Abstract
I provide an overview of Christine Swanton’s target-centered account of right (and virtuous) action. First, I contrast the target-centered account with its virtue-ethical rivals. Second, I detail what it takes for an action to hit the target of a virtue. Finally, I explicate and build upon Swanton’s holistic interpretation of overall virtuousness. Along the way, I showcase attractive features of the target-centered account, note alternatives to Swanton’s version, and respond to objections.
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Notes
- 1.
For an argument in favor of RIGHT, see Smith 2018.
- 2.
For an argument that this implication is undesirable, see Johnson 2003.
- 3.
This issue is complicated in Swanton’s work. In 2015a, Chap. 2, Swanton argues that ethical properties are response dependent in the sense that such properties are “open to certain responses or construals in responders having appropriate sensibilities, and these responses or construals are what make the propert[ies] intelligible as…ethical propert[ies]” (2015a, pp. 23–24). This is, however, consistent with the view that ethical properties are nonetheless recognized by virtuous agents, for given that ethical properties are intelligible, “we can talk intelligently about what makes traits of character virtues and what virtue demands of us, but the deliverances of even qualified sensibilities are not the truth makers of claims that V is a virtue, or demands thus and so” (2015a, p. 34).
- 4.
It is, however, an open question whether Swanton’s interpretation of the targets of virtue allows them to be distinctive enough. In (Smith 2017), I criticize Swanton for ‘muddying the aretaic waters’. The charge is that Swanton’s substantive view of the targets of virtue errs by allowing considerations that are specific to one virtue, such as justice, to bear on an action’s success or correctness in respect to another virtue, such as benevolence. In that paper, I outline constraints on an alternative interpretation of the targets of virtue, including an interpretation of the Aristotelian mean as applied to action, if it is to avoid muddying the aretaic waters.
- 5.
Swanton’s claim suggests that an adequate or good enough response is a response that is ‘good enough’ to not be vicious. This has important implications for avoiding the objection that the target-centered account is too demanding because not all right acts are virtuous in any respect (Smith 2018, pp. 251–252).
- 6.
Daniel C. Russell (2009, p. 108) attributes a version of this claim to Swanton.
- 7.
It is unclear whether Swanton is here arguing that an action’s being kind (by ordinary language standards) can count against the action’s being overall virtuous or for the stronger claim that an action can hit the target of kindness and yet that its doing so can count against the action’s overall virtuousness. Her own conclusion is merely the former claim but for it to show something significant about the relation between TARGET and RIGHT, it needs to be the latter claim.
- 8.
For other sorts of reasons why one may doubt Swanton’s evaluation of this example, see Stangl 2010, p. 39.
- 9.
Swanton (2003, p. 281) defends the similar claim that “[o]ne ought always, to act for an undefeated reason for action.”
- 10.
An intermediate position between Swanton and Little is provided by Rebecca Stangl’s (2010) asymmetrical particularism, according to which virtue-properties are not always right-making but vice-properties are always wrong-making.
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Smith, N.R. (2021). Target-Centered Virtue Ethics. In: Halbig, C., Timmermann, F. (eds) Handbuch Tugend und Tugendethik. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24466-8_23
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