ABSTRACT

A general characterisation of virtues is as dispositions of thought, affect, and will ordered towards right judgement, feeling and choice. Rightness in the exercise of these powers is then to be understood in one or other of three ways: either teleologically, as proposed by Aristotle, Aquinas and J.S. Mill, as being directed towards the achievement of some objective good or goods 1 ; or rationalistically, in the manner of Kant and present day philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Tim Scanlon, as being in accord with formal principles of practical reason such as universalizability, impartiality or reasonable non-rejectibility 2 ; or finally, empirically, as proposed by Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith and their followers, including among our contemporaries Simon Blackburn and Alan Gibbard, in terms of some kind of normal human psychology. 3 As a Scot I would like to associate myself with the last of these traditions – Hutcheson, Hume and Smith were all of the Glasgow/Edinburgh School – but to do so I would recast it as a version of the teleological approach, in a manner that allows that feeling is in itself a form of cognition of objective goods. In fact, this is no great effort as it is a position that can be traced to Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas all of whom recognise the role of emotion in the discernment of goods and evils. 4