My specific thesis is that moral character, rather than being a potency, is the sum of one’s moral habits and moral dispositions. Given the central role that the notion of character plays in the discipline of ethics and in living a moral life, the reader stands to gain knowledge that amply compensates for any extra expenditure of effort. Although my reasoning at times may strike the nonphilosopher as technical, much of it is based on common sense. 2 In this paper I intend to set forth a correct understanding of character. While I agree with these positions, I maintain that Mitchell is mistaken in identifying character as a potency. Her central theses are that the actions of a person who “is pressured or convinced or even willing to perform an action that considers to be bad or wrong” corrupts his character and, more generally, that one’s actions both impact on and reflect one’s character (Mitchell 2015, 149). ![]() Louise Mitchell takes up the important topic of character in her article “Integrity and virtue: The forming of good character” (Mitchell 2015). ![]() 1 Although initially, it might seem advantageous for the person to do things such as rob people and spy on his competitors, upon further reflection one realizes that if he were to do so, he would destroy his character, his very self, in the process. He put before us a scenario in which a person has a magic ring that, when worn, makes him invisible, and thus allows him to commit any crime he wishes without being seen (Plato 1961, 359e–60d, 367e). Plato long ago raised the question of why one should refrain from wrong-doing. Moral character is a crucial notion in ethics.
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