Minor Virtues: A Deweyan Approach

But as moral philosophers have come to recognize virtue ethics as a distinct type of ethical theory, a less distorting taxonomy of ethical theories is now possible. Virtue ethic theories have features in common with consequentialist and deontological theories, but are distinct from either. Like consequentialist theories, a virtue ethic may be said to define right in terms of good, i.e., the good of human flourishing. But unlike classic consequentialisms, human flourishing is not defined in terms of acquisition of experiences whose value is independent of the acts or dispositions by which they were obtained. Thus a good life is not simply a life in which, for example, preference-satisfaction is maximized, personal and/or public. Rather, preference satisfaction is good just to the extent that it is a feature of a good human life. And a good human life is a life which gives active expression to an agent's virtues. Following Gary Watson's suggestion,(4) we may say that what sets a virtue ethic apart from other types of theory is that it (1) assigns explanatory priority to character in its account of moral good and (2) offers an account of the traits of character - or virtues - which make for good character and action. .
             Defenders of Dewey's ethics have frequently argued that his normative theory differs markedly from its "consequentialist" rivals in assigning greater importance to character and personal integrity.(5) While Dewey identifies right action with action that promotes the good, he does not conceive of good in terms of states of affairs desirable in themselves, to which acts are merely instrumentally valuable. Instead he considers activity to be directly constitutive of human good. Thus in Dewey's ethics, evaluation of activities and goals turns out to be reciprocal. On the one hand, we evaluate particular choices of acts for their efficiency in realizing certain goals, while on the other, we evaluate selections of goals by reference to the sorts of activities to which they give rise.