What Even Consequentialists Should Say About the Virtues

Luke Russell

Utilitas, 2007, vol. 19, issue 4, 466-486

Abstract: In Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver advocates a consequentialist account of the virtues. In so far as her view is ‘psychologically minimalist’, Driver's account is superior to the psychologically rich theories of virtue offered by Aristotle, Hume and Kant. However, Driver is also committed to ‘instrumentalism’ about virtue: a trait is a virtue only if it has instrumental value. In contrast, I argue for a ‘disjunctive’ form of minimalism, according to which a character trait counts as a virtue if it has either instrumental or intrinsic value. The common intuitions about virtue that Driver takes to support her ‘instrumental minimalism’ actually fit better with disjunctive minimalism. Admittedly, disjunctive minimalism is a messy account of virtue. However, this messiness would be a problem only if we drew a tight connection between virtue and right action, and we have good independent reasons for thinking there is no such tight link.

Date: 2007
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