MORAL EDUCATIONFOR A SOCIETY INMORAL TRANSITIONLAWRE.docx

MORAL EDUCATION
FOR A SOCIETY IN
MORAL TRANSITION
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG*
IN 1969 the Association for Super
vision and Curriculum Development held a
special conference on the hidden or un
studied curriculum of the school. My friend
Philip Jackson organized the session with
papers by Friedenberg, Dreeben, Jackson,
and myself. 1 At the time I claimed Jackson's
term, the "hidden curriculum," referred to
the moral atmosphere of the school, and that
the function of the hidden curriculum was
moral education or perhaps miseducation. To
make the point, I took a trivial episode. My
son, then in the second grade, came home
from school one day saving, "I don't want to
be one of the bad boys at school." I asked,
"Who are they?" and he answered, "They are
the boys who don't put their books away,
and they get yelled at."
Praise, Crowds, and Power
Philip Jackson holds that the guts of the
hidden curriculum are the praise, the teach
er's use of rewards or punishments; the
crowd or the life in a crowded group; and the

teacher's power. Our episode of the teacher
blaming kids for not putting their books
away is the natural exercise of teacher
power, the natural use of praise or blame in
1 Norman V. Overly, editor. The Unstudied
Curriculum: Its Impact on Children. Washington,
D.C.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development, 1970. 130 pp.
"Why are decisions based on universal
principles of justice better decisions?
Because they are decisions on which all
moral people could agree.... Truly moral or
just resolutions of conflicts require principles
which are, or can be, universally applicable."
a crowded setting where order is a necessary
preoccupation. To the teacher it is not moral
education, it is a natural reaction to the
classroom situation. To my son, however, it
was moral education or miseducation. It
defined the good boys and the bad. That is
what I meant by claiming that the school or
teacher's methods of classroom management,
the unstudied or hidden curriculum, should
be approached from a theory of moral edu
cation. This implies that not only did we
need to study the hidden curriculum, but to
take a moral position on it.
In 1969, Philip Jackson and Robert
Dreeben reported their excellent studies of
the hidden curriculum, done as value-neutral
scientists. I said their sociological view of
the functions of the hidden curriculum was

not really value-neutral, it was conservative.
In the Jackson and Dreeben view, the hidden
curriculum served the function of socializing
* L awrence Kohlberg, Professor of Education
and Social Psychology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
46 Educational Leadership
the student into the norms of the American
competitive bureaucratic industrial society.
Our example of putting books away, from
their point of view, would be said to aid the
child to adapt to a bureaucratic society of
crowds, praise, and power at office and fac
tory. Edgar Friedenberg, the radical, im
plicitly showed that Jackson and Dreeben
were not really value-neutral by taking Jack
son's ideas and turning them upside down.
The function of the hidden curriculum,
Friedenberg stated, was to wipe out indi
viduality and impose the conformity and the
banal values of mass bureaucratic society on
the young.
Having rejected the possibility of value-
neutrality, in 1969 I stated my own value
viewpoint on the hidden curriculum. My
viewpoint was neither radical nor conserva
tive but progressive in John Dewey's sense.
The conservative thinks that the hidden
curriculum of the bureaucratic academic
achievement school is good, it helps the stu

dent to adapt to a bureaucratic academic
oriented society. The radical thinks it bad,
it stamps out individuality and sensitivity.
"Close down the academic achievement
bureaucractic schools," say the Friedenbergs,
"and start alternative open schools." To me,
neither the conservative nor the radical had
understood John Dewey's progressive view
point, or they would have taken Dewey's
third position.
According to Dewey, the progressive
educator identifies true progress with devel
opment, the child's development and the
development of society. If we are to evolve
or progress, we must know what progress or
development is. The development of the
child, the child's standard of progress, is
something studied by the child psychologist.
We shall show that some of his or her con
clusions are relevant to judging the progress
of the society. In this light we will look to
Watergate. The standard of progress for the
child or the society is not a standard that can
be purely scientific, however. Ultimately, the
standard for the development of the indi
vidual or the society is to a higher level of
moral awareness and action. The funda
mental way in which education helps social
progress is through aiding the moral devel
opment of the individual and the society.
Here is how Dewey stated it:
The aim of education is growth or develop

ment, both intellectual and moral. Ethical and
psychological principles can aid the school in
the greatest of all constructions the building
of a free and powerful character. Only knowl
edge of the order and connection of the stages
in psychological development can insure this.
Education is the work of supplying the condi
tions which will enable the psychological func
tions to mature in the freest and fullest manner. 2
Dewey and Tufts postulated three levels
of moral development which are: (a)
the premoral or preconventional level "of
behavior motivated by biological and social
impulses with results for morals," (b) the
conventional level of behavior "in which the
individual accepts with little critical reflec
tions the standards of his group," (c) the
autonomous level of behavior in which
"conduct is guided by the individual thinking
and judging for himself whether a purpose
is good, and does not accept the standard of
his group without reflection."
Movement Through Moral Levels
Education, said Dewey, is to aid devel
opment through these moral levels, not by
indoctrination but by supplying the condi
tions for movement from stage to stage.
Dewey's conception of education as move
ment through moral levels makes it clear
that the individual is not born at the autono
mous or self-directing level. Romantics like
Friedenberg or A. S. Neill see children as
born individual, creative, empathic, and as

crushed or limited by school and society.
Autonomy, however, is not born, it develops;
the autonomous level comes after the con
ventional. Autonomy will not develop
through an education of "do your thing,"
but through educational stimulation which
leads first to the level of understanding the
standard of the group and then to autonomy,
2 John Dewey. "What Psychology Can Do for
the Teacher." In: Reginald Archambault, editor.
John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings. New
York: Random House, Inc., 1964.
October 1975 47
to constructing standards held through re
flection and self-judgment.
Here, let me discuss what I could only
theorize about in 1968, how to make a
school's hidden curriculum good, that is, how
to make it a vehicle for stimulating moral
development. For the past six months I have
been working with a new small school within
the Cambridge, Massachusetts, public high
school whose unstudied curriculum is democ
racy, and whose purpose is moral as well as
intellectual advance. The school, officially
called the Cluster School, we call a Just
Community school. To explain its working
requires a trip through moral psychology and
philosophy and a review of 20 years of re
search I have done on moral development.

The research started with the concept of
moral stage. In 1955, I started to redefine
and validate (through longitudinal and cross-
cultural study) the Dewey-Piaget levels and
stages. I found two stages at each of Dewey's
three levels. For instance, at Dewey's pre-
conventional level there was a Stage 1 of
punishment and obedience and a Stage 2 of
instrumental exchange.
We claim to have not only found but
validated the stages defined in Table 1. The
notion that stages can be validated implies
that stages have definite empirical or re-
searchable characteristics (Kohlberg, 1975,
in press). The concept of stages (as used by
Piaget, 1948, and the writer) implies the fol
lowing characteristics:
1. Stages are "structured wholes," or
organized systems of thought. This means in
dividuals are consistent in level of moral judg
ment.
2. Stages form an invariant sequence.
Under all conditions except extreme trauma,
movement is always forward, never backward.
Individuals never skip stages, movement is
always to the next stage up. This is true in all
cultures.
3. Stages are "hierarchical integrations."
Thinking at a higher stage includes or compre
hends within it lower stage thinking. There is
a tendency to function at or prefer the highest

stage available.
Each of these characteristics has been
demonstrated for moral stages. Stages are
defined by responses to a set of verbal moral
dilemmas classified according to an elaborate
scoring scheme. Validating studies include:
a. A 20-year study of 50 Chicago area
boys, middle- and working class. Initially inter
viewed at ages 10-16, they have been reinter-
viewed at three-year intervals thereafter.
b. A small six-year longitudinal study of
Turkish village and city boys of the same age.
c. A variety of cross-sectional longitudinal
studies in Canada, Britain, Israel, Turkey,
Taiwan, Yucatan, Honduras, and India.
With regard to 1., the structured whole
or consistency criterion, we have found more
than 50 percent of an individual's thinking
is always at one stage with the remainder at
the next adjacent stage (which he or she is
leaving or is moving into).
With regard to 2., invariant sequence,
our longitudinal results indicate that on
every retest individuals were either at
the same stage as three years earlier or
had moved up one stage. This was true in
Turkey as well as in the United States.
With regard to 3., the hierarchical in

tegration criterion, we have found that:
adolescents exposed to statements at each of
the six stages comprehend all statements at
or below their own stage but fail to compre
hend any statements more than one stage
above their own. They prefer (or rank as
best) the highest stage they can comprehend.
To understand moral stages it is impor
tant to clarify their relations to stage of logic
or intelligence on the one hand, and to moral
behavior on the other. Mature moral judg
ment is not highly correlated with I.Q. or
verbal intelligence (correlations are only in
the 30's, accounting for 10 percent of the
variance). Cognitive development, in the
stage sense, however, is more important for
moral development than such correlations
suggest. Piaget has found that after the child
learns to speak there are three major stages
of reasoning: the intuitive, the concrete
operational, and the formal operational. A
person whose logical stage is only concrete-
operational is limited to the preconventional
moral stages (Stages 1 and 2). A person
whose logical stage is only partially formal
I. Preconventlonal level *
At this level the child is responsive to cultural
rules and labels of good and bad, right or wrong, but
interprets these labels either in terms of the physical

or the hedonistic consequences of action (punishment,
reward, exchange of favors) or in terms of the physical
power of those who enunciate the rules and labels. The
level is divided into the following two stages:
Stage 1: The punishment-and-obedience orienta
tion. T he physical consequences of action determine
its goodness or badness regardless of the human mean
ing or value of these consequences. Avoidance of
punishment and unquestioning deference to power are
valued in their own right, not in terms of respect for an
underlying moral order supported by punishment and
authority (the latter being stage 4).
Stage 2: The instrumental-relativist orientation.
Right action consists of that which instrumentally satis
fies one's own needs and occasionally the needs of
others. Human relations are viewed in terms like those
of the market place. Elements of fairness, of reci
procity, and of equal sharing are present, but they are
always interpreted in a physical pragmatic way. Reci
procity is a matter of "you scratch my back and I'll
scratch yours," not of loyalty, gratitude, or justice.
II. Conventional level
At this level, maintaining the expectations of the
individual's family, group, or nation is perceived as
valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and
obvious consequences. The attitude is not only one
of c onformity t o personal expectations and social order,
but of loyalty to it, of actively m aintaining, s upporting,
and justifying the order, and of identifying with the
persons or group involved in it. At this level, there are
the following two stages:

Stage 3: The interpersonal concordance or "good
boy—nice girl" orientation. G ood behavior is that
which pleases or helps others and is approved by them.
There is much conformity to stereotypical images of
'Reprinted from: Lawrence Kohlberg. "The
Claim to Moral Adequacy of a Highest Stage of Moral
Judgment." The Journal of Philosophy 7 0 (18): 631-32;
October 25, 1973.
what is majority or "natural" behavior. Behavior is
frequently judged by intention—"he means well" be
comes important for the first time. One earns approval
by being "nice."
Stage 4: The "law and order" orientation. There
is orientation toward authority, fixed rules, and the
maintenance of the social order. Right behavior con
sists of doing one's duty, showing respect for authority,
and maintaining the given social order for its own sake.
III. Postconventional, autonomous, or principled level
At this level, there is a clear effort to define moral
values and principles that have validity and application
apart from the authority of the groups or persons hold
ing these principles and apart from the individual's own
identification with these groups. This level again has
two stages:
Stage 5: The social contract, legalistic orientation.
generally with utilitarian overtones. Right action tends
to be defined in terms of general individual rights, and
standards which have been critically examined and
agreed upon by the whole society. There is a clear
awareness of the relativism of personal values and

opinions and a corresponding emphasis upon proce
dural rules for reaching consensus. Aside from what
is constitutionally and democratically agreed upon, the
right is a matter of personal "values" and "opinion."
The result is an emphasis upon the "legal point of
view," but with an emphasis upon the possibility of
changing law in terms of rational considerations of
social utility (rather than freezing it in terms of stage 4
"law and order"). Outside the legal realm, free agree
ment and contract is the binding element of obligation.
This is the "official" morality of the American govern
ment and constitution.
Stage 6: The universal-ethical-principle orienta
tion. Right is defined by the decision of conscience in
accord with self-chosen ethical principles a ppealing to
logical comprehensiveness, universality, and consis
tency. These principles are abstract and ethical (the
Golden Rule, the categorical imperative); they are not
concrete moral rules like the Ten Commandments. At
heart, these are universal principles of justice, of the
reciprocity a nd e quality of human rights, a nd of respect
for the dignity of human beings as individual persons
("From Is to Ought," pp. 164-65).
Table 1. Definition of Moral Stages
operational is limited to the conventional
moral stages (Stage 3). While logical devel
opment is necessary for moral development
and sets limits to it, most individuals are
higher in logical stage than they are in moral
stage. As an example, over 50 percent of
late adolescents and adults are capable of
full formal reasoning but only 10 percent of
these adults (all formal operational) display

principled (Stages 5 and 6) moral reasoning.
In summary, moral development partly
depends upon the intellectual development
which is the school's first concern, but
usually lags behind it. If logical reasoning is
a necessary but not sufficient condition for
mature moral judgment, mature moral judg
ment is a necessary but not sufficient condi
tion for mature moral action. On,e cannot
follow moral principles if one does not
understand (or believe in) moral principles.
However, one can reason in terms of prin
ciples and not live up to these principles. As
an example, Krebs and Kohlberg (1974)
found that only 15 percent of students show
ing some principled thinking cheated as com
pared to 55 percent of conventional subjects
October 1975 49
and 70 percent of preconventional subjects.
Thus, mature moral judgment predicts moral
action. Nevertheless, 15 percent of the prin
cipled subjects did cheat, suggesting that
factors additional to moral judgment are
necessary for principled moral reasoning to
be translated into "moral action."
If maturity of moral reasoning is only
one factor to moral behavior, why does the
progressive approach to moral education
focus so heavily upon moral reasoning? For

the following reasons:
1. Moral judgment, while only one factor
in moral behavior, is the single most important
or influential factor yet discovered in moral
behavior.
2. While other factors influence moral
behavior, moral judgment is the only distinc
tively moral factor in moral behavior. To illus
trate, the Krebs and Kohlberg study indicated
that "strong-willed" conventional stage subjects
resisted cheating more than "weak-willed" sub
jects, only 26 percent of strong-willed subjects
cheated as compared to 76 percent of the weak-
willed. For those at a preconventional level of
moral reasoning, however, "will" had an oppo
site effect. "Strong-willed" Stages 1 and 2 sub
jects cheated more, not less than "weak-willed"
subjects, that is, they had the "courage of their
(amoral) convictions" that it was worthwhile
to cheat. "Will," then, is an important factor in
moral behavior but it is not distinctively moral,
it becomes moral only when informed by mature
moral judgment.
3. Moral judgment change is long-range
or irreversible, a higher stage is never lost. In
contrast, moral behavior as such is largely
situational and reversible or "loseable" in new
situations.
Psychology finds an invariant sequence
of moral stages. Moral philosophy, however,
must be invoked to answer whether a later
stage is a better stage. The "stage" of

senescence and death follows the "stage of
adulthood," but that does not mean that the
later "stage" is the better. The tradition of
moral philosophy to which we appeal is the
liberal or rational tradition running from
Kant through Mill and Dewey to John Rawls
(1971). Central to this tradition Is the claim
that an adequate morality is principled, that
is, that it makes judgments in terms of uni
versal principles applicable to all people.
Principles are to be distinguished from rules.
Conventional morality is grounded on rules,
primarily "thou shall nots" such as are repre
sented by the Ten Commandments. Rules are
prescriptions of kinds of actions; principles
are, rather, universal guides to making a
moral decision. An example is Kant's "cate
gorical imperative," formulated in two ways.
The first formulation is the maxim of respect
for human personality, "Act always toward
the other as an end, not a means." The
second is the maxim of universalization,
"Choose only as you would be willing to have
everyone choose in your situation."
Furthermore, moral principles are ulti
mately principles of justice. In essence,
moral conflicts are conflicts between the
claims of persons and principles for resolving
these claims are principles of justice, "for
giving each his due." Central to justice are
the demands of liberty, equality, and reci
procity. At every moral stage there is a
concern for justice. The most damning state
ment a school child can make about a teacher

is that the teacher is not "fair." At each
higher stage, however, the conception of
justice is reorganized. At Stage 1, justice is
punishing the bad in terms of "an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth." At Stage 2,
it is exchanging favors and goods in an equal
manner. At Stages 3 and 4, it is treating
people as they "deserve" in terms of the con
ventional rules. At Stage 5, it is recognized
that all rules and laws flow from justice,
from a social contract between the governors
and the governed designed to protect the
equal rights of all. At Stage 6, personally
chosen moral principles are also principles
of justice, the principles any member of a
society would choose for that society if the
person did not know what his or her position
was to be in the society and in which he or
she might be the least advantaged (Rawls,
1971).
Why are decisions based on universal
principles of justice better decisions? Be
cause they are decisions on which all moral
people could agree. When decisions are
based on conventional moral rules people
will disagree, since they adhere to conflicting
systems of rules dependent on culture and
social position. Throughout history people
have killed one another in the name of con
flicting moral rules and values, most recently

in Vietnam and the Middle East. Truly moral
or just resolutions of conflicts require prin
ciples which are, or can be, universally
applicable.
A Concern for Moral Education
If moral development centers on a sense
of individual justice, it becomes apparent
that moral and civic education are much the
same thing. This equation, taken for granted
by the classic philosophers of education from
Plato and Aristotle to Dewey, is basic to
our claim that a concern for moral education
is central to the educational objectives of
social studies.
The term "civic education" is used to
refer to social studies as more than the study
of the facts and concepts of social science,
history, and civics. It is education for the
analytic understanding, value principles, and
motivation necessary for a citizen in a
democracy if democracy is to be an effective
process. To understand and be democratic
is to understand and practice justice. It is
political education. Civic or political educa
tion means the stimulation of development of
more advanced patterns of reasoning about
political and social decisions and their im
plementation. These are largely patterns of
moral reasoning. Our studies show that
reasoning and decision making about politi
cal decisions are directly derivative of broader
patterns of moral reasoning and decision
making. We have interviewed high school

and college students about concrete political
situations involving laws about open housing,
civil disobedience for peace in Vietnam, free
press rights to publish what might disturb
national order, distribution of income through
taxation. We find that reasoning on these
political decisions can be classified according
to moral stage and that an individual's stage
on political dilemmas is at the same level as
on nonpolitical moral dilemmas.
From a psychological side, then, politi
cal development is part of moral develop
ment. The same is true from the philosophic
side. In historical perspective, America was
the first nation whose government was pub
licly founded on post-conventional principles
of justice and the rights of human beings,
rather than upon the authority central to
conventional moral reasoning. At the time
of our founding, post-conventional or prin
cipled moral and political reasoning was the
possession of the minority, as it still is. Today,
as in the time of our founding, the majority
of our adults are at the conventional level,
particularly the law-and-order fourth moral
stage. (Every few years the Gallup Poll cir
culates the Bill of Rights unidentified and
each time it is turned down.) The founders
of our nation intuitively understood this
without benefit of our elaborate social re
search and constructed a document designing
a government which would maintain prin
ciples of justice and the rights of all even
though principled people were not those in

power. The machinery included checks and
balances, the independent judiciary, freedom
of the press. Most recently, this machinery
found its use at Watergate. The tragedy of
Richard Nixon, as Harry Truman said long
ago, was that he never understood the Con
stitution, a Stage 5 document, but the Consti
tution understood Richard Nixon. 3
From Conventional to Principled
Morality
Watergate, then, is not some sign of
moral decay of the nation, but rather, of the
fact that understanding and action in sup
port of justice principles is still the possession
of a minority of our society. Insofar as there
is moral decay today, it represents the weak
ening of conventional morality in the face of
social and value conflict. This can lead the
less fortunate adolescent to fixation at the
preconventional level, the more fortunate to
movement to principles. Watergate, then, I
3 No public or private word or deed of Nixon
ever rose above Stage 4, the law-and-order stage.
His last comments in the White House were of
wonderment that the Republican Congress could
turn on him after so many Stage 2 exchanges of
favors in getting them elected.
October 1975 51
see as part of the slow movement of society

from the conventional to the morally prin
cipled level. I will argue that our society has
been in this transition zone for the 200 years
since its founding. In the lives of youths I
have studied, the transition from conven
tional to principled morality usually takes
10 years. In the life of a nation, a bicenten
nial would not be long. I shall claim our
schools for 200 years have been essentially
Stage 4 law, order, and authority stage insti
tutions though our Constitutional govern
ment aspires to the Stage 5 social contract
democracy and the human rights.
In the high school today, one often hears
both preconventional adolescents and those
moving beyond convention sounding the
same note of disaffection for the traditional
school. This is partly because our schools
have traditionally been Stage 4 institutions
of convention and authority. Today more
than ever democratic schools systematically
engaged in civic and moral education are
required. Our approach to moral education
starts with the cognitive-developmental
theory as to how moral progress is made.
The theory suggests that the conditions for
moral development in homes and schools are
similar, and very different from the psycho
analytic and Skinnerian or learning theory
views of the conditions for moral de
velopment. According to the cognitive-
developmental theory, morality is a natural
product of a universal human tendency
toward empathy or role-taking, toward put
ting oneself in the shoes of other conscious

beings. It is also a product of a universal
human concern for justice, for reciprocity or
equality in the relation of one person to
another.
As an example, when my son was four
he became a morally principled vegetarian
and refused to eat meat, resisting all parental
efforts of persuasion to increase his protein
intake. His reason was, 'It's bad to kill ani
mals." His moral commitment to vegetarian
ism was not taught or acquired from parental
authority, it was the result of the universal
tendency of the child to project his con
sciousness and values into other living things,
other selves. My son's vegetarianism also
involved a sense of justice, revealed when I
read him a book about Eskimos in which a
seal hunting expedition was described. His
response was to say, "Daddy, there is one
kind of meat I would eat, Eskimo meat. It's
all right to eat Eskimos because they eat
animals." This natural sense of justice or
reciprocity was Stage 1, an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth. His sense of the value
of life was also Stage 1 and involved no
differentiation between human personality
and physical life. His morality, though
Stage 1, was, however, natural and internal.
Moral development past Stage 1, then,
is not an internalization, but the reconstruc
tion of tendencies to role-take and concep
tions of justice toward greater adequacy.
These reconstructions occur in order to

achieve a better match between the child's
own moral structures and the structures of
the social and moral situations he or she
confronts. We divide these conditions into
two kinds, those dealing with moral discus
sion and communication and those dealing
with the total moral environment or at
mosphere in which the child lives.
In terms of moral discussion, the im
portant conditions appear to be:
1. Exposure to the next stage of reasoning
up
2. Exposure to situations posing problems
and contradictions for the child's current moral
structure, leading to dissatisfaction with his or
her current level
3. An atmosphere of interchange and dia
logue in which the first two conditions obtain,
in which conflicting moral views are compared
in an open manner.
Drawing on this notion of the condi
tions stimulating advance, Blatt (Blatt and
Kohlberg, 1974) conducted classroom dis
cussions and conflict-laden hypothetical
moral dilemmas with four classes of junior
high and high school students for a semester.
In each of these classes, students were to be
found at three stages. Since the children
were not all responding at the same stage,
the arguments they used with each other
were at different levels. In the course of

these discussions among the students, the
teacher first supported and clarified those
arguments that were one stage above the
lowest stage among the children (for ex
ample, the teacher supported Stage 3 rather
than Stage 2). When it seemed that these
arguments were understood by the students,
the teacher then challenged that stage, using
new situations, and clarified the arguments
one stage above the previous one (Stage 4
rather than Stage 3). At the end of the
semester, all the students were retested; they
showed significant upward change as com
pared to the controls, and maintained the
change one year later. In the various experi
mental classrooms from one-fourth to one-
half of the students moved up a stage, while
there was essentially no change during the
course of the experiment in the control group.
Given the Blatt studies showing that
moral discussion could raise moral stage, we
undertook the next step, to see if teachers
could conduct moral discussions in the course
of teaching high school social studies with
the same results. This step we took in coop
eration with Edwin Fenton, who introduced
moral dilemmas in his ninth and eleventh
grade social studies texts. Twenty-four
teachers in the Boston and Pittsburgh areas
were given some instruction in conducting

moral discussions around the dilemmas and
the text. About half of the teachers stimu
lated significant developmental change in
their classrooms, their discussions leading to
upward stage movement on one-quarter to
one-half a stage. In control classes using the
text but no moral dilemma discussions, the
same teachers failed to stimulate any moral
change in the students. Moral discussion,
then, can be a useable and effective part of
the curriculum at any grade level. Working
with filmstrip dilemmas produced in coopera
tion with Guidance Associates, second grade
teachers conducted moral discussions yield
ing a similar amount of moral stage move
ment. We also have achieved similar results
at the Harvard undergraduate level.
Moral discussion and curriculum, how
ever, is only one portion of the conditions
stimulating moral growth. When we turn to
analyzing the broader life environment, we
turn to a consideration of the m oral atmo
sphere of the home, the school, and the
broader society, what we earlier called the
hidden curriculum. Central to this atmo
sphere is, first, the role-taking opportunities
it provides, the extent to which it encourages
the child to take the point of view of others.
The second related condition is the level of
justice of the environment or institution. The
justice structure of an institution refers to
the perceived rules or principles for dis
tributing rewards, punishments, responsibili
ties, and privileges among the members of an

institution. As an example, a study of a
traditional prison revealed that inmates per
ceived it as Stage 1 regardless of their own
level (Kohlberg, Scharf, and Hickey, 1972).
Obedience to arbitrary command by power
figures and punishment for disobedience
were seen as the governing justice norms of
the prison. A behavior-modification prison
using point rewards for conformity was per
ceived as a Stage 2 system of instrumental
exchange. Inmates at Stage 3 or 4 perceived
this institution as more fair than the tradi
tional prison, but not as really fair in their.
Stage 3 terms. These and other studies sug
gest that a higher level of justice in an
environment stimulates development to a
higher stage of a sense of justice.
A "Just Community" High School
One year ago Ted Fenton, Ralph Mosher,
and myself received a three-year grant from
the Danforth Foundation to make r.ioral edu
cation a living matter in two high schools
in the Boston area (Cambridge and Brook-
line) and two in Pittsburgh. The plan had
two components. The first was the intellec
tual or official curriculum. It involved train
ing social studies, English, and counseling
staff in conducting classroom moral discus
sions and making moral discussion an inte
grated part of the curriculum. The second
was addressed to the unstudied curriculum.
Its focus was establishing a just community
school within a public high school.

The theory of the just community high
school postulated a participatory democracy
stressing solving school issues in a commu
nity meeting through moral discussion
process. It assumes that treating real-life
October 1975 53
moral situations and actions as issues of fair
ness and as matters for democratic decision
would stimulate advance in both moral rea
soning and moral action. A participatory
democracy provides more extensive oppor
tunities for role-taking and a higher level of
perceived institutional justice than does any
other social arrangement. Most alternative
schools strive to establish a democratic gov
ernance, but none we have observed has
achieved a vital or viable participatory
democracy.
Our theory suggested reasons why we
might succeed where others failed. First, we
felt participatory democracy had failed be
cause it was not a central commitment of a
school, rather, it was a humanitarian frill.
Democracy as moral education provides that
commitment. Second, democracy in alterna
tive schools often failed because it bored the
students. Students preferred to let teachers
make decisions about staff, courses, sched
ules, than to attend lengthy complicated
meetings. Our theory said that the issues a
democracy should focus on were issues of

morality and fairness. Real issues concerning
drugs, stealing, causing disturbances, grad
ing, are never boring if handled as issues of
fairness. Such moral issues are often evaded
in alternative schools because of the per
vasive "do your thing" ideology. Third, our
theory suggested that if democratic decision-
making meetings were preceded by small-
group moral discussion, higher stage thinking
by students would win out in town meeting
decisions, avoiding the disasters of mob rule.
Our Cambridge just community school
started with a small summer planning ses
sion of volunteer teachers, students, and
parents. At the time the school opened in the
fall, a commitment to democracy and a
skeleton program of English and social stud
ies for the half day given over to the new
school had been decided on. The school
started with six teachers from the regular
school and 60 students. One-third were from
academic/professional homes, one-third from
working-class homes, one-third were drop-
outs and troublemakers in terms of previous
record. The usual mistakes and usual chaos
of a beginning alternative school ensued.
Within a few weeks, however, a successful
democratic community process had been
established. Rules were made around press
ing issues, disturbances, drugs, hooking. A
rotating student discipline committee or jury
was set up. Our democratic system of rules
and enforcement has been relatively effective
and reasonable but we do not see fairness or

reasonableness as an end in itself. Rather,
the democratic process is a vehicle for moral
discussion and the cause of an emerging
sense of community.
Our successes in these ends can be docu
mented as yet only by anecdotes. An example
is Greg, who started in the fall as the greatest
paragon of humor, aggression, light-fingered-
ness, and inability to sit still known to this
writer. From being the principal disturber of
all community meetings, Greg has become an
excellent community meeting participant and
chairman. While ahead in his willingness to
enforce rules on others rather than to observe
them himself, Greg's commitment to the
school has led to a steady decrease in his
exotic behavior.
References
Moshe Blatt and Lawrence Kohlberg. "Effects
of Classroom Discussions upon Children's Level of
Moral Judgment." In: Lawrence Kohlberg, editor.
Recent Research, 1 974.
Lawrence Kohlberg. "Moral Stages and Morali-
zation: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach."
In: Thomas Lickona, editor. M an, Morality, and
Society. N ew York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
in press.
Lawrence Kohlberg, Peter Scharf, and Joseph
Hickey. "The Justice Structure of the Prison: A
Theory and an Intervention." The Prison Journal,

Autumn-Winter, 1972.
Richard Krebs and Lawrence Kohlberg. "Moral
Judgment and Ego Controls as Determinants of
Resistance to Cheating." In: Lawrence Kohlberg,
editor. R ecent Research, 1 974.
Jean Piaget. The Moral Judgment of the
Child. Glencoe, IlUnois: The Free Press, 1948.
John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. C ambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971. Q
Copyright © 1975 by the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum
Development. All rights reserved.
14 Social Alternatives Vol. 34 No. 1, 2015
Classical Stoicism and the Birth of a Global
Ethics: Cosmopolitan Duties in a
World of Local Loyalties

Lisa hiLL
Do I have responsibilities to strangers and, if so, why? Is a
global ethics possible in the absence
of supra-national institutions? The responses of the classical
Stoics to these questions directly
influenced modern conceptions of global citizenship and
contemporary understandings of our
duties to others. This paper explores the Stoic rationale for a
cosmopolitan ethic that makes
significant moral demands on its practitioners. It also uniquely
addresses the objection that a
global ethics is impractical in the absence of supra-national
institutions and law.
themed artiCLe
What do we owe to strangers and why? Is a global ethics
possible in the face of national boundaries?
What should we do when bad governments order us to
mistreat strangers or the weak? These were just some
of the questions to which the ancient Stoics applied
themselves. Their answers, which emphasised the
equal worth and inherent dignity of every human being,
were to reverberate throughout the Western political
tradition and directly influence modern conceptions of
global citizenship. Yet, how the Stoics arrived at their
cosmopolitanism is often imperfectly understood, hence
the first part of the discussion. Objections that their ideas
were too utopian to be practically useful also reflect
misunderstandings about Stoicism, hence the second
part of the paper.
I begin by exploring the Stoic rationale for the cosmopolis,
the world state, after which I address the objection that
a global ethics is impractical in the absence of supra-

national institutions and law. Well aware that local
loyalties and the jealousy of sovereign states towards
their own jurisdictional authority would represent
significant obstacles to the practice of a global ethic, the
Stoics insisted that the cosmopolis could still be brought
into existence by those who unilaterally obeyed the laws
of ‘reason’ even within the confines of national borders
and in the face of hostile local institutions.
Background
Inspired by the teaching of Socrates and Diogenes of
Sinope (Diogenes the Cynic), Stoicism was founded
at Athens by Zeno of Citium in around 300 BCE and
was influential throughout the Greco-Roman world
until around 200 CE.1 Its teachings were transmitted
to later generations largely through the surviving Latin
writings of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, C. Musonius
Rufus and Marcus Aurelius, as well as the Greek
author Diogenes Laertius via his Lives and Opinions of
Eminent Philosophers. The Stoics not only influenced
later generations; they were extremely influential in their
own time. From the outset, Stoicism was a distinctive
voice in intellectual life, from the Early Stoa in the fourth
and third centuries BCE, the Middle Stoa in the second
and first centuries BCE, to Late Stoicism in the first
and second centuries CE (and beyond) when Stoicism,
having spread to Rome and captivated many important
public figures, was at the height of its influence.
Stoic Cosmopolitanism and Global Ethics
The idea that we should condition ourselves to regard
everyone as being of equal value and concern is at
the heart of Stoic cosmopolitanism. The Stoics were

not alone in promoting this ideal: the Cynics were also
cosmopolitan. But it was the Stoics – the dominant
and most influential of the Hellenistic schools – who
systematised and popularised the concept of the
oikoumene, or world state, the human world as a
single, integrated city of natural siblings. Impartiality,
universalism and egalitarianism were at the heart of
this idea.
The Stoic challenge to particularism was extremely
subversive for a time when racism, classism, sexism
and the systematic mistreatment of non-citizens was
a matter of course. It was hardly thought controversial,
for example, that Aristotle (1943: IV. 775a. 5-15) should
declare that ‘in human beings the male is much better
in its nature than the female’ and that ‘we should look
upon the female state as being … a deformity’. Similarly,
ethnic prejudice was the norm rather than the exception
in antiquity. The complacent xenophobia and racism
of Demosthenes’s 341 BCE diatribe against Philip of
Social Alternatives Vol. 34 No 1, 2015 15
Macedon would not have raised a single eyebrow in his
Greek audience:
[H]e is not only no Greek, nor related to the
Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place
that can be named with honour, but a pestilent
knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet
possible to buy a decent slave (Demosthenes,
1926: 31).
Reversing these kinds of attitudes (and the behaviour

attendant on them) was the self-appointed task of the
Stoic philosophers.
The Cosmopolitan Ideal, Social Distance and Care
for Strangers
The first step towards promoting a universalistic ethic
entailed changing our whole way of thinking about
social distance. The Stoics were well aware that most
people tend to imagine their primary, secondary and
tertiary duties to others as ranked geographically:
distance regulates the intensity of obligation and people
will normally give priority to themselves, intimates,
conspecifics, and compatriots (in roughly that order),
before strangers, foreigners and members of out-
groups. This view is what is commonly referred to as ‘the
common-sense priority thesis’ or the ‘common-sense’
view of global concerns. Hierocles, the second century
Stoic philosopher, introduces the image of concentric
circles to illustrate how we generally conceive of our
obligations to others:
Each one of us is … entirely encompassed by
many circles, some smaller, others larger, the
latter enclosing the former on the basis of their
different and unequal dispositions relative to each
other. The first and closest circle is the one which
a person has drawn as though around a centre,
his own mind. This circle encloses the body and
anything taken for the sake of the body … Next,
the second one further removed from the centre
but enclosing the first circle; this contains parents,
siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it
uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces,
and cousins. The next circle includes the other
relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local

residents, then the circle of fellow-tribesmen, next
that of fellow citizens, and then in the same way
the circle of people from neighboring towns, and
the circle of fellow-countrymen. The outermost
and largest circle, which encompasses all the
rest, is that of the whole human race (fragment
reproduced in Long and Sedley 1987: 1349).
But the Stoics wanted to radically change this way of
thinking and feeling about others. As Hierocles suggests,
we must first become aware of our own prejudices in
order to repudiate them and thereafter substitute them
with superior cosmopolitan mental habits:
Once all these [circles] have been surveyed, it
is the task of a well tempered man, in his proper
treatment of each group, to draw the circles
together somehow toward the centre, and to keep
zealously transferring those from the enclosing
circles into the enclosed ones (Hierocles fragment
in Long and Sedley 1987: 1/349).
Humanity must embark on a morally demanding
developmental journey that begins (quite naturally) with a
variable quality of attachment towards others, proceeding
to a state of invariable quality of attachment towards
the world at large. The Stoics did not aim to invert the
priority thesis (which would mean that the intensity of our
feelings would increase the further out we went); rather,
they strove for a sameness of feeling for all, regardless
of social distance. Impartiality was their ideal. To be self-
regarding and partial to intimates was not only contrary
to natural law; it was a sign of moral immaturity.
Why Do I Owe Strangers (and the Less Fortunate)

Anything?
What led the Stoics to this ambitious mission? The
answer originates in Stoic theology, which was devised
as a philosophy of defence in a troubled world and
a rival to the religion of the Olympian pantheon. The
Stoic emotional ideal was a combination of spiritual
calm (ataraxia) and resignation (apatheia) that were
to be cultivated in order to achieve happiness/human
flourishing (eudaimonia). The point of religion was to
bring order and tranquillity; something the official Greek
religion of the Olympian gods was quite obviously
incapable of achieving. This religion, with its capricious,
sex-crazed, ill-tempered and unpredictable gods who
meddled in human affairs from the heights of Mount
Olympus hardly inspired calm, let alone compassion.
Neither did its unending demands for propitiation and
sacrifice promote resignation. So the Stoics devised
a less disconcerting religion that spoke of an orderly
universe with no divine intervention whatsoever and
brought the gods not only closer to us, but into us;
no longer distant, terrifying others but, quite literally,
kindly insiders. ‘Reason’, the ‘mind-fire spirit’ existed as
intelligent matter, residing benignly in all life and impelling
it unconsciously and teleologically towards order and
rightness. Humans are not separate from God (or Gods)
but a part of ‘Him’: ‘the universe [is] one living being,
having one substance and one soul’ (Marcus Aurelius
1916: IV.40).
Because the Gods have given each human a particle of
God-like intellect (‘reason’), we have a natural kinship
both with God and with each other (Marcus Aurelius
1916: 12.26). As related parts of the same entity, and

equally sharing in ‘reason’, we are natural equals on
earth with equal sagacious potential. According to
Cicero, everyone has the spark of reason and ‘there is no
difference in kind between man and man [it] is certainly
common to us all’ (Cicero 1988: I. 30). Seneca says that
the light of educated reason ‘shines for all’ regardless
of social location, which is, after all, merely a matter of
luck and social conditioning. As he quite sensibly points
out, ‘Socrates was no aristocrat. Cleanthes worked at
a well and served as a hired man watering a garden.
Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made
him one’ (Seneca 2002: Ep. 44.3). Exclusive pedigrees
‘do not make the nobleman’; only ‘the soul … renders us
noble’ (Seneca 2002: Ep. 44.5). Everyone has the same
capacity for wisdom and virtue and everyone is equally
desirous of these things (Seneca 2002: Ep. 44.6).
True freedom comes from knowledge, from learning to
distinguish ‘between good and bad things’ (Seneca 2002:
Ep. 44.6). Being knowledgeable and therefore ‘good’ is
not just for ‘professional philosophers’. People do not
need to ‘wrap [themselves] up in a worn cloak … nor
grow long hair nor deviate from the ordinary practices
of the average man’ in order to enter the cosmopolis;
rather, admission is open to anyone who insists on using
their own right judgement, in simply ‘thinking out what
is man’s duty and meditating upon it’ (Musonius 1905:
Discourse 16). This is the route to both the moral and the
happy life: when we learn to live according to the natural
law of Zeus, and therefore our natural tendencies, we
are enabled to achieve inner tranquillity (Chrysippus in
Diogenes 1958: ‘Zeno’, VII. 88).2

Duties, Harm and Aid
The Stoics insisted that one of the things that allow
us to live virtuously in accordance with nature is the
correct performance of duties (Sorabji 1993: 134-157).
The virtuous agent is beneficent and just: justice is the
cardinal social virtue (‘the crowning glory of the virtues’)
and beneficence is closely ‘akin’ to it (Chrysippus cited
in Cicero 1990: I. 20). We should always strive to refrain
from harming others since the universal law forbids
it (Cicero 1990: 1. 149.153; Marcus Aurelius 1916:
9.1; Seneca 2002: Ep. 95.51-3). Indeed, ‘according to
[Nature’s] ruling, it is more wretched to commit than to
suffer injury’ (Seneca 2002: Ep. 95.52-3).
But the negative virtue of refraining from harm is not
enough: virtue must also be positive. It is natural for
human beings to aid others (Cicero 1961: III. 62). We
are duty-bound to meet the needs of our divine siblings
(Marcus Aurelius 1916: 11.4) and it is ‘Nature’s will
that we enter into a general interchange of acts of
kindness, by giving and receiving’ (Cicero 1990: I. 20).
The morally mature person knows that she must ‘live for
[her] neighbour’ as she lives for herself (Seneca 2002:
Ep. 48.3).
We have duties of justice, fairness and mutual aid to one
another and the needs of others imply a duty to meet
them: ‘Through [Nature’s] orders, let our hands be ready
for all that needs to be helped’ (Seneca 2002: Ep. 95.52-
3). Moral failure is epitomised by an ‘incapacity to extend
help’ (Epictetus 1989: Fragment 7, 4: 447). It is not only
neutral strangers who are entitled to our assistance, but
also our supposed enemies. Contrary to the ‘common
notion’ that ‘the despicable man is recognised by his
inability to harm his enemies … actually he is much more

easily recognised by his inability to help them’ (Musonius
1905: Fragment XLI). Clearly, the moral demands of the
cosmopolitan ethic are extremely high, requiring that we
treat impartially even the feared and hated. The need for
a high level of moral maturity is one of the reasons why
the Stoics placed so much emphasis on the desirability
of emotional self-control.
Universal Versus Positive, Local Law
The extirpation of passionate attachment and the
moderation of intense loyalties to conspecifics are basic
preconditions for a global ethics. Impartiality is the key
to Stoic egalitarianism: the wise person knows that the
laws governing her behaviour are the same for everyone
regardless of ethnicity, class, blood ties (Clark 1987:
65, 70), and gender (Hill 2001). Judgements about the
welfare of others are always unbiased: ‘persons’ are of
equal value and ends in themselves regardless of their
social location or proximity to us. Reason is common
and so too is law; hence ‘the whole race of mankind’
are ‘fellow-members of the world state’ (Marcus Aurelius
1916: 4.4; see also Epictetus 1989: I.9. 1-3; Cicero 1988:
I.23-31).
Cicero (1961: III.63) says that ‘the mere fact’ of our
‘common humanity’ not only inclines us, but also
‘requires’ that we feel ‘akin’ to one another. The
siblinghood of all rational creatures overrides any local
or emotional attachments because the ‘wise man’
knows that ‘every place is his country’ (Seneca 1970:
II, IX.7; see also Epictetus 1989: IV, 155-165). In order
to ‘guar[d]’ our own welfare we will subject ourselves
to God’s laws, ‘not the laws of Masurius and Cassius’.
When family members rule over others we ‘demolis[h] the
whole structure of civil society’ while putting compatriots

before ‘foreigners’ destroys ‘the universal brotherhood
of mankind’. If we refuse to recognise that foreigners
have the same ‘rights’3 as compatriots we utterly destroy
all ‘kindness, generosity, goodness and justice’ (Cicero
1990: 3. 27-8).
The rational agent will put the laws of Zeus before those
of ‘men’ whenever a conflict between them arises, even
when this imperils the wellbeing of the agent concerned,
as it so often did in the case of Stoic disciples. For
example, when in 60 CE Nero sent Rubellius into exile
to Asia Minor, Musonius went with him in a gesture of
solidarity, thereby casting suspicion on himself in the
Social Alternatives Vol. 34 No 1, 2015 17
eyes of the lethally dangerous Nero. Upon the death
of Rubellius, Musonius returned to Rome, where his
Stoic proselytising drew the further ire of Nero who
subsequently banished him to the remote island of
Gyaros. After Nero’s reign ended, Musonius returned
to Rome but was banished yet again by Vespasian on
account of his political activism.
Musonius thus practised what he preached. He taught
that it is virtuous to exercise nonviolent disobedience
in cases where an authority orders us to violate the
universal law. It is right to disobey an unlawful command
from any superior, be it father, magistrate, or master
because our allegiance – first and always – is to Zeus
and to ‘his’ commandment to do right. In fact, an act
is only disobedient when one has refused ‘to carry out
good and honourable and useful orders’ (Musonius 1905:
Discourse 16). Where the laws of God conflict with the

laws of ‘men’, natural law trumps positive law (Cicero
1988: II.11). As Epictetus (1989: 3.4-7) says: ‘if the good
is something different from the noble and the just, then
father and brother and country and all relationships
simply disappear’. All the Stoics agree on this point
and they directly influenced Kant’s views on the same
subject, namely, that the universal law ‘condemns any
violation that, should it be general, would undermine
human fellowship’ (Nussbaum 2000: 12).
Realist Objections
It is often suggested that cosmopolitanism in general –
and the idea of the world state in particular – is hard to
take seriously because it is practically impossible due
to the persistence of sovereign states and the localised
loyalties that accompany them. On this view, Stoic
cosmopolitanism necessarily involves the commitment
to a world state capable of enacting and enforcing
Stoic principles. However, the cosmopolis is not, strictly
speaking, a legal or constitutional entity (although, of
course, it can be): rather, it is, first and foremost, an
imaginary city, a state of mind, open to anyone capable
of recognising the inherent sanctity of others and who
evinces the Stoic virtues of sympatheia (social solidarity),
philanthropia or humanitas (benevolence), and clementia
(compassion). We become cosmopolites when we work
hard to look beyond surface appearances (Seneca 2002:
Ep. 44.6) and live in obedience to the laws of reason
and of nature, rather than the variable laws of a single
locality. These are the qualities that secure a person’s
membership of the cosmopolis and which also conjure
it into reality.
We are all capable of being cosmopolites. As Musonius
says, the mind is ‘free from all compulsion’ and is ‘in

its own power’; no one can ‘prevent you from using it
nor from thinking … nor from liking the good’ nor from
‘choosing’ the latter, for ‘in the very act of doing this’, you
become a cosmopolite (1905: Discourse 16). Sovereign
states and the citizens within them do not need formal,
supranational structures and legal frameworks to operate
as world citizens; they only need to begin acting as
though the world were a single city which, although
composed predominantly of strangers, is nevertheless
and inescapably one family of natural siblings. Everyone
can and should be a cosmopolite, even if this means
challenging the institutional authority of those who rule.
The fact that the cosmopolis is an imagined community
(albeit constituted by real moral agents committing real
acts of ‘reason’) does not mean that its laws are not more
secure once they have been enshrined in positive law. In
fact, the Stoics preferred to see the laws of Zeus codified
(Bauman 2000: 70, 80). The Roman Stoics, in particular,
sought to bring the cosmopolis into practical existence
through the exercise of power. This is why many threw
themselves into the Sturm und Drang of politics. The true
sage spurns the life of solitary contemplation to devote
him/herself to civic life. There is a fundamental human
desire to ‘safeguard and protect’ our fellow human beings
and because it is natural to ‘desire to benefit as many
people as [one] can’ (Cicero 1961: III.65); it follows that
‘the Wise Man’ will ‘engage in politics and government’
(Cicero 1961: III.68; Diogenes 1958: ‘Zeno’ VII. 21).
Many Stoics sought to influence politics either directly or
indirectly. The Stoic philosopher-king, Marcus Aurelius,
was the most powerful person on earth during his reign
(Noyen 1955), while the Gracchi brothers pushed for
many Stoic-inspired reforms such as admission of all
Italians to citizenship. Those without formal power sought

to influence those who did hold it: Panaetius advised
Scipio Aemilianus, Seneca advised Nero while Blossius
of Cumae advised Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (see
Hill 2005).
But in the absence of formal institutionalisation the laws
of the cosmos are still held to be real; we remain bound
by them because, as Cicero points out, ‘true law’ is
not ‘any enactment of peoples’ [statute] but something
eternal which rules the whole universe by its wisdom
in command and prohibition’. After all, ‘there was no
written law against rape at Rome in the reign of Lucius
Tarquinius’ yet ‘we cannot say on that account that
Sextus Tarquinius did not break that eternal Law by
violating Lucretia’. The eternal law ‘urging men to right
conduct and diverting them from wrongdoing ... did not
first become Law when it was written down, but when it
first came into existence’, which occurred ‘simultaneously
with the divine mind’ (1988: II. 11).
Even if they never managed to constitutionally entrench
the cosmopolis, the Stoics believe it is realised the
moment an agent internalises its moral precepts and
begins to act upon them unilaterally. On this view,
technically, the world state can be brought into existence
by the actions of a single right-thinking person. Therefore
it is unclear that a global ethics is meaningless without
a world state and without political anchoring practices,
and positive laws to guarantee them. At its inception, the
Stoic cosmopolis was conceived as a moral mindset: no
Stoic ever advocated a legally constituted world-state.

One enters the cosmopolis in and with one’s mind, a
mind that is disciplined to absolute impartiality, capable of
seeing past social conventions and intent on universally
extending benevolence and compassion.
Concluding Remarks
For the Stoics, we are siblings with a common ancestry
who share equally in a capacity for reason. Accordingly,
we are all entitled to full recognition. The global state,
the cosmopolis, is brought into being by this recognition:
it is a function of the capacity to be impartial and to
appreciate that there is an inescapable duty to aid
anyone in need, regardless of their social location or
social proximity. The Stoics knew that this was a hard
task requiring not only a high degree of emotional
control and moral maturity but also a willingness to resist
social convention and local practice. Their injunctions
to reasonable behaviour were made in full knowledge
of the fact that the desired anchoring practices would
most likely be absent; nevertheless, they expected their
disciples to adhere to them, not only in the absence of
such practices but even in the face of hostile anchoring
practices, whether in the form of laws or norms.
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Marcus Aurelius 1916 The Meditations, trans. C.R.
Haines, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Musonius R. 1905 Musonius Rufus, Reliquiae, O. Hense
(ed.), Teubner, Chicago.
Noyen, P. 1955 ‘Marcus Aurelius: the greatest practitioner
of Stoicism’, Antiquité Classique, 24: 372-383.
Nussbaum, M. 2000 Ethics and Political Philosophy,
Transaction Publications, New Brunswick.
Seneca, Lucius Annaues 1970 ‘Ad Helvium’, in Seneca,
Moral Essays, trans. J.W. Basore, William Heinemann
Ltd, London.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 2002 Epistles, in three vols,
intro. R. M. Gummere, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
Sorabji, R. 1993 Animal Minds and Human Morals,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Author
Lisa Hill PhD is Professor of Politics at the University of
Adelaide. Before that she was an Australian Research
Council Fellow and a Fellow in Political Science at the
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National
University. Her interests are in political theory, history of
political thought and electoral ethics. She is co-author
of: An Intellectual History of Political Corruption, and
Compulsory Voting: For and Against. She has published
her work in Political Studies, Federal Law Review,
The British Journal of Political Science and Journal of

Theoretical Politics.
End Notes
1. Although the school wasn’t officially closed until 529 CE.
2. Happiness is synonymous with wisdom and virtue in
Stoicism.
3. Habendam, or what is held or is due to one.
Every Breath
It's interesting to consider that
every breath I take
has already been breathed
been part of another breath.
Perhaps that dog over there,
smelly and hairy, licking its own arse.
lynne White,
GWynedd, WaleS
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Virtue Ethics and Modern Society–A Response to the Thesis of
the Modern Predicament
of Virtue Ethics
Author(s): Qun GONG and Lin ZHANG
Source: Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June
2010), pp. 255-265
Published by: Brill
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Front. Philos. China 2010, 5(2): 255-265
DOI 10.1007/sl 1466-010-0014-5
RESEARCH ARTICLE
GONG Qun
Virtue Ethics and Modern Society^-A Response to
the Thesis of the Modern Predicament of Virtue
Ethics
? Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract The revival of modern Western virtue ethics presents
the question of
whether or not virtue ethics is appropriate for modern society.
Ethicists believe
that virtue ethics came from traditional society, to which it
conforms so well. The
appearance of the market economy and a utilitarian spirit,
together with society's
diversification, is a sign that modern society has arrived. This
also indicates a
transformation in the moral spirit. But modern society has not
made virtues less
important, and even as modern life has become more
diversified, rule-following
ethics have taken on even greater importance. Modern ethical
life is still the
ethical life of individuals whose self-identity contains the
identity of moral spirit,
and virtues have a very important influence on the self-
identical moral characters.

Furthermore, modern society, which is centered around
utilitarianism, makes it
apparent that rules themselves are far from being adequate and
virtues are
important. Virtues are a moral resource for modern people to
resist modern evils.
Keywords virtue, ethics, modern society
1
In the history of ethics, both Confucian ethic thoughts in the
Chinese tradition
and ancient Greek ethic thoughts with Aristotle as the
representative are virtue
ethics. In modern times, utilitarianism, represented by Bentham
and Mill, and
deontology, represented by Kant, have come into being in the
West, and over a
considerable amount of time, the tradition of virtue ethics has
been in decline. In
Translated by ZHANG Lin from Zhexue Dongtai ^ $]& (Trends
of Philosophy), 2009, (5):
40-45_
GONG Qun (El)
School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, Beijing
100872, China
E-mail: [email protected]
2019 12:23:15 UTC

256 GONG Qun
the 1950s, in an epoch-making article "Modem Ethical
Philosophy, " G. E. M.
Anscombe, a British ethicist, challenged utilitarianism and
deontology from the
perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. This was regarded as a
sign of the
revival of virtue ethics. Afterwards, notably in the 1980s, many
ethicists
developed virtue ethics from theoretical as well as historical
aspects, igniting its
momentous resurrection. Nonetheless, people have cast a
suspicious eye on the
resurrection, that is to say, they doubt whether or not theorists
could revive the
virtue ethics that has already degenerated. They believe that the
transformation of
virtue ethics to utilitarianism and the normative ethics of
deontology indicates
that virtue ethics are not appropriate for modern society, and it
faces the dilemma
of modern society's changing social structure.
It is not a new view that virtue ethics face a dilemma in modern
society. This
Wew comes from Maclntyre. I will hereby discuss his theory
and compare it to
levant arguments by Chinese scholars. Unlike other ethicists,
Maclntyre is not
only an ethical theorist but also an expert in the history of
ethics. Analyzing the
social history of virtues, Maclntyre proposes that we are in an
after virtue age.
The title of the book, After Virtue, according to the author's

explanation, has
meanings on two levels: First, modern society is in an after
virtue age, ancient,
traditional Aristotelian virtues or traditional virtues
represented by Aristotle,
inevitably disappeared; second, this title indicates the search
for the history of
virtues. That is to say, the author must search for virtues in a
society that has lost
traditional virtues.
According to Maclntyre, virtue ethics was born in traditional
society, which
does not share a similar social structure with modern society.
Traditional society
is one characterized by hierarchy and status, wherein everyone
has their status
and mission. For instance, a noble is as he is at birth, and the
same holds true to a
chieftain, a king, a shepherd, etc. As a result, the established
status of a person
determines his duty, responsibility, and mission, which then
shapes his character
and virtue. At the same time, in traditional society, an
individual not only spends
his entire life engaging in one type of work, but so, too, are
successive
generations. These are the social conditions which are used to
evaluate a person.
The appearance of modern society dissolved these conditions,
as a result of
which the certainty of self disappeared. Maclntyre maintains,
"the democratized
self which has no necessary social content and no necessary
social identity can

then be anything, can assume any role or take any point of
view, because it is in
and for self nothing...the self is no more than 'a peg' on which
the clothes of the
role are hung" (Maclntyre 1984, p. 32).
Maclntyre points out that in traditional society, people
identified themselves
by their membership in different social groups. One can be a
member of a family,
someone's brother, a member of a village, and the like. He
stresses that these are
by no means tentative characteristics, nor do they require
removing "the
2019 12:23:15 UTC
Virtue Ethics and Modern Society 257
discovering of authentic self," but "part of my substance,
defining partially at
least and sometimes wholly my obligation and my duties"
(Ibid.). Modern
society is a contract society identified by contracts, or a society
of equality
whence people have status of freedom. Meanwhile, social
members are not born
with fixed careers; rather, their professions vary at any given
time. Consequently,
in such a modern society, the normative demands from their
profession rather

than those on individual virtue become the focus of ethical
studies. It is in this
sense that duty or responsibility becomes the key concept of
modern ethics.
Therefore, to resurrect virtue ethics, i.e., expanding the mode
of normative
ethics1 appropriate for traditional society to modern society
will encounter
difficulties or become out-dated.
Virtue ethics focuses on what kind of person one may become
or one should
become, putting the subject rather than his acts at the center of
its theory. Modern
normative ethics, on the other hand, mainly concerns acts,
namely, what acts are
good. While utilitarianism stresses the moral value of actions
from their
consequences, deontology evaluates the value of actions based
on the principles
or rules they should follow. According to ethicists like
Maclntyre, traditional
virtue ethics cares about human character and virtue is not
unrelated to
determinate status and circumstances in traditional society. At
the same time, the
traditional self is a concept that integrates birth, life, and death
on the whole, and
in human life it is the search for good in the whole of life
wherein virtue plays a
key role. In modern society, individual life is no longer

considered as part of a
whole, as in traditional society. On the contrary, it has been
taken apart and self
has degenerated into separate fields with different fragments
exerting different
demands on character. Virtue through life has lost its living
space. Such a
degeneration of the holistic self in modern society has rendered
the concept of
Aristotelian virtue in inactive.
Maclntyre also recalls the process in which traditional Western
virtue theories
represented by Aristotle declined. Since modern times, along
with the
establishment of the relationship between capitalism and the
market economy,
utility has become central to modern society. The market
economy seeks the
1 "Normative ethics" was put forward by meta-ethicists in the
tradition of analytic philosophy.
Ethicists or ethic theorists, before the appearance of meta-
ethics who, when studying or
writing about ethics, circled around the making of value
judgments in morality and advocated
some moral values. According to them, this was the ethical
study or work on a practical level.
Meta-ethicists, on the other hand, carry out their investigation
on a philosophical level
concerned only with the analysis of ethical concepts and
judgments, with the logical analysis
of ethical sentences without involving value judgments. In
other words, the concept of
normative ethics is used to differentiate between meta-ethics

and the work of previous ethicists.
It is in this sense that virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and ethics of
deontology are placed in the
category of normative ethics. This article makes use of the
concept of "normative ethics" in
this sense.
2019 12:23:15 UTC
258 GONG Qun
biggest profits, hence the pursuit of utility or material profits,
and financial
profits are of overwhelming significance. In market economies,
all relationships,
even old and tender familial relationships, have been inscribed
with money. It is
in such a social setting that utilitarianism has become rampant,
squeezing virtue
out from the center to the periphery. Maclntyre points out that
the concept of
"utility" was born in contemporary times. Profound changes in
contemporary
productive relationships and the appearance of the commodity
and market
economies made it possible for the pursuit of utility to
dominate. When people
treat utility as a supreme principle for action and the canon for
judgment between
good and evil, virtue degenerates into whether or not it can has
utility. Franklin's

view of virtue is a paragon.
Modern deontology is represented by Kant. It is a normative
deontology with
formal universality, concerned with form, not content. It is
Maclntyre's belief
that this kind of deontology is indicative of the decline of
virtue. To understand
"What you should do" merely as formal categorical
imperatives, we must
consider moral rules or norms in previous social structures
which, however, have
disappeared along with changes in modern society. The original
moral setting
does not exist anymore, but the virtuous imperatives have
survived, which,
consequently, seem empty.2
2
When virtue and virtue ethics only have significance in
traditional society, efforts
by ethicists to resurrect virtue ethics in modern society are
simply a theoretical
game without any practical meaning. When it is only the empty
wish of ethicists,
theorists are engaged in a battle like Don Quixote's windmill.
As a matter of fact,
even Maclntyre himself holds a pessimistic attitude toward the
resurrection of
virtue ethics in modern society, contesting that it can only be
realized in
communities like the cleric educational center set up by
Benedict. A

communitarianist as he is, Maclntyre is also a virtue ethicist
who, as a result, is
thought to be advocating a kind of virtue ethics relevant to
ancient communities
which will surely fail. Does such failure however reveal the
general trouble
2 In effect, it is a misunderstanding by thinkers including
Hegel that Kantian ethics includes
only formal categorical imperatives. Kantian ethics involves
not only formal categorical
imperatives, but also substantial categorical imperatives, that
are human beings are not only
means but ends. When people take two categorical imperatives
apart and concentrate only on
the former, it is natural to find it empty. What must be seen is
that the categorical imperative
that takes human beings to be ends does not appear as the result
of the disappearance of social
construction, wherein ancient virtue was born. On the contrary,
it is the embodiment of social
construction in modern society. Therefore, we cannot
completely attribute Kant's categorical
imperatives to the disappearance of the ancient environment.
2019 12:23:15 UTC
plaguing virtue ethics, or simply indicate the modern trouble
that ancient virtue
ethics is suffering?

The degeneration of ancient communities and the rise of
normative ethics as
utilitarianism and deontology can be taken as the most
important alteration in
social and ethical thought in the process of the transformation
from the
traditional society to the modern one. Along with the
degeneration of ancient
communities and the coming force of modern society, the
characteristics of self
have changed significantly, that is the fragmentation of the
modern self. Such a
transition makes Maclntyre think that the basis for virtue ethics
has vanished.
Hence, the first question is whether or not people still retain
virtues if traditional
communities or the system of status and hierarchy no longer
exists. It is our
contention that traditional communities are no longer around
does not mean
people lack virtues. Since virtues are related to a certain social
community or
social culture, on which it depends to exist and survive, as long
as people still
live in a certain social structure, virtues will, whether in a
traditional community
or not, be the link for maintaining interpersonal relationships.
In other words,
since virtues are socially and culturally relative, modern
society should, like its
ancient counterpart, have corresponding virtue ethics
appropriate for the modern
social structure. The assertion that only ancient society (in the

eyes of some
communitarians, the idea of community has another
significance, that is, society)
has corresponding virtues does not conform to general logical
reasoning.
A more important question concerning whether or not virtue
ethics agrees with
modern society is about the modern self, viz., the
fragmentation of self. We must
accept the fact that the characteristics of the modern self have
changed. Have
such changes nevertheless deprived self of its identity? Or,
does the fragmented
self still contain self-identity? Even so, is there an internal
relationship between
identity and virtue? Without this internal relationship, we
cannot reveal the
meaning and value that traditional virtue has for the self. To
put it in other words,
when the modern self is really ghostlike and without ethical
value, virtues loses
the ontological precondition for its existence in modern
society.
It should be noted that Maclntyre's fragmented self refers to
division in social
life. The most important division that occurs for the individual
from modern life
is the separation of the public sphere from that of the private.
In traditional
society, due to the relatively narrow social sphere,

inconvenient transportation,
and underdeveloped forms of communication, people in a
geographical
community lived in a society consisting of acquaintances, in
which there was
virtually no private space. Even in the city-states of ancient
Greece, people lived
among acquaintances as such. Industrialization and
urbanization in modern
society has changed people's living state and life space. What
has appeared along
with urbanization is a society of strangers. The biggest
difference between
strangers and acquaintances lies in the fact that as far as a
stranger is concerned,
2019 12:23:15 UTC
260 GONG Qun
he has no right to interfere in anything of mine. In this way, the
modem city and
modem industry have allowed strangers to emerge. Meanwhile,
all the fields
related to the public have developed, e.g. different professional
groups and their
life. Public spheres such as political activities, space for public
opinion,
networking, and public spaces etc., developed, wherein
everyone must follow
relevant social norms or moral standards. Such a separation of

spheres has
highlighted differences in social circumstances between modem
virtue and its
ancient counterpart, and make the professional morals in the
professional sphere
and the public morals in the public sphere as contrasted with
the private morals
in the private sphere emerge. Nonetheless, even though this has
led to differences
between ancient people and modem people on moral life, it
does not mean that
virtues have dissolved because of the division that has occurred
in modem life
and only universal ethical principles are permitted. As far as
modem individuals
are concerned, whether in the public life or private one, virtues
are required. In
modem society's market economy, due to the fragmentation of
interpersonal
interests, the possibility of conflict is far greater than that
within a family or even
a clan, and hence the virtue of righteousness is of greater
importance than in
ancient society. In other words, we need, all the more,
righteous people, those
with lofty ideas who hold good and justice in society higher
than anything else.
In the same vein, in different professional fields, duty and
responsibility or
rule-following ethics are found in the center. Be that as it may,
as far as an
individual is concerned, when he does not change these duties
and mies into his
internal demands, but treats them as the external demands of

professional duties,
there is no virtue whatsoever. The difference between virtues
and external mies
lies in that the former is the manifestation of an individual's
character whereas
the latter is no more than an instrument to reach a goal. Such is
the case wherein
both professional moral demands and professional techniques
are needed to
fulfill a professional task for which the former two are means.
But, for an
individual, can we regard duty and responsibility as necessary
means for him to
fulfill a duty? If so, people would not be able to follow the
bondage of these
duties and responsibilities or mies where profits from
professional life can be
made without their stipulation; instead, they may seek these
interests through
more convenient and lucrative means. Such means however
would damage
people's professional lives, negatively affecting or even mining
their careers. The
Sanlu Hj? (a trade mark in China) powdered-milk case is one
such instance for
people to ponder. Virtue means to treat duty and responsibility
as internal
requirements, making them key factors in one's moral character
so that one
cannot help doing so, and it is not a means to profit from
external interests. In
this sense, any modem profession, as such, cannot be without
virtue. Additionally,
unlike those virtues (e.g., courage, generosity, etc.) conceived

of by Aristotle
from the perspective of individual life, virtues in modem
society have a closer
2019 12:23:15 UTC
bearing on duty and are more diverse. This is to say that
professions appeal to
professional virtues. As a result, it is not in a general sense that
virtue ethics has
suffered in modern society. The so-called trouble is only
meaningful in the sense
of traditional virtues. People should not believe that
Aristotelian virtue ethics
hold no significance for modern life (this is an issue deserving
of more detailed
discussion, which cannot be done here).
What is more, the separation of spheres in modern society
refers to neither the
fragmentation of the self's personality nor the degeneration of
the identity of the
self. Seen from the segmentation of the external life, the
modern self seems to
have degenerated. The individual has no self, his essence is not
defined by
himself, and the self becomes a hanger for a role. The case,
seemingly, is not so
however when we see from the point of view of the individual
mental and

psychic identities such as mental identity, moral identity, and
identity of tendency
to act. As is demonstrated by developmental psychology, the
identity of an
individual's mental self comes from one's childhood
experience, and throughout
the development of the behavioral subject, his ability to speak
and act takes form
and develops, building some consistency. Self qua subject
keeps its own identity
during separation from and interaction with other objects. As
Harbermas puts it,
self may keep his identity when interconnecting with others
and, in all the games
relevant to roles, express that kind of relationship akin to
others yet absolutely
different hence ambivalent. What's more, as such a person?he
incorporates the
inner interaction into some unquestioned complex mood of life
history?he
makes himself appear (Harbermas 1989, p. 113). We do not
mean to say, of
course, that a person will never change his mentality or moral
tendency to act etc.,
but we mean that there will be changes, and there is
consistency which, as it were,
enables us to recognize from mental and moral identity as well
as physical
identity the same person from several years ago, decades ago,
or even earlier.
The mentality and moral tendency to act is an important facet
of one's identity.

We cannot deny that a person, from his youth into middle age
and to old age, has
personal identity. Indeed, most people have relatively steady
personalities, albeit
some have alternating personalities. Nevertheless, even this
alternation does not
come from large everyday changes and, even if it were a great
change, is the
result of gradual and quantitative changes, or a significant
change occurs after
some juncture has been reached. In other words, it is the
change, in lieu of the
fragmentation, of personality.
The main aspect of mental identity is individual moral identity,
the root of
which is virtue or the moral character of a person. Character is
the moral life of a
person, a layer above his natural one. As is pointed out by
Aristotle, virtue is
cultivated from a person's habit to act or gradually formed in
his life experiences,
and consequently, becomes a person's second life. Mencius
contends that there is
a slight difference between human and animals, and it is moral
character. Human
2019 12:23:15 UTC
262 GONG Qun
essence is not one's nature, but his social attributes, of which

morality is the most
essential. To put it in another way, human identity in moral
character embodies
our particularity as human beings. Nonetheless, while this
particularity leads to
generic identification between others and us, it differentiates us
from others
qua a moral self. As Harbermas puts it, in self identity, some
paradoxical
relationship is revealed: As a common one, and self is the same
as all the
others; as an individual however, he is by no means identical
with any other
individual (Ibid., pp. 93-94). Because of different
psychological processes and
life experiences, an individual's moral characteristics which are
formed by his
long-term habits may differ. As far as the self is concerned,
self identity
maintains consistent individual tendencies to act so that we can
expect
consistency from an individual due to his life experiences. In
other words,
when someone acts a certain way under some circumstance, it
stands to reason
that he would still do the same under similar circumstances.
Take, for example,
a brave man. It is more than that his life experiences have
demonstrated his
bravery. We can also expect his behavior to be the same in the
future. This is
to say that a righteous man would behave righteously, a brave
man bravely, a
moderate man moderately, a benevolent man kindly, and so on.
Aristotle

repeatedly mentions what a brave man would do and what a
righteous man
would do, referring to virtuous agents in the sense of self-
identity. When a
person is not worthy of expectation with regard to virtue, it
means that people
do not know how to communicate, cooperate, or co-exist with
him. Individual
self-identity is related to the maintenance of interpersonal
relationships and the
plan and expectations of human life.3
Will a man of virtue disappear as the result of the
fragmentation of life in
modern society? Whether in ancient society or modern society,
there is always
the virtuous self or the self lacking of virtue, and this will not
change as
modern living conditions vary. Self-identity and moral identity
are cultivated
from mental experiences and moral tendencies to act. Both in
ancient times and
in modern times, individuals exist and develop in
communication with the
external social circumstances and others. Based on this, if the
fragmentation of
modern life leads to the fragmentation of self, it only means
that there is no
standard for individuating individual self in society. In effect,
none can be
found to have been totally lost his moral self in any society.
Self-identity is a
unique psychological, moral and spiritual basis of individuals
qua individuals.
In self-identity, moral identity or the identity of moral

character is of much
Of course, we by no means deny that Aristotelian virtue ethics
includes the idea that slaves
are not men, but this also does not conform to Aristotle's view
that treating virtue as coming
from the inner construction of humanity and human praxis.
Pointing to this, we do not deny
that virtue ethics discuss virtue in a general sense of humanity.
2019 12:23:15 UTC
importance.
3
The second important issue presented by Maclntyre is: Modern
society is utility
centered whereas traditional society is virtue centered. Virtue
has been
marginalized in modern society. According to Maclntyre, we
are now in an after
virtue "dark age." What this view holds is not that there is no
virtue in modern
society, but that virtue is no longer important in modern
society. In Aristotelian
ethics, happiness centers around virtue; in utilitarianist ethics,
on the other hand,
happiness takes utility as its core or treats the utilitarian

consequence of action as
the standard for judgment. Maclntyre is correct in this sense
when judging the
place of virtue in modern society. Others also contend, on the
basis of
rule-following ethics represented by deontology, that modern
society puts rules
in the center and hence virtue at the periphery of moral life.
The following two
views deserve our notice: The first is judging the
marginalization of virtue as a
fact; the second is taking it as value identification. It is
Maclntyre's position to
make a judgment on the fact, ignoring value identification. His
opinion with
respect to the circumstances of virtue in modern society fails to
lead him to the
conclusion that virtue is not important in modern society. Just
the opposite, he
argues that we need to seek virtue because we have lost ancient
Aristotelian
virtue. As has been stated before, the pun, i.e., "after virtue"
used by Maclntyre
which contains the dual meaning of after virtue and searching
for virtue
demonstrates this. Where, nevertheless, should we cultivate or
find virtue?
Maybe the too much element of ancient Aristotelian complex in
Maclntyre has
inscribed in him the idea that authentic virtue can by no means
be cultivated in
modern society. A considerable number of modern Western
ethicists however do
not agree with him. For instance, Max L. Stackhouse, the
famous ethicist once
told me, even though we do not have Aristotelian ancient

virtue, we still have
virtue!
Of course, adherents to the ethical doctrine based on rules who
affirm virtues
from value considerations do not deny that virtue is needed in
modern society.
They simply believe that virtue is less important. What cannot
be denied is that
there is a great difference between ancient or traditional social
life and modern
one regarding the significance of virtue. The development of
modern material
civilization and the abundance of material life have changed
the appearance of
material life in traditional society. The upsurge in material
wealth is the origin as
well as product of the utilitarian pursuit. The conversion of
human spiritual value
has greatly improved the living conditions of modern man and
should be
commended for this. Nonetheless, the loss of the central status
of virtues has also
2019 12:23:15 UTC
264 GONG Qun
brought about problems such as the alienation and money-
orientation of

interpersonal relationships, damage brought to human beings
camouflaged by the
neutrality of technological value, the massacre of Jews in
World War II, to name
just a few. On this issue, I agree with Maclntyre's words,
namely that history has
its merits and faults, so we should not stop thinking about what
we have lost
when celebrating what has been given to us by progress.
Needless to say,
historical changes have led to a great change in status of virtue
in human life, but
we cannot claim that virtue has become less important because
it has no place in
modern society. It is just the opposite. The evils that have
happened in modern
society are unprecedented and unanticipated for our ancestors,
demonstrating
how necessary virtue is for modern society. Maybe utilitarian
pursuit in modern
society has produced many morally indifferent individuals or
even evil ones, and
has greatly degraded moral standards in modern society. It does
not mean
however that we no longer need virtue or virtue is no longer
appropriate for
modern society. If this is the plight, we should admit that it is
the plight of
modern man in lieu of virtue.
Virtues are necessarily important to the continuing existence of
mankind and
to the continuing development of human civilization. Can we
say that it is

enough for modern society to merely have rules? Is it worthy of
our concern that
virtue is in the periphery? Undoubtedly, virtues in modern
society are very
different from that in ancient society. We thus cannot return to
the age of
Confucius or Aristotle. Being unable to renew the exact
Confucian or Aristotelian
virtue notwithstanding, we cannot claim that it is dispensable.
The emergence of
professional life, urban life and technological life has
considerably changed the
human environment, further reinforcing the need for rules.
Rules nevertheless
cannot replace virtues in people's social and moral lives.
Rather than a kind of
elusive mental state, virtue is the inner character of a moral
self. What is more,
utilitarian pursuit in modern society has changed the direction
of human pursuit
for value and people's attitude toward material interests. The
change of the
human environment and values has led to changes in virtue and
its enrichment. In
addition, modern life centered on utility presents a greater
demand for the
practice of modern virtue. Modern man is confronted with
stronger temptations
from greed and selfish desires than his ancestors, and a society
of strangers has
enlarged the possibility of committing evil. The virtual cyber
world has presented
far greater demand for human virtue than the shendu (self-
discipline)

stressed in traditional Chinese society. On this account, we
hold that virtue,
especially modern virtue, is needed in modern society; rules
alone are not
enough.
The last problem is: There are ethics, to wit. utilitarian ethics
and ethics of
deontology, that fit in with modern life, do we still need virtue
ethics? The point
is, can utilitarianism and deontology alone respond to the need
for virtues? We do
2019 12:23:15 UTC
not think so. Issues pertaining to virtue should not be
categorized into that of
consequence of acts or rules of acts. Utilitarian ethics
interprets the moral
significance of utilitarian consequence from that of acts, and
deontology stresses
the moral significance of rules to acts from the significance of
rules.
Nevertheless, they fail to answer modern society's moral
demands. Virtue ethics
reaffirms the importance of virtue from the significance of
individual virtue,
which is precisely what the aforementioned two theories lack.
Seen from the
perspective of ethics, morality is concerned with voluntary

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