Commentary on ‘What Virtue Adds to Value’

ABSTRACT

Pettigrove’s paper argues strongly and effectively against a proportionality principle grounded on a univocal scale of value, and argues in favour of a kind of virtue ethics that is focused exclusively on the characteristic and non-univocal attitudes of the subject. In my critique, however, I point out that not all proponents of value ethics adhere to the proportionality principle and that the radical shift from object to subject has risks that were highlighted in a book by C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man. I also point out that Pettigrove in fact treats ‘I love you’ and ‘I forgive you’ substantively in terms of a first-person act in which any relationship-enabling response by the second person is accidental. On this account, there seems to be an underlying ethical challenge, namely that the Pettigrovian valuers are in reality isolated, cut off from relationships based on genuine union with second persons.

KEY WORDS:

• proportionality principle
• non-univocal values
• first-person perspective
• second-person perspective

Notes

1 See also Aristotle’s comments on the differences of ethics and mathematics in the Nicomachean Ethics, I.3.1094b10–27. See also Bentham’s qualifications of his own utility principle. For a summary see, e.g., Crimmins [2019].

2 Pettigrove draws principally from Hurka [2001: 13, 16, 17].

3 Pettigrove [2022: 125] offers a similar image of blanketing sin by quoting Matthew 5:45, in which God is described as sending sun and rain on just and unjust alike, rather than one of a vast number of texts, such as Matthew 25:31-46 on the Last Judgement, which teach that divine indifference to good and evil is only apparent and temporary.

4 ‘“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”’ [Carroll 1934: 205]

5 For an application of a second-person perspective to the problem of personal isolation, see, e.g., Stump [2010]. See also Stump [2018]. I have also applied this perspective to interpret Aquinas’s moral philosophy in Pinsent [2012].