A proposal for a pragmatic virtue theory

Loosely, Aristotle’s virtue theory can be outlined as follows:

Virtuous actions are actions performed by virtuous people.
Virtuous people are those who act virtuously.

It’s obviously circular, but that’s not the point. Aristotle is trying to root virtue in a particular kind of being, or way of living. In this respect he is ahead of his time. Unlike the likes of Kant and Mill, who thought that virtuous acts could be calculated for every situation, he thinks that the most ethical course of action is determined intuitively, and prior to the moment, by the condition of already having a virtuous predisposition. Such a disposition is arrived at by the pursuit of practical and intellectual knowledge, and practice, and or repetition. The problem arises when we ask ourselves how we ought to model this disposition. Aristotle argued that we should appeal to our elders and prior experience, but where do we turn to in a world where social science has demonstrated to us that we should not necessarily trust our elders, and that we should not trust our experience sans reflection – in other words, a world without neutral knowledge. I think this dilemma can be resolved by appealing to a pragmatic virtue theory. The best we can do is what we ought to do, and fortunately for us we live in a world in which our elders have outlined the prior mentioned dilemma. So we add the clause, “question one’s elders, and act reflexively,” to our already long list of clauses that cultivate a virtuous being. Such is the reality that a virtuous person must navigate in this day and age. Thus the clauses that constitute a virtuous person are constantly in flux, and different depending on our point in history. The elders of our day, or the experts and scholars that came before us, are our source for virtue like every generation prior to ours, except the things they say have changed. The usefulness of the development of a cohesive social science is evident here to the development of past and future virtuous ways of living. Finally there is still a particularity to such an approach, and which, I believe, forces me to side with Rorty and his notions on ethnocentrism. We simply can’t escape our context, but are obliged to act in the best way we see fit, taking into consideration the things we can. I think there is some interesting work to be done concerning an ethics which includes the clauses I listed above – should we call it a sceptical virtue theory instead, and can we justify that such an approach is preferable to one that doesn’t include a hefty dose of questioning? In other words can questioning, or a critical disposition, be virtuous? I at least like to think so.