Virtue Ethics: Social Care and Human Rights
This week we are going back to the beginning of the volume. The first chapter is titled “Values and Human Rights: Implications of an Emerging Discourse on Virtue Ethics,” by Dr. Michael L Penn. It gives a generous overview of the ways that virtue ethics can interact with ideas of human rights conceptually and in practice. Since its conception in the 1950s, virtue ethics has drawn on Aristotelean thought and has developed a unique perspective when compared to other moral theories like deontology and utilitarianism.
Virtue ethics focuses on moral selves rather than moral laws. It centers on the cultivation of human capabilities and holds special relevance in an era where corporations and individuals can impact human rights as much as governments can. Human rights theorists tend to focus on norms and laws like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. Violating these norms then constitutes a crime, as in a war crime or a crime against humanity. They also tend to rely on explanations and logic found in deontology or utilitarianism.
Virtue ethics offers a different perspective in which cultivating good human character is the way to support, promote, and protect human rights. This approach focuses on people as a collective rather than states as actors. It also emphasizes the role of education in shaping lifelong moral development and civic engagement. This education can help children center both care and justice ethics. Dr. Penn sees virtue ethics as more than a moral theory. It envisions human prosperity on all levels, and a large part of that goal is socially embedding virtue.
In protecting human rights, one of the most important virtues is the ability to care about the plights and well-being of others. We build a consciousness of human vulnerability and need to help shape our moral imperative to care. Human rights violations do not appear out of nowhere. They are incubated in social context until they morph and grow into the worst expressions of discrimination and prejudice. In order to combat this, we must create a society that is inhospitable to hatred, conflict, and authoritarianism.
Society is made up of people. We can make caring more socially viable and ignorance and oppression socially unacceptable. Human capabilities can be reached only when genuine needs like life, health, freedom, emotion, and companionship are met. The role of people in a collective and of governing bodies should be to help people meet those needs and therefore be able to succeed and thrive beyond current limits.
About the Author
Stella Hudson is a Graduate Assistant with the Baha’i Chair for World Peace. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2021 with a B.A. in English. She will graduate from the University of Maryland with her MLIS in spring 2023.