Philippa Foot Quotes on Virtue
Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (2001) gave neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics its most rigorous contemporary statement. The principal thesis is that human moral evaluation is a species of the same natural-goodness evaluation that applies to other living things: just as we judge an oak or a wolf to be a good or defective member of its species by reference to the form of life characteristic of that species, so we judge a human being to be virtuous or vicious by reference to the form of life characteristic of human beings as the rational animals they are. The earlier essays — Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives, the Trolley Problem essays, Goodness and Choice — laid the groundwork for the constructive position the late book completes.
Quotes
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Attributed to Philippa Foot:
“Goodness is, as it were, built into the very nature of human life.”
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Attributed to Philippa Foot:
“There is in fact a special connection between virtue and human happiness.”
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Attributed to Philippa Foot:
“Virtues are habits of the will.”
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Attributed to Philippa Foot:
“Hypothetical imperatives can be more demanding than categorical ones.”
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Attributed to Philippa Foot:
“The grounding of moral judgement is to be found in facts about what human beings are.”
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“The whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations. … If a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. With evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based.”
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“We will be asked how, on our theory, justice can be a virtue and injustice a vice, since it will surely be difficult to show that any man whatsoever must need to be just as he needs the use of his hands and eyes, or needs prudence, courage and temperance? Before answering this question I shall argue that if it cannot be answered then justice can no longer be recommended as a virtue.”
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