Is Character Necessary for Moral Behavior?

Professional Essay Paper Writing Service 15% OFF Discount Code QEW15

Is Character Necessary for Moral Behavior?

This question could be addressed in many different ways. I will begin by offering some preliminary remarks about the meanings of the relevant terms, which will help us get at a precise answer. First, by “character” I mean the possession of one or more virtues, and by “moral behavior” I mean the doing of morally good actions. But what does it mean to possess a virtue? One way to understand this idea, which comes from the ethical tradition associated with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, is that to possess a virtue is to have a deeply ingrained disposition, thanks to which one is able to not only recognize what is virtuous, but to do it promptly, easily, and without internal struggle. This is what I will mean by “possessing” a virtue or being virtuous.

With these definitions in hand, we can reformulate our question. Is a given virtue necessary for the kind of morally good action characteristic of that virtue? For example, is the virtue of courage necessary for courageous actions? Is the virtue of kindness necessary for kind actions? (Let’s leave aside questions about the so-called “unity” of the virtues — that is, for instance, whether one can be courageous but unkind, or kind but cowardly.) At first blush, it might seem obvious that the answer is “no”: people who aren’t particularly courageous sometimes do courageous things, and people who aren’t particularly kind sometimes do kind things. This is true. But do they do these things in the same way that courageous or kind people do them?
Buy this essay paper