VIRTUE ETHICS AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

Should virtue ethics become a priority for all American corporations? Virtue ethics is defined as a moral philosophy that simply asks: “What kind of person should I be?” Rather than relying strictly on rules—which can be prevalent in certain philosophies—virtue ethics argues that an action is only moral if a virtuous person would naturally do that action.

For example, if you found a wallet on the side of the road, deontology may tell you to give that wallet back simply because stealing is wrong and could result in repercussions. Utilitarianism would tell you to return the money because the person who lost their wallet would be happy, thus fulfilling the burden of goodness for the greatest amount. In virtue ethics, however, you would simply return the wallet because you are a caring and compassionate person.

This philosophy was created by Aristotle, and his other idea of the Golden Mean seeps into virtue ethics as well. The Golden Mean the ethical idea that the best decision to make is the moderate decision; the other two extremes, either excess or deficiency, are not of best virtue. This principle, as stated earlier, is also found in Aristotle’s virtue ethics. In virtue ethics, Aristotle cautions against finding the extremes in ‘good’ behavior, as he believes that moderacy in that good behavior is the most virtuous. For example, when considering the characteristic of courage, having too much or too little courage can lead to recklessness or cowardice, respectively; maintaining courage in moderacy, however, is the most virtuous as you are able to maintain the characteristic the perfect—or golden—amount.

Let’s get to the actual debate of whether being virtuous should be a priority for all American corporations. When looking at this problem flatly, one would automatically say yes; why wouldn’t we want companies to exhibit more morally sound behaviors. Unfortunately, reality isn’t so black and white; even now, we see that many companies are attempting to fake virtuosity, when in reality those efforts lead to more toxicity and unethicalities within the corporation. For example, Volkswagen was famously known prior to 2015 for their ‘Clean Diesel’ campaign, which touted their vehicles as environmentally friendly and highly efficient. However, upon further investigation, the EPA found that Volkswagen had in actuality installed software into their cars to cheat emission tests; real data shows that Volkswagen emitted up to 40 times the permitted level of pollutants. The Volkswagen scandal, dubbed as ‘DieselGate’ by many, is just one example out of the hundreds of companies—that we know of—that try to demonstrate virtuosity, which only led to more immorality.

In the ideal world, it may be easy to quickly say that virtuosity should be a priority of American corporations. However, in the American world, that is not the case; having all companies prioritise virtue ethics could lead to even more issues within a company and increase the development of ways to cheat virtue, as did Volkswagen. Before we decide that companies should prioritize virtue ethics, it is important that we fix other issues in American capitalism first.