The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

340 chapter 30scales—that is, prudence.“If a strength [of character, one of the twenty-fourthey identify] is recognized only when it produces a payoff,” as Peterson andSeligman argue, “we do not need the notion of good character to accountfor human conduct. We can return to a radical behaviorism and speak onlyof prevailing rewards and punishments. But as Aristotle and other philosophersconcerned with virtue persuasively argue, actions undertaken solelyfor external reasons cannot be considered virtuous, because they are coaxedor coerced, carroted or sticked.” 8The impulse to find some prudential seed for so-called virtues is modern.Benjamin Franklin himself claimed famously to be governed by PrudenceOnly, a rhetoric popular by the time he composed the first part of hisAutobiography. As Tocqueville said, “In the United States as . ..elsewherepeople are sometimes seen to give way to those disinterested . . . impulses . . . ;but the Americans seldom admit [it]. ...They are more anxious to dohonor to their philosophy than to themselves.” 9 Like that of his countrymen,Franklin’s rhetoric was false. In his life he was a good friend anda good citizen, just and courageous, hopeful and temperate. He was notperfect, but he was not a Prudence Only machine, not at all. Max Weber,D. H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, and even the perspicacious AlasdairMacIntyre don’t grasp this about their “pattern American.”Even very sensible philosophers want nowadays to deny such observationsby reducing every virtue to prudence. In his last book Robert Nozicktried to argue that “ethics exists because at least sometimes it is possible tocoordinate actions to mutual benefit.” 10 Or: “Ethics arises when frequentlyor importantly there are situations offering opportunities for mutual benefitfrom coordinated activity.” And a utilitarian—which Nozick was not—would say that “since cooperation to mutual benefit is the function ofethics, the only thing that matters is . . . the size of the social pie.”But after sixty-four closely reasoned pages, Nozick is left worrying thatethics must have something more. The reason he gets into trouble is that hemakes the characteristically modern philosophical mistake of simply definingethics as “concerning interpersonal relations.” 11 That is, his main argument hasno place for the virtues of self-improvement or of devotion to a transcendent.It is a middle-level ethics, neither at the hope-faith-love top or the temperancecouragebottom, but aimed at Justice implemented with prudence. It is entirelyabout economics, that is, about “Pareto optimality,” about mutually beneficialdeals. The ethical object is the other people in the deal, not ever oneself or God.