Christine Swanton is, without question, one of the leading scholars in contemporary virtue ethics. Nevertheless, and somewhat surprisingly, her target-centered account of virtue ethics, which was developed in Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account (2003) and a series of articles, has not garnered much support. Part of the reason has to do with the sheer popularity of Aristotelian virtue ethics, in particular Rosalind Hursthouse’s book On Virtue Ethics (1999). However, I suspect that the main reason for its comparative lack of popularity is the complexity of her work. Swanton’s analyses tend to be much deeper and more detailed than her competitors’ work. She draws from, and assumes a familiarity with, a wide range of scholarly literature as well as different philosophical traditions, with the result that her work is inaccessible to students. As George Harris (2004) writes in his review of Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account, the book is “[w]ritten for advanced specialists in moral theory [and] … framed within a technical vocabulary that requires concentrated effort to master before its contributions can be appreciated. Even those who are already familiar with a good bit of the virtue-ethics literature will have to orient the issues to her terminological framework.” Target Centred Virtue Ethics is no exception. It is aimed at advanced specialists in normative theory and metaethics. However, I was pleased to see that some of the chapters are accessible to students. In particular, Chapter 5, in which Swanton explains and defends the basic features of target-centered virtue ethics, can (and should!) be incorporated into an upper-level ethics syllabus alongside the standard introductory readings on Aristotelian virtue ethics.I give a summary of the main features of Swanton’s account and then comment on the structure of the book.Target-centered virtue ethics shares two features with other forms of virtue ethics: it takes thick evaluative concepts, such as generous, kind, callous, and cruel, as central, and it evaluates actions and agents through the notions of virtue and vice. It has two distinguishing features. The first is its account of right action. On the Aristotelian view proposed by Hursthouse (1999), an action is right if it is what an ideally virtuous agent would characteristically do in the circumstances. Swanton rejects this view on the grounds that a virtuous agent—someone with practical wisdom—is fallible. Instead, she proposes that an action is right if it hits the target(s) of the relevant virtues. The basic idea is fairly simple: The target of benevolence is to promote the good of others, so an action is right if it succeeds in doing so. Swanton further develops this idea with the help of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. Aristotle takes the mean to be multidimensional: It is not simply a matter of hitting the mean between, say, giving too much and giving too little, but also of “acting in the right circumstance, in the right manner, at the right time, to the right extent, for the right reasons, with respect to the right people or objects, deploying the right instruments” (42). A further complication is that the target of a particular virtue depends on the context, including things such as the agent’s role and relationships, as well as cultural and historical features. Swanton argues that virtue ethics needs to move beyond its reliance on “basic” virtues such as honesty, generosity, justice, and so on. These abstract notions are not very useful. To apply to the real world, the basic virtues should be differentiated according to the agent’s role and stage of life, cultural location, historical features, and so on. One possible advantage of this approach is that it allows us to solve the familiar “dilemma of role ethics.” That is, it acknowledges the existence of role-differentiated obligations, while at the same time it denies that role occupiers are sometimes required to act immorally (181–98).The second distinguishing feature of target-centered virtue ethics is that it gives a pluralistic account of what makes a trait a virtue. Aristotelian virtue ethicists subscribe to some version of the eudaimonist thesis: “It is a necessary condition of a trait being a virtue that it characteristically benefits its possessor” (123). Swanton rejected this thesis in her earlier work (2003), but in doing so she invited the objection that she denies the link between virtue and flourishing. Such a denial is implausible because it is easy to demonstrate how being virtuous—kind, honest, compassionate, just—benefits the agent (and, conversely, how being vicious—dishonest, cruel, selfish, unreliable—makes them unhappy). However, the objection is unfounded, for as Swanton explains, she does not reject the claim that “agents need virtue to flourish.” The latter specifies a necessary condition on flourishing, and a noneudaimonist can support this view. Rather, she rejects the claim that it is a necessary condition for virtue that it characteristically benefits its possessor. One of her reasons is that it is simply not true that every virtue characteristically benefits its possessor. For example, a freedom fighter might be truly courageous without it being the case that their courage characteristically promotes their flourishing (124). Eudaimonism also encounters the familiar egoism (or narcissism) objection: If the virtuous person is ultimately motivated by her own flourishing or excellence of character, that is, if she takes her own flourishing to be the finest good for her, then she is intolerably egoistic rather than genuinely virtuous. Swanton argues that eudaimonism can only avoid this problem by establishing a problematic disconnect between the virtuous agent’s final ends (her own flourishing) and her motives for acting (such as helping others, respecting their rights, etc.). A target-centered account avoids the disconnect objection by claiming that “what makes actions right is hitting the targets of (relevant) virtues in relation to action, what makes traits virtues is determined by their targets or aims, and what should motivate an agent at both fundamental and everyday levels are these very features” (134–35). It is, as she puts it, “everywhere direct” (133).The book has three parts. Part I (“Metaphysics”) develops a “new metaphysics” for virtue ethics as an alternative to the metaphysics inspired by Philippa Foot’s influential book, Natural Goodness (2001). Swanton describes it as “a form of response-dependence view inspired by Heidegger, Hume, and McDowell” (8). It is committed to the following metaethical theses: ethical realism (factualism and objectivism), descriptivism, and reasons and/or fittingness fundamentalism. Although the material is clearly structured, part I is written for specialists in metaethics and assumes a familiarity with McDowell’s critique of Aristotelian naturalism as well as Heideggerian ontology.Part II (“Nature”) gives an account of the nature of Swanton’s virtue ethics. Chapter 5 begins with a critique of eudaimonism and then presents the main features of target-centered virtue ethics, including its account of right action. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 explore the idea that virtue is “differentiated.” A virtue such as generosity exists in many different forms, depending on cultural and historical features, the role someone occupies, their stage of life, relationships, and so on. This view raises important questions about the link between differentiated virtue (or “role ethics”) and “ordinary morality,” and Swanton argues for what she calls an “integrated view,” namely that role-differentiated morality is constrained by ordinary morality (158). Chapter 8 draws on research in moral psychology to counter the popular Aristotelian view that the young cannot be virtuous. Swanton argues that virtue is differentiated according to stage of life, so we can speak of children’s virtues and virtues that are proper to old age. Chapter 9 gives a pluralistic account of the “grounds” of virtue (i.e., the features that make a trait a virtue) and is an attractive alternative to monistic accounts such as eudaimonism and consequentialism.Part III (“Application”) addresses a number of theoretical issues related to right action and action guidance. The first two chapters will be of interest to all normative theorists. Chapter 10, “Has Virtue Ethics Sold Out?” addresses an important question about right action: Given Elizabeth Anscombe’s (1958) claim that the notions of “moral obligation and moral duty” should be “jettisoned” (1), is it a mistake for contemporary virtue ethicists to offer an account of right action? Swanton answers in the negative, and she argues that we should not interpret Anscombe as rejecting deontic notions per se. Anscombe rejects the notion of moral obligation or moral rightness, where the moral has a special “mesmeric force” that commits the theorist to a dubious metaphysics (a “supreme lawgiver”), and virtue ethics does not offer an account of moral rightness in this special sense. Does this mean virtue ethics is not playing the same game, that it uses “rightness” in way that differs from standard usage? Swanton’s response is that there is no standard conception of rightness. It is, as W. B. Gallie puts it, an “essentially contested” concept (249). Unlike some virtue ethicists, Swanton thinks we should accommodate rightness understood in terms of requirements, permissions, and obligations, and that virtue ethics can do so without using the concept in the problematic special sense. Chapter 11 addresses the familiar objection that virtue ethics cannot provide action guidance because it is committed to particularism and therefore “uncodifiable.” Swanton embraces a fairly radical (but reasonable) form of particularism. She argues that the fact that an action is honest, say, does not necessarily count as a reason in its favor. However, she thinks virtue ethics is sufficiently codifiable through the “virtue rules” as long as these are understood as providing “default reasons.” Thus, for example, one should “be honest” unless “certain complicating factors intervene” (266). The final two chapters revisit topics discussed in part I relating to the logos of ethics (Chapter 12) and epistemology (Chapter 13).Swanton makes some helpful suggestions about how different chapters can be grouped together according to themes (11). To readers who are not familiar with Swanton’s virtue ethics, I would suggest reading the introduction, in which Swanton identifies two theses that characterize virtue ethics as a family, and then moving on to Chapter 5 (“Eudaimonistic versus Target Centred Virtue Ethics”), Chapter 9 (“On the Grounds of Virtue”), and Chapter 10 (“Has Virtue Ethics Sold Out?”). Readers who are familiar with Swanton’s work will notice that the volume contains material that is published elsewhere in some form. To them, I would strongly suggest reading the volume from cover to cover. It contains a significant amount of new material, and the previously published work is suitably modified such that the volume gives a comprehensive and systematic framework for understanding ethics. Swanton’s target-centered virtue ethics shares many of the attractive features of Aristotelian virtue ethics, but it is much more refined and sophisticated and thereby (arguably) avoids many of the weaknesses of Aristotelianism.

中文翻译：

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以目标为中心的美德伦理

毫无疑问，克里斯汀·斯旺顿是当代美德伦理学领域的领军学者之一。然而，有点令人惊讶的是，她在美德伦理学：多元论证 (2003) 和一系列文章中发展起来的以目标为中心的美德伦理学解释并没有获得太多支持。部分原因与亚里士多德美德伦理学的绝对流行有关，尤其是罗莎琳德·赫斯特豪斯 (Rosalind Hursthouse) 的著作《美德伦理学》(On Virtue Ethics, 1999)。然而，我怀疑它相对不受欢迎的主要原因是她工作的复杂性。Swanton 的分析往往比她的竞争对手的工作更深入、更详细。她借鉴并假定熟悉广泛的学术文献和不同的哲学传统，因此她的作品对学生来说是难以理解的。正如乔治·哈里斯 (George Harris) (2004) 在他对美德伦理学的评论中所写：一个多元的解释，这本书是“[w]为道德理论领域的高级专家写的 [和] ......可以欣赏。即使是那些已经相当熟悉美德伦理文献的人，也必须将问题定位到她的术语框架。” 以目标为中心的美德伦理也不例外。它面向规范理论和元伦理学方面的高级专家。然而，我很高兴地看到有些章节可供学生阅读。特别是第 5 章，斯旺顿解释并捍卫了以目标为中心的美德伦理学的基本特征，可以（而且应该！) 与亚里士多德美德伦理学的标准入门读物一起并入高级伦理学教学大纲。我对斯旺顿的叙述的主要特征进行了总结，然后对本书的结构进行了评论。以目标为中心的美德伦理学与其他形式的美德伦理学：它以慷慨、善良、冷酷和残忍等厚重的评价概念为中心，并通过美德和邪恶的概念来评价行为和代理人。它有两个显着特点。首先是它对正确行为的解释。根据赫斯特豪斯 (Hursthouse, 1999) 提出的亚里士多德观点，如果一个行为是一个理想的有德行的代理人在这种情况下通常会做的事情，那么这个行为就是正确的。斯旺顿反对这种观点，理由是一个有道德的代理人——具有实践智慧的人——是容易犯错的。反而，她提出，如果一项行动达到了相关美德的目标，那么该行动就是正确的。基本思想相当简单：仁爱的目标是促进他人的利益，因此，如果一个行为成功了，它就是正确的。斯旺顿在亚里士多德的中庸之道的帮助下进一步发展了这一思想。亚里士多德认为均值是多维的：这不仅仅是在给予太多和给予太少之间找到均值的问题，而且还涉及“在正确的情况下，以正确的方式，在正确的时间，在正确的范围内，出于正确的原因，针对正确的人或对象，部署正确的工具”(42)。更复杂的是，特定美德的目标取决于上下文，包括诸如代理人的角色和关系之类的事情，以及文化和历史特征。斯旺顿认为，美德伦理需要超越对诚实、慷慨、正义等“基本”美德的依赖。这些抽象概念不是很有用。要应用于现实世界，基本美德应根据主体的角色和生活阶段、文化位置、历史特征等进行区分。这种方法的一个可能优势是它使我们能够解决熟悉的“角色伦理困境”。也就是说，它承认角色区分义务的存在，同时否认角色占据者有时需要不道德地行事（181-98）。以目标为中心的美德伦理学的第二个显着特征是它给出了一个什么使特质成为美德的多元解释。亚里士多德美德伦理学家赞同某种版本的幸福主义论点：“一个特质成为美德的必要条件是，它在特征上有利于其拥有者”（123）。斯旺顿在她早期的作品（2003 年）中拒绝了这个论点，但在这样做的过程中，她招致了反对意见，即她否认美德与繁荣之间的联系。这样的否认是不可信的，因为很容易证明善良——善良、诚实、富有同情心、公正——如何使代理人受益（相反，恶毒——不诚实、残忍、自私、不可靠——如何使他们不快乐）。然而，这种反对意见是没有根据的，因为正如斯旺顿所解释的那样，她并不反对“代理人需要美德才能蓬勃发展”的说法。后者规定了繁荣的必要条件，非恶魔主义者可以支持这一观点。相当，她拒绝这样的说法，即它是美德的必要条件，它的特点是有益于它的拥有者。她的理由之一是，并非每一种美德都特有地有益于其拥有者，这是不正确的。例如，一个自由斗士可能真的很勇敢，但他们的勇气并不是促进他们繁荣的特征 (124)。Eudaimonism 也遇到了熟悉的利己主义（或自恋）反对意见：如果有美德的人最终是由自己的繁荣或品格卓越所激励的，也就是说，如果她认为自己的繁荣对她来说是最好的，那么她就是无法容忍的利己主义而不是真正的善良。斯旺顿认为，幸福主义只能通过在美德代理人的最终目的（她自己的繁荣）和她的行为动机（例如帮助他人、尊重他们的权利等）之间建立一个有问题的脱节来避免这个问题。以目标为中心的解释通过声称“使行动正确的是达到与行动相关的（相关）美德的目标，使特征成为美德的是他们的目标或目的决定的，以及什么应该激励代理人基本水平和日常水平都是这些特征”（134-35）。正如她所说，它“无处不在”(133)。本书分为三个部分。第一部分（“形而上学”）为美德伦理发展了一种“新形而上学”，以替代受 Philippa Foot 颇具影响力的著作 Natural Goodness（2001 年）启发的形而上学。Swanton 将其描述为“一种受海德格尔、休谟和麦克道尔启发的反应依赖性观点”(8)。它致力于以下元伦理学论点：伦理现实主义（事实主义和客观主义）、描述主义以及原因和/或适用性原教旨主义。尽管材料结构清晰，但第一部分是为元伦理学专家编写的，并假定熟悉麦克道尔对亚里士多德自然主义和海德格尔本体论的批判。第二部分（“自然”）描述了斯旺顿美德伦理学的本质。第 5 章从对幸福论的批判开始，然后介绍了以目标为中心的美德伦理学的主要特征，包括它对正确行为的解释。第 6、7 和 8 章探讨了美德是“分化的”这一观点。诸如慷慨之类的美德以多种不同的形式存在，取决于文化和历史特征、某人所扮演的角色、他们的人生阶段、人际关系等。这种观点提出了关于区分美德（或“角色伦理”）与“普通道德”之间联系的重要问题，斯旺顿主张她所谓的“综合观点”，即角色区分道德受到普通道德的约束（158 ). 第 8 章利用道德心理学的研究来反驳流行的亚里士多德观点，即年轻人不可能有德行。斯旺顿认为，美德是根据生命的阶段而区分的，因此我们可以说儿童的美德和适合老年的美德。第 9 章对美德的“基础”进行了多元解释（即，使特质成为美德的特征）并且是一种有吸引力的替代一元论的解释，例如幸福论和结果论。第三部分（“应用”）解决了与正确行动和行动指导相关的许多理论问题。所有规范理论家都会对前两章感兴趣。第 10 章，“美德伦理学卖光了吗？” 解决了关于正确行为的一个重要问题：鉴于 Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) 声称“道德义务和道德责任”的概念应该被“抛弃”(1)，当代美德伦理学家对正确行为的解释是否错误？Swanton 的回答是否定的，她认为我们不应该将 Anscombe 解释为拒绝道义概念本身。Anscombe 拒绝道德义务或道德正确性的概念，道德有一种特殊的“催眠力”，使理论家陷入可疑的形而上学（“最高立法者”），而美德伦理学并没有提供这种特殊意义上的道德正确性的解释。这是否意味着美德伦理学不是在玩同一个游戏，它以不同于标准用法的方式使用“正确”？斯旺顿的回应是，没有标准的正确概念。正如 WB Gallie 所说，这是一个“本质上有争议的”概念 (249)。与一些美德伦理学家不同，斯旺顿认为我们应该适应根据要求、许可和义务来理解的正确性，并且美德伦理学可以在不使用有问题的特殊意义的概念的情况下做到这一点。第 11 章解决了一个熟悉的反对意见，即美德伦理学不能提供行动指导，因为它致力于特殊主义，因此“不可编纂”。斯旺顿拥护一种相当激进（但合理）的特殊主义形式。她争辩说，一个行为是诚实的这一事实并不一定算作对其有利的理由。然而，她认为只要这些被理解为提供“默认原因”，美德伦理就可以通过“美德规则”充分编纂。因此，例如，一个人应该“诚实”，除非“某些复杂因素介入”（266）。最后两章重新讨论了第一部分中讨论的主题，这些主题与伦理学的标志（第 12 章）和认识论（第 13 章）有关。Swanton 就如何根据主题（11）将不同的章节组合在一起提出了一些有用的建议。对于不熟悉斯旺顿美德伦理学的读者，我建议阅读导言，其中斯旺顿确定了两个将美德伦理学描述为一个家庭的论点，然后继续阅读第 5 章（“幸福主义与以目标为中心的美德伦理学”），第 9 章（“基于美德”）和第 10 章（“美德伦理已经卖完了吗？”）。熟悉斯旺顿作品的读者会注意到，该卷包含以某种形式在别处发表的材料。对于他们，我强烈建议您从头到尾阅读整本书。它包含大量新材料，并且对先前发表的作品进行了适当修改，使该卷为理解伦理学提供了一个全面而系统的框架。