Eudaimonic Ethics

The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well

Lorraine Besser

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317916789
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

In this book, Lorraine Besser-Jones develops a eudaimonistic virtue ethics based on a psychological account of human nature. While her project maintains the fundamental features of the eudaimonistic virtue ethical framework—virtue, character, and well-being—she constructs these concepts from an empirical basis, drawing support from the psychological fields of self-determination and self-regulation theory. Besser-Jones's resulting account of "eudaimonic ethics" presents a compelling normative theory and offers insight into what is involved in being a virtuous person and "acting well." This original contribution to contemporary ethics and moral psychology puts forward a provocative hypothesis of what an empirically-based moral theory would look like.

1 Moderate Psychological Realism

The anatomist ought never to emulate the painter; nor in his accurate dissections and portraitures of the smaller parts of the human body, pretend to give his figures any graceful and engaging attitude or expression . . . An anatomist, however, is admirably fitted to give advice to a painter; and ’tis even impracticable to excel in the latter art, without the assistance of the former. We must have an exact knowledge of the parts, their situation and connexion, before we can design with any elegance or correctness. And thus the most abstract speculations concerning human nature, however cold and unentertaining, become subservient to practical morality; and may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortions.

—Hume (2000, p. 395)

The field of empirical ethics is gathering steam. It is now, if not widely accepted at least not controversial, to claim that moral theorizing ought to be constrained by some form of psychological realism. But what happens if we see moral philosophy not only as constrained by a psychological conception of human nature but constructed by it? What happens when the philosopher begins with consultation of the psychologist? Will we end up with a theory that, as Hume (2000) hoped, will be “more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortions” (p. 395)?

In what follows here, I construct a eudaimonistic virtue ethics from a psychologically based understanding of human behavior. The result is a virtue ethics that maintains the fundamental features of the eudaimonistic virtue ethical framework: a naturalistic understanding of virtue, a normative ideal defined in terms of a particular state of character, and a theory of the connection between possession of that state of character and the development of well-being. Yet, because it constructs these concepts (virtue, character, well-being) from an empirical basis, the resultant theory departs in many ways from traditional eudaimonistic virtue ethics. The result, I hope, is a theory that is more correct in its descriptive claims, and so is more persuasive in its normative claims.

Over the course of this book, I defend a picture of human nature as driven by innate psychological needs, needs whose satisfaction constitutes an important kind of well-being and whose satisfaction requires positive and meaningful engagement with others. We will see that the line of empirical research supporting this conception of human nature gives us good reason to revise what we think about virtue and virtuous agency. I argue that virtue ought to be understood solely in instrumental terms, according to which success in engaging well with others—in acting well—is the mark of the virtuous agent. Accordingly, I defend an instrumentalist definition of virtue according to which virtue consists in whatever state of character reliably and predictably enables agents to act well. This understanding of virtue is justified by appeal to the kind of behavior research suggests to be essential toward engaging well with others and thereby satisfying innate psychological needs.

I also argue that character, empirically constructed, turns out not to be most helpfully understood in terms of global traits, even if some form of these do exist. Rather, moral character is best construed in terms of one’s moral beliefs, intentions, and the ways in which these interact. The ramifications of this revised account of moral character for virtue ethics are in some instances dramatic, particularly once we start to construct the actual state of character that reliably and predictably enables us to act well. Gone are discrete character traits, such as justice and compassion. In their place is a holistic conception of virtue, which must be understood as a descriptor of one’s entire moral character. Gone is a concern for requiring a particular relationship between emotion and virtue. In its place is an emphasis on cognitively committing to the goals involved in acting well and on acting for the sake of those goals. Gone is any hesitancy toward specifying concrete standards of right action. In its place is a hierarchal system of goals that offers both specific action sequences as well as a decision procedure to invoke in cases of conflict.

To highlight the differences between my approach and more traditional defenses of eudaimonistic virtue ethics, I refer to my theory as a theory of eudaimonic ethics. Eudaimonic ethics is a species of eudaimonistic virtue ethics. It is informed by the psychological conception of eudaimonic wellbeing, rather than the Aristotelian conception of eudaimonia, and so makes necessary revisions to its understanding of virtue and virtuous agency.

Why a virtue ethics? Although Aristotelian virtue ethical theories were the first and most prominent victims of the charge of psychological inadequacy, the structural features inherent in eudaimonistic virtue ethics make it a natural ally to empirical ethics and its accompanying methodological commitment to some form of psychological realism. Eudaimonistic virtue ethics frames moral theorizing as an extension of moral psychology. Requiring this moral psychology be empirically-based builds on the very spirit of virtue ethics, one which has made virtue ethics an appealing alternative to many concerned with the perceived inability of other normative theories to provide a plausible moral psychology (Anscombe, 1958; Stocker, 1976; B. Williams, 1981).

As is typical for a eudaimonistic virtue ethics, the scope of eudaimonic ethics is limited largely to considerations regarding personal development and interpersonal interactions, for these considerations are most central to the development of an agent’s well-being. Considerations of personal development and interpersonal interactions surely do not inform the entire scope of our obligations to others, but, as we will see, they are the kind of concerns most central to our well-being and so are the ones motivated within the framework of eudaimonistic virtue ethics, which remains my exclusive focus. Considerations of human rights and justice likely motivate a broader range of moral obligations; these considerations, however, fall into a different arena than the one I explore here. Moving forward, it will help to keep in mind that the account I offer does not purport to cover the entire range of moral obligations and, instead, stays within the virtue ethical tradition of focusing on personal development and interpersonal interactions.

Eudaimonistic virtue ethics maintains that questions about how one ought to live should be answered by appeal to the good life, to a flourishing life, to a life in which one attains well-being. It maintains that there is a direct connection between virtue and well-being and so portrays a conception of morality as something that is about and for the individual. I think this is a very appealing conception of morality, one that can not only claim morality to be of utmost importance to the individual, but that can also clearly support, explain, and justify this claim. The existence of this justification is vital when it comes to enabling an individual to identify with morality and fully commit to living well. I begin discussion of well-being in Chapter 2, where I propose an understanding of well-being as defined through the satisfaction of innate psychological needs. Before turning to this discussion of the content of eudaimonic ethics, however, let us take a moment to explore in this chapter the intuition underlying a commitment to psychological realism and, more generally, the move toward engaging in empirical ethics.

Psychological Realism

While to many the idea that moral theorizing ought to be conducted with a psychologically realistic picture of human nature is a fundamentally compelling one, it is often faced with skepticism. This skepticism finds its basis in concerns regarding the relationship between the descriptive and the normative, described aptly by Flanagan, Sarkissian, and Wong (2007b) as follows:

Defenders of naturalistic ethics are continually asked to explain how a better picture of moral psychology can contribute to our understanding of ethical theory in general and normative ethics in particular. Moral psychology, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and the other mental and social sciences can tell us perhaps how people in fact think and behave. Ethical theories tell us what the aims of ethics are, where to look to ground morality, and so on, while normative ethics tells us how we ought to feel, think, and act. It is hard to see, the objectors claim, how such factual or descriptive knowledge can contribute to the projects of helping us to understand the aims of ethics, where the sources of moral motivation lie, and how we ought to live. (p. 12)

The skepticism described here notes doubts regarding using empirical research to understand morality; the skepticism is even more entrenched, we can imagine, with regard to using empirical research as I propose to do so here, as a tool for constructing a virtue ethics.

There is indeed something counterintuitive about using descriptive accounts of human nature to develop moral ideals. Ideals, by their nature, depict a state of being that is not typical. No one was clearer on this than Aristotle, who fully embraced the idea that virtue was an ideal attainable by only a few. Moreover, he claimed that this is part of what makes the ideal praiseworthy:

[I]t is a hard task to be good; in every case it is a task to find the median: for instance, not everyone can find the middle of a circle, but only a man who has the proper knowledge. Similarly, anyone can get angry—that is easy—or can give away money or spend it; but to do all this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way is no longer something easy that anyone can do. It is for this reason that good conduct is rare, praiseworthy, and noble

(Aristotle, 1962, p. 50).¹

Aristotle likely would take worries about psychological realism with a grain of salt. If we take the preceding passage seriously, we might even worry that a theory’s being psychologically realistic was a sign that theorists had made the mistake of collapsing the normative into the descriptive, and thus had gone seriously astray in their moral theorizing.

This line of thinking, however, has the potential to jeopardize the practical aspirations of normative moral theorizing. Normative moral theorizing isn’t (or shouldn’t be) content to think about what the best/virtuous/most moral life is. It ought to focus also on how people can attain that life and what they ought to do in order to become a good person. To satisfy fully these practical aspirations, we need to develop normative recommendations that can be practically implemented. Because whether normative recommendations can be practically implemented depends on what the agent is like, a descriptive account of human nature seems a promising starting point—that is, as long as it is clear how we can move beyond this descriptive account of human nature and enter into normative terrain.

This challenge is quite straightforward: It is to show how it is that we can construct a normative ideal from a descriptive (i.e., psychologically realistic) account of human nature, to show how it is that the painter can learn from the anatomist. While there may be different ways of meeting this challenge, the solution I offer here interprets the normative ideal in terms of a psychologically grounded account of how people can behave. We solve the challenge through establishing a bridge between psychological accounts of how people behave with psychological accounts of how people can behave, where how people can behave is determined by consultation with empirical research.

We might describe this enterprise as providing a theory of “reasonable expectations,” in that the ideal must be one that empirical research shows to be reasonably expected of agents. By restricting normative ideals to what can be reasonably expected of agents, we preserve the essential components of both the competing intuitions described earlier. We provide a normative moral theory that is grounded in a psychologically realistic understanding of human nature without sacrificing the normative aspirations of moral theory. The ideals presented by this approach still provide ideals for people to strive for, yet because these ideals are restricted to what people can be reasonably expected to do, these ideals take the form of realistic goals for people. These goals most certainly will require people to change their behavior, but they call for modifications most people will be able to adapt to, and beneficially so, thereby fulfilling the practical aspirations of normative moral theorizing.

The picture I have in mind here can be understood in terms of a bottom-up approach to moral theorizing.² A bottom-up approach begins with analysis of the broad spectrum of human behavior as it actually occurs and examines which modes of behavior are ones that we ought to encourage and emulate. A top-down approach, in contrast, begins with analysis of the ideally moral or virtuous person, and develops prescriptions from this analysis. While it is possible for a top-down approach to deliver normative requirements that are psychologically realistic, on the bottom-up approach, considerations of psychological realism necessarily enter into the development of a moral theory. We can appreciate how the bottom-up approach thus presents those committed to psychological realism with a safer bet, a route that, as long as it is conducted through consultation with empirical studies, provides our best path for developing ideals, as well as normative guidance on how to attain those ideals, guidance that people can be reasonably expected to implement.

This line of thought puts a new spin on the familiar Kantian principle that “ought” implies “can.” It holds that in order to figure out what people ought to be doing, we need to determine what they can do and that the best way to do this is to start one’s theorizing with a psychologically realistic picture of human nature.³ Yet ascertaining what people can do should not be dismissed as a wholly descriptive enterprise. I am not interested merely in what people actually do, but more fundamentally am interested in what they are capable of doing given their psychological makeup, as imperfect and limited as it is. By thinking about what people are capable of doing, and how they can change their behaviors, we generate normative ideals, thereby satisfying the normative aspirations of a moral theory while also staying true to the practical aspirations in that the normative ideals are ones that we can reasonably expect people to attain.⁴

The normative aspirations of moral theory, combined with the equally essentially practical aspirations, call for a moderate psychological realism, which restricts moral theorizing to a psychologically realistic understanding of what sorts of behavior, belief formation, and decision-making processes can be reasonably expected of people. The requirement of moderate psychological realism has obvious roots in Flanagan’s (1991) principle of minimal psychological realism, a principle that, while invoking similar intuitions about the need to ground moral theorizing in psychologically plausible accounts of human nature, nonetheless falls short of providing a requirement that upholds these intuitions. The principle of minimal psychological realism, as defined by Flanagan, places the following restraint on moral theories: “Make sure when constructing a moral theory or projecting a moral ideal that the character decision processing, and behavior prescribed are possible, or are perceived to be possible, for creatures like us” (1991, p. 32).⁵ Taken literally, this principle is quite minimal indeed: Saying something should be perceived to be possible does not amount to much, especially when the majority of the perceivers fall victim to many different observational biases that leave them with a mistaken view of human nature.⁶

Thanks to Doris (2002) and Harman (1999), many philosophers are now familiar with the “fundamental attribution error”: people’s tendencies to overestimate person’s contributions to behavior, such as by attributing their behavior to internal dispositions rather than external situational factors (Krueger & Funder, 2004, p. 317). The fundamental attribution error is just one of dozens of biases that lead people to err in their judgments of human behavior.⁷ Other biases run from the “just world bias” which leads us to believe that the world must be fair (or will turn out to be fair in the long run), to the “confirmation bias,” which leads us to seek evidence that confirms and supports our beliefs, to the “sinister attribution error,” which leads us to engage in collective paranoia and distrust of organizations; to the “empathy gap,” which leads us to underestimate affective influences on our behavior; and so on.

These biases taint our conceptions of what we perceive to be possible for human agents. Because of the fundamental attribution error, we might think that people have complete control over their behavior; because of the empathy gap, we might think...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Moderate Psychological Realism
• 2 Innate Psychological Needs
• 3 Sociability
• 4 Autonomy, Identification, and Morality
• 5 A Complex Account of Character
• 6 An Instrumental Theory of Virtue
• 7 Practical Reason, Goal Pursuit, and Acting Well
• 8 Value Fulfillment
• 9 Acting Well
• 10 Virtuous Agency
• References
• Index