I didn't know that.
I don't think God would if I told him.
Altruism isn't really my concern so much as things like sympathy and empathy with the suffering and violation of others. I can see why a virtue ethicist would be charitable, but I wonder if they would disregard the suffering of others in the name of 'virtue'. eg: As long as you can justify yourself being virtuous, you don't have to take the pain and choice of others seriously.
I don't think it's possible to be a truly virtuous (pervasively virtuous) person and be able to divide what's good for you from what's good for other people, including empathy.
Morality being beautiful isn't unique to virtue ethics.
But VE is the only theory that holds beauty as integral, even motivational, to being a good or ethical person.
I consider the lack of mentioning others quite sad. As long as you are an excellent person, to hell with everyone else.
I just don't see this as a part of a virtuous person's character. A virtuous person is going to value how other people are affected by things, because considering the betterment of other people is a possible situation to will the good for them, the intuitive sense of this goodness for them being beauty.
That is such a weak and lacking condemnation of torture. It's bad because it makes the victimizer a bad person? Because the victimizer might feel a little bad about themselves (but might not)? Really? Do you have nothing stronger to say about torture other than how the torturer feels about him/herself?
What about the victim? You don't think the suffering inflicted on the victim is important and absolutely wrong? As I said, it seems such self-centred ethics makes people apathetic towards the victim.
Easy now.
What is the alternative to what you mention? That the torturer should be disciplined by the law? Keep in mind that ethics doesn't overlap with legality here, the latter which minimizes harm in society. If we're looking at the torturer and we're not talking about coercing him legally (if we can imagine meeting him in the middle of nowhere and he has no chance of getting caught), then how else are we to speak of him ethically? That his actions cause less happiness to the victim (consequentialism)? No, that doesn't work. That he has a duty not to do bad things? No, that obviously doesn't work.
The only way you have any hope for the possibility of appealing to anyone, if we keep the punishment of the law off the table (which should be considered in your example, I think), we have to appeal to
how the character of the unvirtuous person, here the torturer, can be made better for not only others but also himself. He has to learn that 1) he has no clear idea of what the good is, and 2) he doesn't realize that following the good makes his character good, which brings with it happiness as flourishing.
How else do people "come around" to doing good? I'll be darned if it's because of duty, and only in stretches because of consequences: Nietzsche called utilitarianism a "pig's philosophy," saying we only know what's good for us (in an external sense) "two or three paces" down the road. And you can get into possibly dangerous ground if a person is purely Kantian and does everything for duty, given that his heart isn't with the actions he has, making it possible that he'll have a rotten character despite his ability to follow duty. (To me, deontology always ran the risk of legalism in the mode of the scribes and pharisees, who did the "right actions" of the law but never developed a right heart or character.) A person comes around to being good by realizing the value of the good, and how being a person who does good or virtuous things consistently is a better person as well as a better person to other people. Otherwise we only have empty duty, which could potentially lead to blandness of character, or the superficiality of happiness as what is pleasing consequentially.
I don't know what you mean by saying happiness is atomical.
Character doesn't matter as much as action and their consequences. The important thing is doing the right thing, not being able to pat yourself on the back for being good.
By atomically I mean that happiness is considered in discrete, even quantitative, units for individual situations, rather than looking at the character of the self, which is aggregately "build up" or "town down" by the virtuous or unvirtuous choices he makes in these specific and multifarious situations.
And no really virtuous person is going to be as crude as pat himself on the back. For me, being virtuous
is its own reward, given that it involves engaging with the good, which involves a type of participation with beauty. The rewards that go with virtue here include instances of the good where other people are benefited. Therefore, being virtuous involves instances of helping other people and these instances are their own reward. What psychologically "makes it" rewarding is the sense of beauty associated with virtuous action.
