Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T23:03:50.564Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An Aristotelian Critique of Situationism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2008

Kristján Kristjánsson
Affiliation:
University of Akureyiri, and Iceland University of Education

Abstract

Aristotle says that no human achievement has the stability of activities that express virtue. Ethical situationists consider this claim to be refutable by empirical evidence. If that is true, not only Aristotelianism, but folk psychology, contemporary virtue ethics and character education have all been seriously infirmed. The aim of this paper is threefold: (1) to offer a systematic classification of the existing objections against situationism under four main headings: ‘the methodological objection’, ‘the moral dilemma objection’, ‘the bullet-biting objection’ and ‘the anti-behaviouristic objection’; (2) to resuscitate a more powerful Aristotelian version of the ‘anti-behaviouristic objection’ than advanced by previous critics; and (3) to explore some of the implications of such resuscitation for our understanding of the salience of character and for future studies of its nature.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, T. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1985), 25 (1100b12–14)Google Scholar.

2 See especially Harman, G., ‘Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999), 315331CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doris, J., ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, Noûs 32 (1998), 504530CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Doris, J., Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Harman, op. cit., 327.

4 See Doris, Lack of Character, ix.

5 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 504–505.

6 Harman, op. cit., 328.

7 Sardonic poststructuralists may want to argue that moral philosophers resent situationism because it threatens to undermine part of their authority – to devaluate their ‘symbolic capital’. Whether or not such explanations are to be taken seriously is another story.

8 See e.g. Flanagan, O., Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), Ch. 14Google Scholar; Athanassoulis, N., ‘A Response to Harman: Virtue Ethics and Character Traits’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2001), 215221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, C., ‘Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics’, The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003), 365392CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kamtekar, R., ‘Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character’, Ethics 114 (2004), 458491CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldie, P., On Personality (London/New York: Routledge, 2004), 6074Google Scholar; Sabini, J. and Silver, M., ‘Lack of Character? Situationism Critiqued’, Ethics 115 (2005), 535562CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleming, D., ‘The Character of Virtue: Answering the Situationist Challenge to Virtue Ethics’, Ratio 19 (2006), 2442CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Webber, J., ‘Virtue, Character and Situations’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (2006), 193213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 505.

10 Harman is the one who draws the most radical implications from the experiments, evidently rejecting the notion of character altogether, at least in its everyday sense; see op. cit., 316.

11 Doris, Lack of Character, 22–26.

12 Although this fact seems to have gone unnoticed in the situationist literature, such attributions may be partly culture-dependent. In cross-cultural studies, Western subjects tend to explain murders and sports achievements through ascribed personal traits, whereas East Asian subjects explain such events with reference to contextual variables; see Lee, F., Hallahan, M. and Herzog, T., ‘Explaining Real Life Events: How Culture and Domain Shape Attributions’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22 (1996), 732741CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Harman, op. cit., 316.

14 Flanagan, op. cit., 32.

15 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 513.

16 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 514.

17 See e.g. Harman, op. cit., 320.

18 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 516–517.

19 See e.g. McLaughlin, T. H. and Halstead, J. M., ‘Education in Character and Virtue’, Education in Morality, Halstead, J. M. and McLaughlin, T. H. (eds) (London/New York: Routledge, 1999), 132164, esp. 134–135Google Scholar.

20 Harman, op. cit., 328.

21 Damon, W., The Moral Child: Nurturing Children's Natural Moral Growth (New York: Free Press, 1988), 69Google Scholar.

22 See Sabini and Silver, op. cit., 539–540.

23 Sabini and Silver, op. cit., 550–561.

24 See Damon, op. cit., 8.

25 See Kamtekar, op. cit., 481.

26 Kamtekar, op. cit., 473.

27 See e.g. Hursthouse, R., ‘Applying Virtue Ethics’, Virtues and Reasons. Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G. and Quinn, W. (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 5775Google Scholar.

28 See e.g. McDowell, J., ‘Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle's Ethics’, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty, Engstrom, S. and Whiting, J. (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1935Google Scholar; and Dunne, J., Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techné’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

29 Aristotle, op. cit., 36 and 241 (1104a10–11 and 1164b26–30). On Aristotle as a moral generalists, see e.g. Irwin, T., ‘Ethics as an Inexact Science: Aristotle's Ambitions for Moral Theory’, Moral Particularism, Hooker, B. and Little, M. O. (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 100129Google Scholar; and Kristjánsson, K., Aristotle, Emotions, and Education (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), Chs 3 and 11Google Scholar.

30 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, p. 511. Cf. Fleming, op. cit., 41–42; Miller, op. cit., 378–379.

31 Aristotle, op. cit., 190 and 197 (1150a15 and 1152a25–6).

32 See e.g. Miller, op. cit., 370 and 385.

33 See e.g. Sabini and Silver, op. cit., 542–544.

34 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 506. Cf. Aristotle, op. cit., 25–26 and 115 (1100b19–34 and 1128b22–32).

35 Curzer, H., ‘How Good People Do Bad Things: Aristotle on the Misdeeds of the Virtuous’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 28 (2005), 233–56Google Scholar.

36 Harman, op. cit., 317.

37 See e.g. Athanassoulis, op. cit., 218; Kamtekar, op. cit., 460 and 477; Webber, op. cit., Section VI.

38 Athanassoulis, op. cit., 218; Goldie, op. cit., 72–73.

39 Goldie, op. cit., 73.

40 Aristotle, op. cit., 91–93 (1121b13–1122a17).

41 Aristotle, op. cit., 103–104 (1125a27–35).

42 Aristotle, op. cit., 90–91 (1121a10–1121b13).

43 Aristotle, op. cit., 292 (1179b11–17).

44 Aristotle, op. cit., 190–191 (1150a13–1150b7).

45 Aristotle, op. cit., 190–191 (1150a13–37).

46 Aristotle, op. cit., 173–96 (1145a34–1151b33).

47 Aristotle, op. cit., 173–96 (1145a34–1151b33).

48 Aristotle, op. cit., 32 (1102b25–9).

49 Aristotle, op. cit., 88 (1120b4–6). A parallel example is of the virtue of mildness (with respect to anger): The mild person ‘seems to err more in the direction of deficiency [of anger], since the mild person is ready to pardon’, see 105 (1125b35–1126a3). Cf. Curzer, op. cit.

50 Aristotle, op. cit., 40 (1105a30–34).

51 For thicker examples from literary sources, see Kristjánsson, op. cit., Ch. 9.

52 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 512. For somewhat different responses to those given below, see Miller, op. cit., 380–381.

53 Cf. Aristotle, op. cit., 213 (1126b24).

54 Aristotle, , On Rhetoric, trans. Kennedy, G. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 161 (1388a30–35)Google Scholar.

55 Doris, ‘Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics’, 509–511.

56 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 44 (1106b29–35).

57 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 97–104 (1123b34–1125a35).

58 Cited in Webber, op. cit., 199.

59 Cited in Blasi, A., ‘Bridging Moral Cognition and Moral Action: A Critical Review of the Literature’, Psychological Bulletin 88 (1980), 145, here 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 See e.g. Goldberg, L. R., ‘The Structure of Phonotypic Personality Traits’, American Psychologist 48 (1993), 2634CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Aristotle would agree with Doris that situation selection and modification constitutes an important facet of such a sensitisation process – but he would not neglect more cognitively complex strategies.

62 In addition to sources I have already cited, see Ben-Ze'ev, A., The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), esp. 8889, on affective traitsGoogle Scholar; Keller, M. and Edelstein, W., ‘The Development of the Moral Self from Childhood to Adolescence’, The Moral Self, Noam, G. G. and Wren, T. E. (eds) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 310336, on the significance of moral feelings in the construction of a moral selfGoogle Scholar; and the extensive literature on Big Five personality research.

63 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 281 (1176a33–36).

64 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 20 (1099a4–6).

65 Cf. L. Montada, ‘Understanding Oughts by Assessing Moral Reasoning or Moral Emotions’, in Noam and Wren (eds.), op. cit., 292–309.

66 Kamtekar, op. cit., 476.

67 Webber, op. cit., 209–211.