struggle to respond virtuously, it is plausible to claim that traditional Aristotelian notions of character allow for such cases.

In Aristotle’s examples of virtuous people who either act wrongly or carry negatively tinged mental features lies an articulation of a view about the nature of virtue that competes with the traditional view that virtue requires moral perfection. Of course, this view about

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the nature of virtue, which allows for two kinds of imperfection, is not beyond contention, and it is not clearly attributable to Aristotle since he also explicitly claims that “the decent person will never will- ingly do base actions” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1128b28–29).

Christine Swanton provides comments that suggest she is amenable to the view that virtuous agents might possess struggle- producing negatively tinged mental features. Consistent with the second Aristotelian understanding about the nature of virtue, according to which virtue is compatible with imperfection, she claims that struggle is consistent with virtue, that “the mark of the virtuous is the propensity to violate a ‘virtue rule’ such as ‘Be benevolent’

only with reluctance, anguish, and distress.”¹⁴ Oftentimes, people struggle with reluctance, anguish, and distress, and even fear, passion, and disgust, but do not violate a “virtue rule.” And, so, Swan- ton endorses the claim that at least some moral agents who display negatively tinged mental features that seemingly oppose the content of their virtuous frame of mind, and require them to struggle to respond virtuously, can still be virtuous.

The account of virtue, according to which virtue does not require perfection, is preferable because it more closely coheres with commonsense accounts of virtue. By the commonsense understanding, courage involves overcoming fear in the face of personal danger;¹⁵ justice involves equitable distribution even when the just agent would be disappointed by or disgusted at the outcome; honesty sometimes involves appropriate truth telling even when the agent faces intense nervousness that others might react adversely to the truth. For this reason, I include in my explication of the traditional understanding of character traits the clause that struggle is consistent with virtue, even though this claim might be rejected by some Aristotelians.

Of course, the content of some struggle-producing features seems consistent with their owner’s virtue, while others suggest that their owner is less than virtuous, if she is virtuous at all. Suppose that an adult has just fallen off her bicycle, and that S struggles to get herself to aid the cyclist because she is shy and uncomfortable approaching individuals who are unfamiliar to her. The reason for S’s

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struggle is intuitively consistent with her being virtuous. But if the reason for S’s struggle is that S does not wish to arrive late to a movie she wishes to see, S is intuitively less than virtuous, or not virtuous at all. The content of our struggle-producing mental features varies radically, but, still, many of these features are clearly consistent with virtue.¹⁶

THE DYNAMIC TR AIT

The second feature that is central to traditionally understood character traits is their dynamism; a dynamic character trait yields appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses. Character traits are typically thought to enable their possessors to flourish, to live valuable, happy lives in which they pursue their interests and projects, and perform right action, and character traits can support an agent’s flourishing only if she is connected to the world via behavior. Whether an agent’s character trait is dynamic is a function of two factors: the intensity of the trait’s frame of mind and the intensity of any negatively tinged struggle-producing mental features.

If S possessed all the mental features appropriate to bravery but her willpower was not sufficiently intense, she would not behave bravely; if her willpower were more robust, however, she would behave bravely. Similarly, if S possessed all the mental features appropriate to bravery but was sufficiently disgusted by the potential recipients of her would-be bravery, she would not behave bravely in every relevant situation; if her willpower were stronger, however, or if she found a way to overcome the source of her disgust, she would behave bravely. A trait’s dynamism is, hence, rooted firmly in the agent’s entire mental state, which includes both her traits’ appropriate frame of mind and any negatively tinged struggle-producing features.

One point of dispute over character traits’ dynamic quality concerns whether traits’ proper operation should guarantee, or only probabilify, appropriate behavioral and attitudinal responses.¹⁷ If traits of character share all the relevant features of the kinds of

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dispositions studied by metaphysicians and philosophers of science,¹⁸then some character traits probabilistically issue in appropriate responses of their own nature. However, as I suggest in the pre- vious section, it is reasonable to accept the claim that virtuous people need not always respond in ways that are morally beyond re- proach. Hence, consistent with the claim about behavioral and attitudinal moral perfection, and virtue, an agent who possesses a traditionally conceived trait of character should, insofar as that trait is dynamic, display appropriate moral responses with a reasonably high degree of probability.

THE GLOBAL TR AIT

The third feature traditional accounts hold as being central to character traits is that they are global—character traits must dispose the agent to produce trait-relevant behavior across a broad range of normal kinds of situation.¹⁹ A situation is a state of affairs having features to which an agent is potentially morally sensitive, such that en- countering a situation might impact the agent’s behavioral or attitudinal responses. A situation might be external to the agent, as when an agent’s friend is present, and the friend’s presence either consciously or nonconsciously affects the agent’s moral behavior or attitudes. Similarly, a situation might be internal to an agent, as when an agent’s chronic depression affects her moral behavior or attitudes. Situations are best individuated on the basis of factors issuing both from an agent’s own point of view and outsiders’ point of view.²⁰An outsider, upon observing S’s behavior, might notice that S always behaves in a friendly manner when she is in coffee shops and conclude that coffee shops present situations to which S is morally sensitive. However, the information that S always and only meets her close friends in coffee shops in unavailable to the outside observer, and it is actually the presence of her close friends to which S is morally sensitive. At the same time, a moral agent might note that she consistently behaves in a friendly manner when she is in coffee shops and conclude that she is morally sensitive to coffee

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shop-like situations. But an outsider might notice that the agent fre- quents only coffee shops where she encounters individuals whose socioeconomic status is lower than hers, concluding that an individ- ual’s socioeconomic status presents the real aspect of the situation to which the agent is morally sensitive. And, of course, a moral agent might actually be morally sensitive to certain situations in which she ought not to be morally sensitive.

A traditionally brave agent must be disposed to behave bravely across a broad range of normal kinds of situation. Suppose that S is in a brave frame of mind, and that the mental features grounding her bravery are sufficiently intense to produce morally appropriate behavior. To possess the traditional trait of bravery, S must behave bravely in different physical locations, when different kinds of val- ues are at stake, when she is in benevolent and irritable moods, and toward family, acquaintances, and strangers, and in a variety of other kinds of situations. Due to the astounding array of psychological differences in human beings, the requirements of virtue might demand that two agents behave bravely in different sets of situations. While it is implausible that we can appropriately link a moral agent’s virtue to some specific number of kinds of situation in which she ought to behave virtuously, it is useful to suppose, for the sake of establishing an important theoretical point, that this linking is possible. It is consistent with the traditional concept of bravery that, to be brave, S must behave bravely in eight kinds of situation, while T must behave bravely in only six. Provided an agent behaves bravely in the situations where virtue demands bravery, she is brave;

if she would behave bravely in fewer situations than virtue demands, she is not brave.

The broad range of situations across which a virtuous agent must behave virtuously should be normal; virtue does not demand that an agent behave bravely if the situation is not normal. A descriptive account of normal situations might hold that normal situations are those that are statistically commonplace. And in a particular indi- vidual’s case, severe, chronic depression might be statistically commonplace. If we accept this descriptive account of normal situations, then if someone fails to behave compassionately because of a

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prevailing depression, she is simply not a compassionate person. In- tuitively, however, this account gets things wrong. Provided the vic- tim of depression possesses the dispositional mental features appropriate to compassion, her occurrent depression mitigates her non-compassionate behavior. Suppose that S possesses the frame of mind that is relevant to bravery but that she would not behave bravely because her occurrent chronic depression overwhelms the virtuous behavior she would otherwise display. S’s depression is a non-normal situation that morally mitigates her failure to behave bravely, since she is not responsible for bringing the depression upon herself, and no agent experiencing chronic depression could reasonably be expected to satisfy virtue’s demands. Which specific situations count as non-normal and, hence, morally mitigating is open to debate. Still, however, when the situation an agent inhabits is normal, that is, when her failure to act bravely is not morally mit- igated, an agent must behave bravely in order to merit the traditional attribution of brave.

Whether a trait expresses itself globally depends upon the content and nature of the psychological intricacies of the agent’s overall mental state. Suppose that S possesses the mental features appropriate to bravery and that she should behave bravely across seven kinds of situation, but that she would behave bravely across only six.

Her failure to satisfy the behavioral demands of virtue is rooted in the presence of a negatively tinged struggle-producing mental feature. Further, as I have already claimed, whether a trait actually op- erates dynamically depends upon the agent’s overall mental state.

The centrality of one’s overall mental framework, which includes both one’s virtuous frame of mind and any negatively tinged struggle-producing features, to the virtues’ core defining features ex- plains why virtue ethics is often referred to as the “ethics of being,”

as opposed to the “ethics of doing.”

Combining the three core features of traditionally conceived character traits enables us to construct a coherent account of traits and their possession. S possesses a global character trait GT just in case (1) S is in a frame of mind appropriate to GT; (2) S’s frame of mind would issue in GT-appropriate behavioral and attitudinal re-

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sponses; and (3) S’s GT-relevant responses would extend across a broad range of normal situations. This account of character traits and their possession captures the central features of character traits as they have been understood by an extensive and esteemed se- quence of moral philosophers, dating back to Aristotle.

One additional feature, often agreed to hold for traits of character, is that they can be instantiated in different degrees.²¹For any two agents, both of whom are brave, one might be braver than the other. Proponents of degrees of virtue have neglected to character- ize the mechanism by which degrees of virtue arise, but a variety of different factors can afford the possibility that virtues can come in degrees. If, as I have argued, any particular virtue concept allows for possession of the virtue in the absence of behavioral and attitudinal responses that are always perfectly virtuous, then virtue can come in degrees. The braver agent might always respond utterly bravely, while the less brave agent might exhibit an occasional lapse in her bravery-related responses; both are still brave, though.

A distinct route by which degrees of virtue might be instantiated appeals to the differently constituted sets of virtue-related frames of mind two agents might possess. It is implausible that the virtue ethicist could actually specify which, and how many, mental features a moral agent should possess to be in a just frame of mind. Still, however, to make clear an important philosophical point, assume that it is possible to execute such a task. If one agent should possess only seven mental features to be just, while another should possess ten, it is not unreasonable to hold that, while both agents are just, the second is more so. Alternatively, if the first agent morally exerts herself such that she exceeds her virtue expectations by developing eight, rather than just seven, justice-related mental features, while the second agent does not exceed her virtue-related expectations, it is reasonable to hold that the first agent is more just than the second. Yet a further route to attaining degrees of virtue appeals to the differently constituted sets of normal situations across which two virtuous agents should respond appropriately. One agent who should and does respond appropriately in six kinds of normal situations might be less virtuous than another who should and does

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behave appropriately in nine kinds of situations. And the agent who exceeds her virtue expectations by responding virtuously in a greater number of normal situation kinds than she ought might be more virtuous than the agent who does not similarly exceed her situation-related virtue expectations. What should be clear from this brief discussion on degrees of virtue is that, since such a wide range of features of moral agents can explain why one agent is more or less virtuous than another, endorsing degrees of virtue greatly compli- cates the traditionalist’s already complicated concept of virtue.

GLOBAL TR AITS IN THE PR ACTICAL REALM

Cultivating, or sincerely endeavoring to cultivate, global traits of character is, for most agents, likely to be a time-consuming, work- laden, emotionally painful exploit.²² To develop the traditional global trait of compassion, for example, the aspiring moral agent would seek to develop a frame of mind that is appropriate to compassion in a way that befits her own distinctive physiological and psychological makeup. Further, the moral agent who aspires to compassion would seek always to respond and behave in a manner appropriate to compassion, but that, once again, suits her physiological and psychological features that delimit the actions and emotions that can reasonably be expected of her.

To envision the difficulty and frustration that can attend the pursuit of developing a global trait of character, consider Ellen, a sensitive, intelligent, and earnest moral agent who, after a series of subtle but incisive comments from her parents, realizes that she has slowly developed into a selfish person. Wishing to fulfill a higher vi- sion she has for the value and purpose of her own life, she endeav- ors to mature into a compassionate person. Reflecting back on her selfishness, she realizes that consistently favoring herself over others never made her happy, and even produced a feeling of guilt, whose emotional sting she hardened herself not to experience. To develop her compassion, Ellen decides that she must first force herself to help somebody in need. The first person she tries to help is a

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store clerk who has just accidentally knocked over a stack of chairs.

Reluctantly, Ellen walks over to help the clerk, who calls Ellen

“weird” and claims that it’s her, the clerk’s, job to pick up the chairs.

Ellen feels embarrassed, but is determined to become a better person and, thus, to try again. The second person she tries to help is a young man who trips and falls on the cement. Ellen tries to aid and comfort the young man, who rudely rebuffs Ellen, insisting that he does not need her help. Ellen retreats, but eventually recognizes that he was probably embarrassed. Ultimately, through reflection on her different attempts, successes and failures at helping others, Ellen gains a sense of which individuals it is appropriate for her to help and how, exactly, she should provide this help, and she learns that trying to become virtuous can involve a long, painful journey of personal self-discovery.

This brief portrait of Ellen provides only a hint of the struggle that aiming to become virtuous can involve. The agent who tries to develop justice might discover about herself that she deeply resents people who were born with more material wealth than she; the agent who tries to develop compassion might discover that she is profoundly shy, and dreads approaching other people even when they need help; the agent who tries to develop her honesty might discover that it is best for her to live with the crushing guilt of having been an unfaithful long-term partner rather than to disclose her shameful and harm-producing secret.

In addition to the arduous and laborious nature of the struggle to become virtuous, determining whether an agent possesses a global trait of character is a prodigious philosophical and empirical feat. In order empirically to establish that any real moral agents could or do possess the set of mental states appropriate to any particular globally conceived character trait, at least one psychological issue requires resolution.

Ethicists require from psychologists a settled view about the ve- racity of introspection, since the content of an agent’s mental states is accessed primarily via introspection. It is fairly well-established by psychologists that introspection often leads to false beliefs about the content of our beliefs, desires, motivations, and other mental

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states.²³And if the introspective process often yields false information about the content or nature of an agent’s mental states, then even an agent’s most rigorous and respected self-reports are unreli- able.²⁴Still, however, some of our introspective reports about indi- vidual mental states might be reliable; neither philosophers nor psychologists have established that introspection always fails to yield veracious reports. But until, and unless, psychologists deliver a settled view about which particular mental states of which particular moral agents are reliably introspectible, and which processes reliably yield veracious reports, we cannot trust even the sincere and self-reflective self-reports of moral agents about the content of their mental states.

The empirical researcher investigating the putative virtue of another moral agent would first require the ethicist’s fixed view about which mental states a particular agent should develop, and the situations and modes in which she should respond or behave. Second, the empirical researcher would have to employ a variety of interac- tive and observational techniques over the course of several years to determine whether someone is in a virtuous state of mind, and would have to observe her behavior across a wide range of situation kinds that are relevant to the virtue in question.

While systematic application of the techniques designed to provide access to an agent’s real mental states might be available only to professional psychologists, non-psychologists can gather a wide range of relevant information through intense and sustained inter- action with and observation of intimate friends and family mem- bers. The commonsense evidence compiled by sensitive, reflective, intelligent agents suggests that we, as moral agents, regularly suc- ceed, albeit with sporadic failures, at discovering the mental states of ourselves and others. Our partnerships, friendships, marriages, and other relationships with people bring us into regular contact (and conflict) with their beliefs, desires, motivations, and expectations. And this kind of evidence strongly suggests the existence of agents who genuinely care about honesty, understand the nature of its value, reason about honesty in virtuous ways and, yet, struggle to manifest their inner virtue behaviorally. Hence, while non-

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psychologists (and even psychologists) might never fully determine whether someone possesses a global trait of character, they can make significant progress toward the accurate description of any traditionally virtuous agents they might know.

Of course, in the attempt to determine which psychological features ourselves, friends, partners, and other relations embody, it is important to pay careful attention to the findings of professional psychologists. Note, for example, the importance of racist attitudes and their potential bearing on an agent’s possession and manifestation of virtue. Racist attitudes might preclude an agent’s being just, friendly, or compassionate, and they almost certainly yield behavior that is unjust, unfriendly, and non-compassionate.

And, not surprisingly, many Caucasian Americans self-report that they do not harbor any racial biases. But a raft of psychological experiments on racial bias suggests that many Caucasian Ameri- can agents who are not explicitly racially biased are, nonetheless, implicitly racially biased. One particular experiment set Cau- casian New York University undergraduates to the tedious, time- consuming task of classifying sets of colored circles at a computer terminal.²⁵ After subjects had invested a great deal of time in their task, their computers suffered a staged crash. Prior to the staged crash, though, subjects were subliminally primed by the face of either a Caucasian male or an African American male briefly flashing on their computer screen. Subjects were frus- trated at having their work interrupted, but subjects who were primed with the African American male face responded with more hostility than subjects who were primed with the Caucasian male face. While further psychological experiments are needed to determine whether such implicit racist biases tend to issue in racist attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, the sincere, conscientious moral agent who studies and reflects on the findings of social psychologists might discover about herself that she harbors implicit racial biases. And this discovery affords her the opportunity to experiment with techniques for rooting out her bias, behaving virtuously in racially tinged situations, and, thus, further developing her own virtue.

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While it is manifestly plausible that, with time and great effort, we can, with reasonable accuracy, discover which traits, if any, others possess, it is important to underscore the practical dangers that can accompany over- or under-attributing traits of character. After hastily or carelessly deeming someone trustworthy who is not, a moral agent might infer that it is safe to entrust confidential personal information to the putatively trustworthy person. Anyone whose secrets have ever been betrayed knows that having actually trustworthy confidantes is vitally important to her psychological well-being. On the other hand, after hastily or carelessly deeming someone who really is trustworthy not to be so, an agent might treat the putatively non-trustworthy agent with unnecessary suspicion and distance and forestall her (the hasty trait-attributor) including in her life a source of trust, understanding, and well-being.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have provided a general introduction to character traits and their nature, focusing on the traditional Western virtue ethical understanding of traits. In particular, however, I hope to have executed two tasks that are pivotal to the success of several of this book’s novel arguments. First, I have put forth an account of global character traits that captures the central mental, behavioral/attitudinal, and dispositional features of character traits. This account of global traits of character is important for understanding the metaphysically rooted argument for situational traits of character in chapter 2, the normatively rooted arguments for situational traits in chapter 3, and my objections to other extant arguments in support of non-global traits that I put forth in chapter 4. Second, I have argued for the thesis that a moral agent may plausibly be said to possess a trait of character just in case she is in a frame of mind appropriate to the virtue in question, her trait is global, and her trait is dynamic, even if she also possesses a mental state whose content is putatively in tension with the content of her virtuous frame of mind and forces the agent to struggle to respond virtuously.

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Prior to putting forth my normatively rooted arguments in support of situational traits of character, though, I proceed with my defense of situational traits in chapter 2 by arguing for situational traits of character from a solely metaphysical standpoint.

NOTES

1. Julia Annas, “Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology,” A Priori 2 (January 2003). www.apriori.canterbury.ac.nz/volume02.htm. Accessed 9 December 2008; G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Virtue Ethics, eds.

Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Aris- totle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985); Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed.

L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975);

Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J.

Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., ed.

George Sher (Hackett Publishing Company, 2002); Iris Murdoch, The Sover- eignty of Good, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2001); Friedrich Nietzsche, Be- yond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), and On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C.

Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992); John Rawls, A The- ory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971); Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

2. Theoretical virtue ethicists hold, roughly, that the central conceptions of virtue ethics can be captured by providing a list of necessary and sufficient conditions; nontheoretical virtue ethicists deny that necessary and sufficient conditions can adequately capture the central notions of virtue ethics. For more on this distinction, see Julia Driver, “The Virtues and Hu- man Nature,” in How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 111–29.

3. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., ed. George Sher (Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 18 (note 2).

4. I. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

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5. Kant, however, would surely object to the virtues’ playing any such instrumental role in the agent’s moral deliberation and execution of right action, given his insistence that right action must issue only from rational- ity, rather than from emotion. Kant, Foundations. Kant also employs an anomalous notion of virtue, identifying virtue with strength of will in do- ing one’s duty. See Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 156.

6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hack- ett Publishing Company, 1985).

7. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann, (New York:

Vintage Books, 1989).

8. Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve. (Indinapo- lis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Brothers, 1948; reprinted by Christian Classics, 1981).

9. See, for example, Annas, “Virtue Ethics,” 24; Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 40–42; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106a16–24, 1100b35–1101a7; NE 1115a26–27; Foot, Virtues and Vices, 16; Hume, En- quiry, 169, 231; Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 10–11, 20; Joel Kupperman, Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 9; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1985), 179, 185; John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” Monist 62 (1979), 331, 332; Plato, Republic, 412e–414a, 503a;

Peter Railton, “Made in the Shade: Moral Compatibilism and the Aims of Moral Theory,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supp. vol. 21 (1995), 93;

Swanton, Virtue Ethics, 19, 21.

10. Aristotle holds that those who need willpower to do the right thing are not yet virtuous. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1145b10–11. It is ir- relevant to the success of the situational account of traits that I defend in this book whether willpower is or is not one of the specific mental features required to ground a moral agent’s particular trait of character.

11. For a distinct argument that the virtues do not share one metaphysically unifying feature and, hence, cannot yield any real moral obligations, see Jesse Prinz, “The Normativity Challenge: Why the Empirical Reality of Traits Will Not Save Virtue Ethics,” in C. Upton, ed., Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology: The Situationism Debate (The Journal of Ethics, forthcoming).

12. Julia Annas, D. S. Hutchinson, and T. H. Irwin join Aristotle in argu- ing that the virtuous person is morally perfect. See Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Hutchinson, The Virtues of Aristotle (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Irwin, “Disunity