Online research in philosophy

There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important inbusiness. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moralassessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they superveneon) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations.But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or hervirtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can helpdevelop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires.

We often speak of a person's character--good or bad, strong or weak--and think of it as a guide to how that person will behave in a given situation. Oddly, however, philosophers writing about ethics have had virtually nothing to say about the role of character in ethical behavior. What is character? How does it relate to having a self, or to the process of moral decision? Are we responsible for our characters? Character answers these questions, and goes on to examine the place of character in ethical philosophy. Both the Kantian and utilitarian traditions, Kupperman argues, have largely ignored the ways in which decisions are integrated over time, and instead provide a "snapshot" model of moral decision. Kupperman demonstrates the deficiencies of a number of classic and contemporary ethical theories that do not take account of the idea of character, and offers his own character-based theory. Along the way he touches on such subjects as personal identity, the importance of happiness, moral education, and the definition of a valuable life.

The way in which ethical standards are neglected or applied is a function of individual character. The best guarantee of ethical leadership, therefore, lies in the identification of those already predisposed to live according to high moral standards. The ascetic construct is offered as a type of personality with such a predisposition. The ascetic is self-controlled, purposeful, and mindful with regard to consequences. The character traits of the ascetic leader are predicted to increase ethical awareness and ethical accountability within his organization or hers. This will increase the probability of the organization''s economic success because it will reduce uncertainty on the part of customers and investors. A better understanding of the ascetic personality may be helpful in identifying those with the potential for becoming highly ethical leaders.

Contemporary moral psychology and education overemphasise rationality and neglect moral virtues and personality that must be part of a comprehensive understanding of moral functioning. The purpose of this study was to delineate the perceived personality characteristics of moral exemplars using the template of the Five-Factor Model which represents the fundamental dimensions of personality, and to compare that trait description with those for related types of exemplars. Participants were 120 adults from across the lifespan (17-91 years) who provided free-listing descriptions of moral, religious and spiritual exemplars, which were then analysed in terms of the five personality factors. Results revealed meaningful differences in personality attributions across types of exemplars, and indicated that traits reflecting the Conscientiousness and Agreeableness factors were particularly salient for the moral exemplar. Discussion focuses on the value of a re-examination of moral character and virtue, and the need to integrate moral cognition and personality within a realistic model of moral functioning and education.

The first part of this article discusses recent skepticism about character traits. The second describes various forms of virtue ethics as reactions to such skepticism. The philosopher J.-P. Sartre argued in the 1940s that character traits are pretenses, a view that the sociologist E. Goffman elaborated in the 1950s. Since then social psychologists have shown that attributions of character traits tend to be inaccurate through the ignoring of situational factors. (Personality psychology has tended to concentrate on people's conceptions of personality and character rather than on the accuracy of these conceptions). Similarly, the political theorist R. Hardin has argued for situational explanations of bloody social disputes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa, rather than explanations in terms of ethnic hatred for example. A version of virtue ethics might identify virtues as characteristics of acts rather than character traits, as traits consisting in actual regularities in behavior, or as robust dispositions that would manifest themselves also in counterfactual situations.

Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it doesnot undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a prioriclaim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differencesin character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley andBatson experiments have to do with such character traits as obedience and punctuality cannot help to explain the relevant differencesin the way people behave in different situations. His appeal to personality theory fails, because, as an intellectual academic discipline,personality theory is in shambles, mainly because it has been concerned with conceptions of personality rather than with what is trueabout personality. Solomon’s rejection of Doris’s claims about the fragmentation of character is at odds with the received view in socialpsychology. Finally, he is mistaken to think that rejecting virtue ethics implies rejecting free will and moral responsibility.

In his recent book Lack of Character, John Doris argues that people typically lack character (understood in a particular way). Such a claim, if correct, would have devastating implications for moral philosophy and for various human moral projects (e.g. character development). I seek to defend character against Doris's challenging attack. To accomplish this, I draw on Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant to identify some of the central components of virtuous character. Next, I examine in detail some of the central experiments in social psychology upon which Doris's argument is based. I argue that, properly understood, such experiments reveal differences in the characters of their subjects, not that their subjects lack character altogether. I conclude with some reflections on the significance of such experiments and the importance of character.