Abstract
Impartial moral theories must deal with the Problem of the Demandingness of Morality—the worry that impartial moral requirements (whether deontological or consequentialist) will be so demanding upon an agent’s time and resources that she will not be able to pursue her own flourishing, a good human life as she conceives it. Proponents of eudaimonistic virtue ethics must confront an inverted form of the demandingness objection, namely that their theory is not demanding enough, does not require that agents ever sacrifice their own good. Of course, the requirements of virtues such as justice, generosity, and courage frequently call for much to be sacrificed (time, resources, even life), but never for agents to sacrifice their pursuit of the good life as they see it. Everything is done for the sake of eudaimonia, so whatever sacrifices agents do make are made for the sake of eudaimonia—and thus, it seems, for the sake of a greater good for the agents themselves. After considering and finding inadequate a range of responses that are analogous to common responses to the problem of demandingness, I outline what I take to be the correct response to the inverted demandingness objection, which is to make clear that the pursuit of eudaimonia is itself a sacrifice; it is indeed the sacrifice of the agent’s whole life. The word “sacrifice” derives from Latin words meaning to make holy, to dedicate something to the divine. More generally, we can say that it is to dedicate something to the good—to a person, community, or cause insofar as it is good. I argue that to live a life of virtue is to sacrifice oneself, is to dedicate oneself to the good. Eudaimonistic virtue ethics never requires of a virtuous agent that she sacrifice by turning aside from her pursuit of flourishing for moral reasons, because this pursuit already is the sacrifice of herself for moral reasons. Eudaimonistic virtue ethics, of course, is not a theory but a family of theories, and not all of them are amenable to this response to the inverted demandingness objection. But for those that are—if they are vulnerable to a demandingness objection, it is not the objection in its inverted form.
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Notes
- 1.
Scheffler (1986, 531).
- 2.
For example: Thomas Nagel calls for “a process of political reconstruction” leading to a society «in which the great bulk of impersonal claims were met by institutions that left individuals […] free to devote considerable attention and energy to their own lives» in 1986, 207. Christine Korsgaard discusses “limits to the depth of obligation” in Lecture 4, 1996; the quotation is from p. 160. See Kagan 1989, for an argument in favor of an “extremist” view of how demanding morality is. For a number of more recent reactions to the problem, see Chappell 2009.
- 3.
This would change, though. Theorists of the ethics of care (a cousin of virtue ethics, if you will) have been concerned with the PDM (for citations and discussion see Pudner 2008, 241–250). I will, in the first section, mention some recent EVE theorists who have also seen a need to address the problem (and in addition to the works cited there, see the essays by John Cottingham and Christine Swanton in Chappell 2009).
- 4.
Scheffler (1986, 535–536). Scheffler’s language suggests that at least the first two are binary concepts (that, e.g., a theory is either pervasive or not), but it seems clear that these are really degreed concepts.
- 5.
A classic statement of this is Aquinas’s claim: «It sometimes happens that an action is indifferent in its species, but considered in the individual it is good or evil» (Summa theologiae, Ia-IIae, qu. 18, art. 9).
- 6.
Baril (2013, 530). A bit later, Baril explicitly connects her point to the PDM: «A moral theory that demands that one—systematically!—organize one’s life in a way that is not good for one would fail to adequately recognize the worth of a human being» (ibid., 530–531; my italics).
- 7.
Russell (2012, 2).
- 8.
Of course, a tu quoque argument by itself is simply a fallacy (we all make this mistake, so it must not be a mistake). A more developed argument would use the tu quoque to suggest that perhaps it’s not a mistake, and then give independent reasons in support of the suggestion—here reasons for rejecting (1), perhaps in the manner Baril does.
- 9.
This sort of pluralism is at least suggested by Besser-Jones (2014): She writes, «Self-sacrifice clearly stands in the way of developing eudaimonic well-being. … The prudential will always trump competing considerations» (101). But, she also holds that the requirements of well-being do not exhaust the field of morality: «Considerations of personal development and interpersonal relations [which she sees as most central to well-being] surely do not inform the entire scope of our obligations to others … Considerations of human rights and justice likely motivate a broader range of moral obligations» (3).
- 10.
I rely here on Alasdair MacIntyre’s narrative, given in his 2016, at 244–264. For another case of virtuous self-sacrifice, see Philippa Foot’s discussion of the “Letter Writers” in her 2001, at 94–96.
- 11.
MacIntyre is working with a distinction he makes between lives that are eudaimon (lives lived “in accordance with the best and most complete of the virtues in a complete life”) and those that are also makarios (eudaimon lives that are also “rewarded with achievement and good fortune”), a distinction he allows that Aristotle himself in the end rules out (MacIntyre 2016, 229–230). I am inclined to side with Aristotle here and class Grossman’s life with Priam’s, as being excellent given the unfortunate circumstances, but not eudaimon. But, the crucial point here is that Grossman’s life was brought to completion in the way EVE would require.
- 12.
Rosati (2009, 316–317).
- 13.
Two related examples from the tradition are Aquinas’s aspiring monk who foregoes pursuing what he had taken to be a religious vocation in order to care for his stricken family (Summa theologiae, II-II, qu. 189, art. 6) and Aristotle’s loving mother who gives her son up for adoption by a family better able to care for him (Nicomachean Ethics, VIII. 8, 1159a29-34).
- 14.
I do not mean to imply that all versions of EVE hold this, only that a version of EVE can. For a more detailed description of such a version, see Toner 2006a.
- 15.
This distinction between ways of organizing one’s life is similar to the one Anne Baril draws between welfare-prior and excellence-prior versions of EVE: She takes eudaimonism’s central recommendation to be, «A human being ought to organize his or her life so that it realizes eudaimonia» (Baril, 513), and distinguishes two ways of understanding this recommendation: First, as saying that «A human being ought to live her life in a way that is good for her» (in my terms, “good for her” in the self-serving sense)—this is welfare-prior eudaimonism, a view accepted by Baril herself and, among others, LeBar 2004. Second, as saying that «A human being ought to live her life excellently (or in the way that is good as a human being)» (Baril, 520–521)—this is excellence-prior eudaimonism. Excellence-prior eudaimonism need not be self-sacrificial—one may pursue one’s own excellence in a way that is not responsive to the good of others (many cases of so-called “admirable immorality” might be understood in this way). But excellence-prior eudaimonism can and will be self-sacrificial when excellence is conceived, in large part, in terms of relating rightly to goods, which goods are acknowledged to merit being valued for their own sake (see Toner 2006a, especially at 613). It is worth noting here a stark divergence from LeBar’s “Aristotelian Constructivism,” according to which «there is no “prior and independent order of objects and relations” [here he borrows Rawls’s language] providing a criterion for the principles governing what constitutes well-being… things have prudential value just because and insofar as they contribute to the good human life as fashioned by practical wisdom» (LeBar, 204); «Our interest in our welfare picks out of all the possible kinds of perfectionist value just one kind which matters ethically: that which bears on our living lives we find satisfying» (ibid., 213).
- 16.
Aristotle insists that part of being good is enjoying virtuous activity, and that the life of the virtuous agent «does not need pleasure to be added [to virtuous activity] as some sort of extra decoration; rather, it has its pleasure within itself» (Ethics, I.8 1099a16–17). For more on the relationship between virtue and welfare, see Toner 2006b and 2013.
- 17.
Many thanks to David McPherson, Matthews Grant, Gary Atkinson, John van Ingen, and the audience at a faculty colloquium at the University of St. Thomas for helpful comments and criticisms.
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Toner, C. (2019). Sacrifice in Eudaimonistic Virtue Ethics. In: Grimi, E. (eds) Virtue Ethics: Retrospect and Prospect. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15860-6_14
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