How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues

Much of philosophical ethics suffers from being overly impersonal. Utilitarianism, on one strongly advocated interpretation, urges on us a life of rigorous impartiality, enjoining us to push our own children to the back of the queue when there are stronger utility-claimants in line.¹ Even the 'indirect' or 'rule' versions of utility theory seem to allow us our partialities and personal ties only grudgingly: the seal of approval depends on our solemnly demonstrating (if we can) that the general institution of such preferential commitments helps maximize global utility.² Consequentialism's chief rival, deontological ethics, also seems to locate morality in a place well apart from our ordinary impulses of partiality. Notwithstanding the scholarship and eloquence of its defenders,³ Kant's insistence that moral worth is reserved for the austerely motivated act of pure duty, 'uninfluenced by any sensible interest',⁴ seems to bleach out the moral worth from much of our lives--conditioned as they are by the ties of partiality, the 'sensible warm motions' of the human heart.

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