QuestionsWhat makes something right?A duty without a lawgiver makes no sense: back to the virtues
What makes something right?Virtue

A duty without a lawgiver makes no sense: back to the virtues

The return to virtue ethics

G. E. M. Anscombe 1919 · 2001Duty-based morality lost its sense without a lawgiver: let us return to the virtues.
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What it claims

For anyone who does not believe in a divine lawgiver, the notions of moral obligation and duty should be dropped, and we should return to an ethics of the virtues, based on a better understanding of human beings ("moral psychology").

Why

The word "ought" presupposes a divine lawgiver; without one it loses its sense, and we can speak of unjust or cowardly acts instead.

The same idea through history
Aristotle350 BCNicomachean Ethics: an action is just when it is what the just man would do. The centre of ethics is character, not a law.
G. E. M. Anscombe1958"Modern Moral Philosophy": the words "obligation" and "moral duty" are leftovers from an ethics of divine law. We should drop them and return to moral psychology and the virtues.
Alasdair MacIntyre1981After Virtue: our moral language is made of pieces of a lost tradition, and modern debates cannot be settled. He proposes a return to an Aristotelian ethics of the virtues.
Philippa Foot2001Natural Goodness: moral goodness is a form of "natural goodness". Just as we call a root or a wolf good or defective, we can say what a human being needs to live well: the virtues.
In short

"A duty without a lawgiver makes no sense: back to the virtues" is an argument by G. E. M. Anscombe (Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958), 1958) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: virtue). Its claim: For anyone who does not believe in a divine lawgiver, the notions of moral obligation and duty should be dropped, and we should return to an ethics of the virtues, based on a better understanding of human beings ("moral psychology"). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1958, the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe published an article that landed like a bomb. She noted that modern philosophers constantly talk about "moral obligation", about what one "ought" to do in the moral sense. Yet Aristotle, the great thinker of ancient ethics, hardly had these words. Where do they come from? From an ethics in which the good is a law given by God, as in the Bible. But most modern philosophers no longer believe in that lawgiver. Keeping the word "obligation" without him, she says, is like keeping the word "criminal" after abolishing the laws and the courts. Her conclusion: let us stop talking that way and go back to words that still have content, like "just", "honest", "cowardly". This is the starting point of the revival of virtue ethics.

P1The notions of "moral obligation" and "moral duty" have the sense of a law: to be morally obliged is to be bound as one is bound by a law. They come from a conception of ethics as divine law (the Bible, then Christianity).
P2A law in the proper sense requires a lawgiver. One cannot give oneself a law, and the "norms" of a society are not enough: they can be anything.
P3Most modern philosophers no longer believe in a divine lawgiver. For them, keeping the word "obligation" is like keeping the word "criminal" once criminal law and the courts are abolished: only a psychological force remains, without content.
P4One can do ethics without these notions: Aristotle shows it. It is enough to ask whether an act is unjust, dishonest or cowardly, instead of asking whether it is "morally wrong".
P5 · implicit premiseWhen a notion has lost its sense and another way of thinking about ethics exists, we should drop the first and take up the second. In other words: there is no third way that would save obligation without God.
Therefore, for anyone who does not believe in a divine lawgiver, the notions of moral obligation and duty should be dropped, and we should return to an ethics of the virtues, based on a better understanding of human beings ("moral psychology").

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where obligation without God makes no sense, where an ethics of the virtues is possible, but where virtue is still not chosen: for instance because another way of grounding duty is found (Kant), or another vocabulary (consequences). That is exactly how Kantians and utilitarians answer her.
Valid with P5. Anscombe does not say ethics is false or that anything goes: she says the vocabulary of "duty" is a rootless leftover, and that another vocabulary, that of the virtues, keeps real content. Note: her conclusion applies to those who reject God. For a believer who keeps the idea of a divine law, the word "obligation" keeps its sense. Anscombe, herself a Catholic, says so clearly. The debate is mainly about P2 (is a law one gives oneself absurd?) and P5 (can virtue ethics really replace duty?).
Analogy. Imagine a country that has abolished its criminal code and its courts, but where people keep saying "he is a criminal" with the same gravity. The word still frightens, but nobody knows what it means any more. Better to say what the person did: "he lied", "he was cruel".

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

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Robert Louden 1984 · attacks premise 4

Virtue ethics says what kind of person to be, but not what to do. Faced with a real dilemma (telling a patient the truth, having an abortion or not), "be brave, be just" settles nothing. An ethics must be able to guide action.

Anscombe replies
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Rosalind Hursthouse 1991 · Hursthouse's reply
Virtue ethics does give a criterion of right action: an action is right if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. This criterion is no more formal than "follow the moral rule" for Kantians or "produce the best consequences" for utilitarians: in all three cases, the real work comes afterwards. And when two virtues pull in opposite directions, duty-based ethics has the same problem when two of its rules conflict.
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Rosalind Hursthouse 1991 · The instructions of the virtues
Contrary to what is often said, virtue ethics does give rules: each virtue generates a positive instruction (act justly, kindly, bravely, honestly), each vice a prohibition (do not act unjustly, cruelly, like a coward, dishonestly).
The debate goes on (our summary) The debate goes on. Critics reply that "do what a virtuous person would do" goes in circles if, to know who is virtuous, you must already know what is right. Hursthouse answers that the virtues are defined differently: they are the character traits a human being needs to live well. One point is granted by both sides: in hard cases, virtue ethics calls for judgement and experience rather than calculation, and its defenders see this as a strength rather than a weakness.
Kant (and Kantians such as Onora O'Neill) 1788 · attacks premise 2

Duty does not need an outside lawgiver. For Kant, obligation rests on the autonomy of reason: reason gives itself a law, the same for everyone. So obligation can be kept without God, and P2 is false.

Anscombe replies
Elizabeth Anscombe 1958 · Anscombe's reply
Anscombe targets Kant by name: the idea of "legislating for oneself" is absurd. What you do "for yourself" may be admirable, but it is not making a law.
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Onora O'Neill 1989
Kantians reply that autonomy is not doing as you please: it is acting only on principles every rational being could adopt. This law is not invented by an individual; it comes from what reason requires of everyone. And Kant also discusses the virtues: his ethics is not just a list of obligations.
The debate goes on (our summary) The disagreement is about the word "law". For Anscombe, a law requires someone who commands and someone who obeys; if they are the same person, there is no law any more. For Kantians, it is an image: reason commands like a law because it holds for everyone, with no need for a ruler. Both positions are still defended today.
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The self-centredness objection (Thomas Hurka) 2001 · attacks the conclusion

Virtue ethics puts the agent's character at the centre: "what must I become to live well?". But a good person helps a neighbour because the neighbour is suffering, not to improve her own character. An ethics centred on one's own virtues risks turning others into a means of self-improvement.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Anscombe in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Anscombe does not answer this objection, which came later. Defenders of virtue ethics (such as Julia Annas) reply that it confuses the aim of the theory with the motive of the act: the generous person acts for the other, and that is exactly what makes her generous. Someone who helps in order to feel virtuous does not have the virtue. Critics think the difficulty returns when one asks why be virtuous: if the answer is "to live well oneself", the suspicion of egoism remains.