Risk and Virtue Ethics

Abstract

In this chapter, we explain the nature of virtue ethics, differentiating it from competing moral theories – consequentialism or deontology – and arguing that it is superior to both when it comes to the moral assessment of risk. We explore in detail what a virtue ethics approach to the moral evaluation of risk taking would involve, focusing particularly upon the role played by character in such assessments. Our main argument is that individual instances of risk taking are not isolated events, but part of a pattern of behavior on the part of the risk taker. We argue, furthermore, that this pattern does not arise as a result of arbitrary, automatic processes over which individual agents have no control. Rather, risk-related behavior patterns are the product of a complex set of settled dispositions that constitute character. We argue that character dispositions are developed over time through education, which involves habituation, active reflection, and reflective self-modification. They bring together the influences of desire, emotion, and thought to provide explanations of actions and decisions, which are multi-dimensional and profoundly sensitive to the particularity of individual risk-involving actions and choices. Risk taking is both a necessary part of human life and a source of moral vulnerability – it is very difficult to make good choices about risk and there are a lot of different ways in which our risky choices could prove to be morally inadequate. It is our contention that only virtue ethics with its emphasis on character – character development, and character vulnerability – provides us with a sufficiently rich vocabulary to (a) furnish satisfying explanations of the sensible moral judgments we make about risks and risk takers all the time and (b) facilitate effective rational reflection about commonsense moral evaluations of risk taking. We illustrate the value of the virtue ethics approach using a hypothetical time-travel experiment in which an agent must choose whether to take some very serious risks and/or whether to expose others to risk.