1020 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb guage of citizenship, individual responsibility and the idea of a public ethics. Glossy HMSO documents have invoked phrases such as best practice which reflect"inclu- sivist' ideas of participation, commitment and, in effect, the making of a common wealth. If we listen carefully to these statements we may faintly hear a language of virtue that commends the measured comportment of ones qualities of self into form of social relations and the public sphere, and which if cultivated may lead to a moral society The relevance to social work should be fairly clear. Such an ethics gives moral meaning to modes of practice in everyday life whether in personal or professional settings. The practice of virtue developed through experience, reflection and circum spection--is the very stuff of good social work. These situated factors provide cri- teria for a profoundly human moral theory that is not perfectionist in its ambition but rather is defensible in terms of the 'good enough. This is precisely because the ructure of human encounter, of setting, and of policy horizons are variable and dynamic. Only in a static world is perfection possible, and of all worlds the social york world is no utopia. Thus virtue ethics may fit well with a field of activity accountable to time, change, accident and flexibility. Herewith our reasons for giving another outing to this most ancient and contemporary account of moral life. The criticism that a virtue ethics cannot adequately be applied to moral problems of the what ought I to do in this case? type points up a strength for our purposes, namely that at a time when social work aims to become more prescriptive and criteria-lec a theory of moral action rooted in the development of persons-as-subjective-agents is, perhaps, to be welcomed (Louden, 1997, p 184). In this sense, virtue ethics may be seen as partial but revitalizing in its focus upon the virtues of the social worker and not just of the work done. The former should not be isolated from the latter any more than a role can be performed in isolation from the abilities and qualities of the ctor. Doing a task well is not merely a matter of rule-following: expressed in it are the skills and virtues of persons. This point may be used against the mantra of good practice found in training manuals which tend to see the practitioner qua person as a mere cypher. Virtue ethics, then, may not tell us what must be done in this or that case to satisfy an image of social work as a moral enterprise; rather virtue ethics can be used to offer an account of the modes of moral existence shaping the being of a good social worker. More simply then, the basic question is not what is good social work, but rather what is a good social worker? Having sketched out the position of virtue ethics with regard to the history of ethics and social work values and practice, for the rest of this article we propose to outline the character and context of Aristotles notion of virtue to review some of the main contributions to recent work on virtue and then explore some of the ways which these can show how a virtuous disposition can be understood to be at the centre of agency-based social work Aristotelian virtue ethics Essentially, for virtue ethics, a good act is good because it results character that is intrinsically going to perform an action in line with
1020 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb guage of citizenship, individual responsibility and the idea of a public ethics. Glossy HMSO documents have invoked phrases such as ‘best practice’ which reflect ‘inclusivist’ ideas of participation, commitment and, in effect, the making of a commonwealth. If we listen carefully to these statements we may faintly hear a language of virtue that commends the measured comportment of ones qualities of self into forms of social relations and the public sphere, and which if cultivated may lead to a moral society. The relevance to social work should be fairly clear. Such an ethics gives moral meaning to modes of practice in everyday life whether in personal or professional settings. The practice of virtue developed through experience, reflection and circumspection—is the very stuff of good social work. These situated factors provide criteria for a profoundly human moral theory that is not perfectionist in its ambition, but rather is defensible in terms of the ‘good enough’. This is precisely because the structure of human encounter, of setting, and of policy horizons are variable and dynamic. Only in a static world is perfection possible, and of all worlds the social work world is no utopia. Thus virtue ethics may fit well with a field of activity accountable to time, change, accident and flexibility. Herewith our reasons for giving another outing to this most ancient and contemporary account of moral life. The criticism that a virtue ethics cannot adequately be applied to moral problems of the ‘what ought I to do in this case?’ type points up a strength for our purposes, namely that at a time when social work aims to become more prescriptive and criteria-led, a theory of moral action rooted in the development of persons-as-subjective-agents is, perhaps, to be welcomed (Louden, 1997, p.184). In this sense, virtue ethics may be seen as partial but revitalizing in its focus upon the virtues of the social worker and not just of the work done. The former should not be isolated from the latter any more than a role can be performed in isolation from the abilities and qualities of the actor. Doing a task well is not merely a matter of rule-following; expressed in it are the skills and virtues of persons. This point may be used against the mantra of ‘good practice’ found in training manuals which tend to see the practitioner qua person as a mere cypher. Virtue ethics, then, may not tell us what must be done in this or that case to satisfy an image of social work as a moral enterprise; rather virtue ethics can be used to offer an account of the modes of moral existence shaping the being of a good social worker. More simply then, the basic question is not what is good social work, but rather what is a good social worker? Having sketched out the position of virtue ethics with regard to the history of ethics and social work values and practice, for the rest of this article we propose to outline the character and context of Aristotle’s notion of virtue, to review some of the main contributions to recent work on virtue and then explore some of the ways in which these can show how a virtuous disposition can be understood to be at the centre of agency-based social work. Aristotelian virtue ethics Essentially, for virtue ethics, a good act is good because it results froma good character that is intrinsically going to performan action in line with one or more
Virtue ethics and social Work 1021 virtues. Thus the goodness of the act is not a result of the(intended) outcome or of he indexing of ones moral actions by their universalizability and the duty entailed always to act similarly in similar cases. The connection between the actor and the acted upon whether in terms of respect or advantage given to the latter by the former is not of primary concern. It is not that the ends do not matter but that the(intended) result does not make the actor moral. It is rather peculiar to want to suggest that an action or its result, in and of itself, can be good. The goodness of an action lies in persons in a context of moral appraisal and their motivations and dispositions in the execution and aims of their actions. To account for the structure of this process is effect to do a phenomenology of moral action, and this requires scrutiny of the making of the inner self not merely through a psychology, but through the identi- fication of social and cultural factors which shape how the components of the inner life are intricated in the project of being human in the world. And this question exploring the meaning of the good life-the question of the best way to bewas central to plato and aristotle and the hellenic world view Aristotle's notion of the good life placed greater importance upon the collective of the city-state than it did upon the good of the individual. For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual. it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of a ommunity: for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime(Aristotle, 1976, p. 64) Ultimately the interests of the state coincide with the interests of the individual- the well-being of the state is the summum bonum because it promotes the good of all individuals and is the entity which the individual thus aspires to promote and for which he does his best. The reciprocal nature of the relation between the state and e individual requires that good as happiness is a function of the disposition towards certain ways of individual conduct that is the virtues acquired through training and example. To be happy is to act not only in accordance with virtue--to live virtu- ously--but also to have material goods 'throughout a complete life(Aristotle, 1976, p. 84). Human kind is therefore primarily active and practical, and secondarily con- templative. The good life, which all want in their various ways, can only be achieved through participation in the political culture which individuals develop by debating well and acting justly. These are precisely the means by which to improve the structural conditions which in turn improve the conditions of the individual. So the conception of a good life is bound to the practices of the virtuous citizen and the state. At root then, is the good will-the totality of virtuous dispositions the indi- vidual brings into his social and political activity. As we have seen these are matured by forms of education. Here we may quickly note that a good will-the impetus to act well towards an object or goalis the concept Kant appealed to as irreducibly ood when he opened the Groundwork (1785/1948). Identifying the good with a disposition to be good not surprisingly has led many to see that there is more than a whiff of virtue ethics about Kant despite it being widely held that he provided a form of ethical reasoning opposed to that of Aristotle(Sherman, 1997, p. 1; Baron, 1997,§3)
Virtue Ethics and Social Work 1021 virtues. Thus the goodness of the act is not a result of the (intended) outcome or of the indexing of ones moral actions by their universalizability and the duty entailed always to act similarly in similar cases. The connection between the actor and the acted upon whether in terms of respect or advantage given to the latter by the former is not of primary concern. It is not that the ends do not matter but that the (intended) result does not make the actor moral. It is rather peculiar to want to suggest that an action or its result, in and of itself, can be good. The goodness of an action lies in persons in a context of moral appraisal and their motivations and dispositions in the execution and aims of their actions. To account for the structure of this process is in effect to do a phenomenology of moral action, and this requires scrutiny of the making of the inner self not merely through a psychology, but through the identi- fication of social and cultural factors which shape how the components of the inner life are intricated in the project of being human in the world. And this question exploring the meaning of the good life—the question of the best way to be—was central to Plato and Aristotle and the Hellenic world view. Aristotle’s notion of the good life placed greater importance upon the collective of the city-state than it did upon the good of the individual. For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of a community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime (Aristotle, 1976, p. 64). Ultimately the interests of the state coincide with the interests of the individual— the well-being of the state is the summum bonum because it promotes the good of all individuals and is the entity which the individual thus aspires to promote and for which he does his best. The reciprocal nature of the relation between the state and the individual requires that good as happiness is a function of the disposition towards certain ways of individual conduct that is the virtues acquired through training and example. To be happy is to act not only in accordance with virtue—to live virtuously—but also to have material goods ‘throughout a complete life’ (Aristotle, 1976, p. 84). Human kind is therefore primarily active and practical, and secondarily contemplative. The good life, which all want in their various ways, can only be achieved through participation in the political culture which individuals develop by debating well and acting justly. These are precisely the means by which to improve the structural conditions which in turn improve the conditions of the individual. So the conception of a good life is bound to the practices of the virtuous citizen and the state. At root then, is the good will—the totality of virtuous dispositions the individual brings into his social and political activity. As we have seen these are matured by forms of education. Here we may quickly note that a good will—the impetus to act well towards an object or goal—is the concept Kant appealed to as irreducibly good when he opened the Groundwork (1785/1948). Identifying the good with a disposition to be good not surprisingly has led many to see that there is more than a whiff of virtue ethics about Kant despite it being widely held that he provided a formof ethical reasoning opposed to that of Aristotle (Sherman, 1997, p. 1; Baron, 1997, § 3)
1022 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb Aristotle distinguishes between two classes of virtue: intellectual and moral. Under the former fall wisdom, prudence and understanding which are acquired by instruction which needs time and experience which add up to wisdom; under the latter fall into liberality and temperance, which are chiefly acquired by habit and the example of others. However, a virtue can become a vice where there is either a surfeit or deficit of it. with this idea in mind. Aristotle elaborates his well-known doctrine of the mean which has come to be captured in sayings such as you can have too much of a good thing or 'don' t go overboard. He sets out a table of virtues and vices where, in the sphere of social conduct, the virtuous mean would be friendliness, in deficient form would be cantankerousness and in excessive form would be obsequiousness. Thus in Aristotles ethics, to be virtuous is a practice of life which if done well is the process of producing the good life. It requires judge ment of what is a just measure of action commensurable with the situation obtaining, for this is implied by the doctrine of the mean. How such judgement is acquired is tself a socio-cultural product. The relation between the good of the individual and that of the community is bi-conditional Having discussed the context and terms of Aristotle's virtue ethics we should ow turn to exploring post-Aristotelian versions. For our purposes we will only consider work from the last twenty years inasmuch as this work represents a sponse to developments in analytical moral philosophy that have set the paramet of argument in applied ethics in recent times Contemporary virtue ethics' relation to ethical notions in social work Contemporary virtue ethics is a reaction to the pre-dominance of Kantian, utilitarian and meta-ethical theories which concern either giving ethical directives to specific moral problems or defining the meaning of the predicate 'good. Virtue ethics tends to dispense with criteria such as duty, responsibility and ends hitherto deemed essen- tial to justifying actions. Given that our sense of how to evaluate morality is shaped by the dominant discourses of the time, it is not easy to abandon concepts we use Deontological moral discourse rests upon a notion of duty, but it is duty that is abandoned in the face of virtue. a basic argument for this is that if someone says he is doing an act from duty then he is not doing it by reason of an unadulterated will for the sake of the other person, but rather the act is being done for the sake of an abstract obligation. Michael Stocker gives the example of telling someone that one has visited them in hospital because it was ones duty. This carries the implica tion that one did not visit them because one wanted to. In this sense acting from duty is of lesser moral worth than an act done because one purely wanted to. One neither doing the act for oneself or for the other (Stocker, 1997). The same would seem to be true for social work where seeing a client is often done not because we want to see that particular client with a view to doing good for them, but because
1022 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb Aristotle distinguishes between two classes of virtue: intellectual and moral. Under the former fall wisdom, prudence and understanding which are acquired by instruction which needs time and experience which add up to wisdom; under the latter fall into liberality and temperance, which are chiefly acquired by habit and the example of others. However, a virtue can become a vice where there is either a surfeit or deficit of it. With this idea in mind, Aristotle elaborates his well-known doctrine of the mean which has come to be captured in sayings such as ‘you can have too much of a good thing’ or ‘don’t go overboard’. He sets out a table of virtues and vices where, in the sphere of social conduct, the virtuous mean would be friendliness, in deficient formwould be cantankerousness and in excessive form would be obsequiousness. Thus in Aristotle’s ethics, to be virtuous is a practice of life which if done well is the process of producing the good life. It requires judgement of what is a just measure of action commensurable with the situation obtaining, for this is implied by the doctrine of the mean. How such judgement is acquired is itself a socio-cultural product. The relation between the good of the individual and that of the community is bi-conditional. Having discussed the context and terms of Aristotle’s virtue ethics we should now turn to exploring post-Aristotelian versions. For our purposes we will only consider work fromthe last twenty years inasmuch as this work represents a response to developments in analytical moral philosophy that have set the parameters of argument in applied ethics in recent times. Contemporary virtue ethics’ relation to ethical notions in social work Contemporary virtue ethics is a reaction to the pre-dominance of Kantian, utilitarian and meta-ethical theories which concern either giving ethical directives to specific moral problems or defining the meaning of the predicate ‘good’. Virtue ethics tends to dispense with criteria such as duty, responsibility and ends hitherto deemed essential to justifying actions. Given that our sense of how to evaluate morality is shaped by the dominant discourses of the time, it is not easy to abandon concepts we use for everyday moral reasoning. Deontological moral discourse rests upon a notion of duty, but it is duty that is abandoned in the face of virtue. A basic argument for this is that if someone says he is doing an act fromduty then he is not doing it by reason of an unadulterated will for the sake of the other person, but rather the act is being done for the sake of an abstract obligation. Michael Stocker gives the example of telling someone that one has visited themin hospital because it was ones duty. This carries the implication that one did not visit thembecause one wanted to. In this sense acting from duty is of lesser moral worth than an act done because one purely wanted to. One is neither doing the act for oneself or for the other (Stocker, 1997). The same would seemto be true for social work where seeing a client is often done not because we want to see that particular client with a view to doing good for them, but because