美德伦理学论正确的行动

美德伦理学通常被指责为不能提供正确行动的独立标准。面对这一责难,美德伦理学产生了两种回应。一些美德伦理学家认为,伦理学应当用美德概念替代正确行动的概念;另一些美德伦理学家主张,正确行动的概念可以还原为美德概念,并提供了正确行动的美德伦理学解释。前者的回应是不合理的,后者提供的解释是不成功的。美德伦理学的结构决定了它不能提供正确行动的独立解释。其根源就在于美德伦理学与规则伦理学是伦理学的不同组成部分。美德伦理学主要是一种道德修养理论,不适合于论说对行动的道德评价。     

Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics and Right Action: A Reassessment

My question in this paper concerns what eudaimonist virtue ethics (EVE) might have to say about what makes right actions right. This is obviously an important question if we want to know what (if anything) distinguishes EVE from various forms of consequentialism and deontology in ethical theorizing. The answer most commonly given is that according to EVE, an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. However, understood as a claim about what makes particular actions right, this is not especially plausible. What makes a virtuous person??s actions right must reasonably be a matter of the feature, or features, which she, via her practical wisdom, appreciates as ethically relevant in the circumstances, and not the fact that someone such as herself would perform those actions. I argue that EVE instead should be understood as a more radical alternative in ethical philosophy, an alternative that relies on the background assumption that no general account or criterion for what makes right actions right is available to us: right action is simply too complex to be captured in a ??finite and manageable set of??moral principles?? (McKeever and Ridge, Principled ethics, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 139). This does not rule out the possibility that there might be some generalizations about how we should act which hold true without exception. Perhaps there are some things which we must never do, as well as some features of the world which always carry normative weight (even though their exact weight may vary from one context to another). Still, these things are arguably few and far between, and what we must do to ensure that we reliably recognize what is right in particular situations is to acquire practical wisdom. Nothing short of that could do the job.     

Applying Virtue to Ethics

Virtue ethics is sometimes taken to be incapable of providing guidance for an individual's actions, as some other ethical theories do. I show how virtue ethics does provide guidance for action, and also meet the objection that, while it may account for what we ought to do, it cannot account for the force of duty and obligation.     

Virtue Ethics and the Search for an Account of Right Action

Conceived of as a contender to other theories in substantive ethics, virtue ethics is often associated with, in essence, the following account or criterion of right action: VR: An action A is right for S in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous agent would characteristically do A in C. There are serious objections to VR, which take the form of counter-examples. They present us with different scenarios in which less than fully virtuous persons would be acting rightly in doing what no fully virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances. In this paper, various proposals for how to revise VR in order to avoid these counter-examples are considered. I will argue that in so far as the revised accounts really do manage to steer clear of the counter-examples to VR, something which it turns out is not quite true for all of them, they instead fall prey to other damaging objections. I end by discussing the future of virtue ethics, given what has come to light in the previous sections of the paper. In particular, I sketch the outlines of a virtue ethical account of rightness that is structurally different from VR. This account also faces important problems. Still, I suggest that further scrutiny is required before we are in a position to make a definitive decision about its fate.     

美德伦理与规则伦理：由对立互竞到协同互补

当代西方规范伦理学在理论形态上表现为美德伦理学与规则伦理学的对立互竞。这种对立局面导源于对立双方理论动机上的共同错误:单极化企图以及对伦理学限度的认知不足。现实道德生活是多样化的,这就决定了伦理学必须采取多元化的基本概念。因此,美德伦理与规则伦理的协同互补将是规范伦理学的未来发展趋势。     

美德伦理学与情境主义:论品格特征的实在性

情境主义依据社会心理学的实验研究结果主张,个体的行为取决于具体的情境,而不是作为品格特征的美德,根本不存在美德伦理学所说的品格特征。美德伦理学家一方面对情境主义所依托的实验证据进行了质疑,另一方面指出了情境主义对美德概念的误解,从而消解了情境主义的批评。但情境主义一方面可以提醒美德伦理学要注意情境的重要性,另一方面它的研究方法也值得美德伦理学借鉴。     

The Evolution of Social Ethics: Using Economic History to Understand Economic Ethics

In the development of Roman Catholic social thought from the teachings of the scholastics to the modern social encyclicals, changes in normative economics reflect the transformation of an economic terrain from its feudal roots to the modern industrial economy. The preeminence accorded by the modern market to the allocative over the distributive function of price broke the convenient convergence of commutative and distributive justice in scholastic just price theory. Furthermore, the loss of custom, law, and usage in defining the boundaries of economic behavior led to a depersonalization of economic relationships that had previously provided effective informal means of protecting individual well-being. Hence, recent economic ethics has had to look for nonprice, nonmarket mechanisms for distributive justice. This is reflected, for example, in the shift in attitude from the medieval antipathy toward unions to the contemporary defense of organized labor on moral grounds.     

德性伦理:人类的自我关怀

在以德性为核心的亚里士多德的伦理学体系中,德性泛指使事物成为完美事物的特性或规定."人的德性就是种使人成为善良,并获得其优秀成果的品质."[1]现代西方德性伦理学进而认为,"德性是人类为了幸福、欣欣向荣、生活美好所需要的特性品质."[2]在中国传统文化中,"德性"一词始见于<中庸>,曰:"故君子尊德性而道问学",认为德性是人的道德本性,是人生而具有的向善的本性.程颐提出"德性之知",将德性看做是人的内在自我认识.王夫之则将德性较为明确地界定为:"德性者,非耳目口体之性,乃仁义礼智之根心而具足者也,常存之于心,而静不忘,动不迷,不倚见闻言论而德皆实矣."又说:"好善恶恶,德性也."德性即好善恶恶之性.可见,中外思想家对德性有相近的看法.概而言之,德性就是让一个人高尚并使其实践活动完美的品质,是人之为人的内在规定,是实现人与自然、人与社会、人与自己相和谐的内在动力.德性伦理就是以个体或共同体品质为核心,以社会关系中的人为本位,以实现人的幸福生活为目的,以和谐为最高范畴的伦理道德体系.它从人的生活实践的内在性、整体性、超越性出发,真正实现了人对自我的伦理关怀.     

解密的最好办法就是了解

北京八中,在推行素质教育的过程中,创造性地为学生设立了“研究性学习”这门课程。研究性课程的基本思路:像这样一个与任何学科都不沾边的课题,该选谁做指导老师呢?经过对学校老师的一番了解,发现团委的孔燕老师参加了《青少年科学世界观教育》的课题并经常组织学生进行各种德育社会实践活动,因此,最后决定请孔燕老师来指导这个课题。老师带着学生制定计划、实施研究、写作论文。下面就介绍一个研究性学习《神异现象研究——舍利子相关问题研究》课题。这个课题是同学们自己选择,并自愿组合完成的。在课题进行     

如何理解"德得相通"

道德与利益的关系问题可折射出整个社会道德的基础与取向,必须对之予以正确阐释。“德得相通”应该理解成“德”与“道之得”、“心之得”意义上的相通,不应该似是而非的理解成“德”主要与“利之得”意义上相通,更不能把如此理解的“德得相通”视为中国传统道德的基本精神与价值取向。中国传统道德的基本精神与价值取向,应该是以提升自我德性和实现理想人格为主旨,强调克己尚义的道德价值论。     

How to Think About Virtue and Right

Abstract

Robert Johnson argues that virtue ethical accounts of right action fail because they cannot take account of the fact that there are things we ought to do precisely because we do not possess virtuous character traits. Self-improving actions are his paradigm case and it would indeed be a problem if virtue ethics could not make sense of the propriety of self-improvement. To solve this serious problem, I propose that virtue ethics ought to define right action in terms of the virtuous agent's reasons for action instead of defining right action in terms of the actions that the virtuous agent performs. I argue that this revised definition of right action makes sense of the Tightness of self-improving actions and that it can be given a genuinely virtue ethical interpretation.     

情感主义德性伦理学：一种当代的进路

在当代德性伦理学的哲学思潮中,较之于学者们普遍重视的亚里士多德的理性主义传统,相对受到忽视的休谟的情感主义传统反倒更有可能为我们提供一种德性伦理学在当代复兴的思想源泉,在与儒家德性论会通的语境之下尤其如此.当代道德发展心理学的研究印证了休谟的移情观念,而这一移情观念又可以用来对道义论进行一种情感主义的辩护,即一种建基于移情观念的当代情感主义德性伦理学.