Creating a Code of Ethics in After Virtue

All moral codes are based around a system of virtues and vices, everything positive and negative a person could possibly do. Virtues and vices constitute moral codes and ultimately all ethical thought and reason. Chapter 14 of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue tackles the daunting task of dissecting and creating a definition of a virtue. In order to do this, MacIntyre must create a set of rules which not only applies to previous philosophical societies but has room for future amendments. He stated that for a quality to be properly considered a virtue it needed to be "based on a moral tradition," "a narrative order of a single human life" and a set of "practices," qualities which all sound fine in the short-run but I feel aren't malleable enough to create a universal definition. I believe that the definition of a virtue needs to be simple enough for everyone to understand while have the complexity needed to have a certain depth or substance about it.

MacIntyre's three conditions for a virtue sound professionally tailored but I feel they don't necessarily apply to the creation of a virtue, the most glaring example of this being his condition of "a narrative order of a single human life." He seems to explain this as the need for a single person to represent the characteristics and traits of an entire society. I find this to be extremely shallow, since societies are much more complex than the workings of just one person living within it. I cannot imagine picking just one person today to define our current world society as we know it, since we have grown past society being only about one person. The definition of a virtue should be dependant on an analysis of an entire civilization of people; represented by the collective natures and traits which defined them during their time period. It would be impossible to do this while looking at only a "single human life." In Chapter 15 MacIntyre seems to stress the importance of narrative as a whole in the process of creating virtues, an importance I cannot argue with. However it would certainly be silly to base all of a society's ethical workings on a single human life.

I also find a lack of a need for a virtue to be based on the moral traditions of the society preceding the current one. While it would be nice for a society to have a set of virtues to work with, a set which can be altered to custom fit their own needs, I do not find it necessary for the definition of a virtue to be based on a previous method of thought. A world epidemic could occur which would completely separate one society from another in history, one that would make it unique. Under these rare conditions, a society should not necessarily be dependant on the traditions of a previous society if they do not prove to be essential to the strive or continuation of a current society. Some previous moral traditions have absolutely nothing to do with how we all live our lives today, and I cannot see the nature of our virtues being dependant on them (for example, many of the values and characteristics seen in the heroic societies). While a previous society's workings can serve as a fine starting place toward modern virtuous thinking, I don not see it as mandatory since it can potentially be irrelevant.

As I have earlier stated, I believe a set of virtues needs to either be so universally acceptable that any society can successfully adopt it or a society should simply be able to create their own set without intervention of ideas from a previous society (if the previous ideas are irrelevant to modern life). I realize how difficult of a process what I am suggesting can be, however with enough thought from bright and enlightened minds I am confident a reliable set of virtues can be tailored which not only shares a link with every other set of virtues but has the ability to be easily utilized by future societies (if they so deem it relevant to their society). I feel this was MacIntyre's ultimate goal in trying to decipher the under workings of all virtues, but I do not agree with his end result.

The only criticism I can see with the ideas I feel are necessary is that it would be extremely difficult to accomplish, which I happen to agree with. I however feel that a universally accepted code of virtues is extremely important to discover not only for historians researching prior ethical though but for the future of the study as well. I am confident that a universality can be found, as MacIntyre was scratching the surface of what all of the various codes of virtue had in common in the beginning of Chapter 14. He himself states how different all of the virtues are (comparing virtues created by Homeric, Aristotelian, the New Testament, Benjamin Franklin and Jane Austen societies), but then sees three links between all of them; the three being moral tradition, practices and narrative order. I believe further links can be found between all of the virtuous codes, and from this philosophers will be able to create a standard of virtues which will not only be prevalent to all previous societies but for societies still to come.