Episode 57: Julia Annas discusses virtue ethics

episode

Elucidations 39 min 1 speaker 4 chapters transcribed 17 hours ago

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Matt Teichman 0:00

Hey, Matt Techman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show, to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. Alright, thanks.

Matt Teichman 0:33

Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm done and J Jugg and Nothing. With us today is Julia Annes, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, and she is here to discuss virtue ethics. Julie Annis, welcome.

Julia Annas 0:53

Welcome. Thank you for inviting me.

Matt Teichman 0:55

I guess we could just begin by talking about what virtues are. What are like what is a virtue and what are some examples of this or that virtue?

Julia Annas 1:04

Well, I think ordinarily a virtue is the way you are as a matter of character or the way you characteristically are. Uh when psychologists study them they call them traits, and philosophers are more likely to call them dispositions. So it's the way you are which is reliable. But it doesn't mean reliable in that you do it a lot. I think it's easier to take some examples. I think we all think honesty is a virtue, bravery is a virtue, compassion is a virtue. And you're not compassionate just because you do a compassionate thing on one occasion, or even because you might do it reliably. It's a matter of doing it for the right reasons. And also do having the right feelings about it. Somebody who's compassionate but regards it as a drag isn't yet compassionate.

Julia Annas 1:51

So there are a number of factors that go into what a virtue is, but I think it's pretty recognizable what some virtues are at any rate.

Unknown 2:01

Could you tell us something about what virtue ethics is and whether there are other approaches that also talk about virtue?

Julia Annas 2:08

Well, there are different sorts of virtue ethics because there are different conceptions of what a virtue is once you start getting theoretical about it. But any sort of virtue ethics is an approach to ethics in which it's central what sort of person you are. Other approaches to ethics often focus more directly on actions. And until recently there was a tendency for theories of ethics to take the form of giving you answers to ethical problems. So very often you'd start with what are difficult ethical problems and then see how you produce answers to that. And in fact one approach to ethics said, What is an ethical theory? Well we know what ethical problems are and an ethical theory is what gives you the answers to them.

Julia Annas 2:55

Now, virtue ethics starts more from a first personal perspective, that each of us has a life because we're living a life and each of us already, by the time we think about it, has certain virtues and certain vices. And so we start thinking about what it is to have these traits or dispositions as a matter of character. And so the question of what to do comes out of the issue of what sort of person to be. Though I should say at this point, this doesn't mean in philosophical terms that it's a theory in which character is foundational, as we say, and in which you can simply then read off what to do in terms of what character would be. How to act and the sort of person you are are are explained in terms of one another.

Julia Annas 3:40

And in fact virtue ethics doesn't think that there's any one concept in ethics that's foundational such that you can start from that, understand it, and everything else in the theory falls out of that. Virtue ethics typically has all the elements in it are interdependent and so there's no one place where you can start and that's the foundation and if you've got that you've simply then just got to derive all the rest.

Matt Teichman 4:04

Okay, so uh whereas maybe certain other approaches to ethics look at what's the difference between a right and a wrong action? What is it to do good versus to do bad? Virtue ethics looks at what is it to be a good person or to exhibit the right character traits. Can those two things come apart? I mean is it possible to be a virtuous person but do lots of what would otherwise be considered bad things?

Julia Annas 4:29

I think that would be pretty unlikely.