Moral characterorcharacteris an analysis of an individual's steadymoralqualities. The concept ofcharactercan express a variety of attributes including the presence or lack ofvirtuessuch asempathy,courage,fortitude,honesty, andloyalty, or of good behaviors orhabits, these attributes are also a part of one'ssoft skills. Moral character primarily refers to the collection of qualities that differentiate one individual from another – although on a cultural level, the group of moral behaviors to which a social group adheres can be said to unite and define it culturally as distinct from others. Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as "a disposition to express behavior in consistent patterns of functions across a range of situations".[1]Same as, the philosopher Marie I. George refers to moral character as the "sum of one’s moral habits and dispositions".[2]Aristotle has said, "we must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts."[3]
Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography about his habitual efforts to develop his moral character.
The word "character" is derived from the Ancient Greek word "charaktêr", referring to a mark impressed upon a coin. Later it came to mean a point by which one thing was told apart from others.[4]There are two approaches when dealing with moral character:Normative ethicsinvolve moral standards that exhibit right and wrong conduct. It is a test of proper behavior and determining what is right and wrong.Applied ethicsinvolve specific andcontroversialissues along with a moral choice, and tend to involve situations where people are either for or against the issue.[4]
In the military field, character is considered particularly relevant in theleadershipdevelopment area. Military leaders should not only "know" theoretically the moral values but they must embody these values.[6]
TheStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyprovides a historical account of some important developments in philosophical approaches to moral character. A lot of attention is given toPlato,Aristotle, andKarl Marx's views, since they all follow the idea of moral character after theGreeks. Marx accepts Aristotle's insight that virtue and good character are based on a sense ofself-esteemandself-confidence.
Platobelieved that thesoulis divided into three parts of desire:Rational,Appetitive, orSpirited.[7]In order to have moral character, we must understand what contributes to our overall good and have our spirited and appetitive desires educated properly, so that they can agree with the guidance provided by the rational part of the soul.
Aristotletells us that there are good people in the world. These are those who exhibitexcellences– excellences ofthoughtand excellences of character. His phrase for excellences of character –êthikai aretai– we usually translate as moral virtue or moral excellence. When we speak of a moralvirtueor an excellence of character, the emphasis is on the combination of qualities that make an individual the sort of ethically admirable person that he is.[7]Aristotle defines virtuous character at the beginning of Book II inNicomachean Ethics: "Excellence of character, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in ameanrelative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man ofpractical wisdomwould determine it. Now it is a mean between twovices, that which depends onexcessand that which depends ondefect”. In Aristotle's view, good character is based on two naturally occurring psychological responses that most people experience without difficulty: our tendency to takepleasurefromself-realizingactivity and our tendency to form friendly feelings toward others under specific circumstances. Based on his view, virtually everyone is capable of becoming better and they are the onesresponsiblefor actions that express (or could express) their character.[7]
Christian character is also defined as presenting the "Fruit of the Holy Spirit": love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.[Galatians 5:22–23]Doctrines ofgraceandtotal depravityassert that – due tooriginal sin– mankind, entirely or in part, was unable to be good without God's intervention; otherwise at best, one could only ape good behavior for selfish reasons.
In one experiment that was done in the United States in 1985, the moral character of a person was based on whether or not a person had found adimein apublic phone booth. The findings were that 87% of subjects who found a dime in a phone booth mailed a sealed and addressed envelope that was left at the booth in an apparent mistake by someone else, while only 4% of those who did not find a dime helped.[10]Some[who?]found it very troubling that people would be influenced by such morallytrivialfactors in their choice whether to provide low-costassistanceto others.John M. Dorisraises the issue ofecological validity– do experimental findings reflectphenomenafound in naturalcontexts. He recognizes that these results arecounterintuitiveto the way most of us think about morally relevant behavior.[11]
Another experiment that was done that askedcollege studentsatCornellto predict how they would behave when faced with one of severalmoral dilemmas, and to make the samepredictionsfor theirpeers. Again and again, people predicted that they would be moregenerousandkindthan others. Yet when put into the moral dilemma, the subjects did not behave as generously or as kindly as they had predicted. Inpsychological terms, the experimental subjects were successfully anticipating the base rate of moral behavior and accurately predicting how often others, in general, would beself-sacrificing.[11]
In the 1990s and 2000s, a number ofphilosophersandsocial scientistsbegan to question the verypresuppositionsthat theories of moral character and moral character traits are based on. Due to the importance of moral character to issues inphilosophy, it is unlikely that the debates over the nature of moral character will end anytime soon.[12]
Situationismcan be understood as composed of three central claims:[13]
Non-robustness Claim: moral character traits are not consistent across a wide spectrum of trait-relevant situations. Whatever moral character traits an individual has are situation specific.
Consistency Claim: while a person's moral character traits are relatively stable over time, this should be understood as consistency of situation specific traits, rather than robust traits.
Fragmentation Claim: a person's moral character traits do not have theevaluativeintegritysuggested by the Integrity Claim. There may be considerable disunity in a person's moral character among his or her situation-specific character traits.
According to Situationists, theempiricalevidence favors their view of moral character over the Traditional View.Hugh HartshorneandM. A. May's study of the trait ofhonestyamong schoolchildrenfound no cross-situationalcorrelation. A child may be consistently honest with hisfriends, but not with hisparentsorteachers. From this and other studies, Hartshorne and May concluded that character traits are notrobustbut rather "specific functions of life situations".[13]
These recent challenges to the Traditional View have not gone unnoticed. Some have attempted to modify the Traditional View to insulate it from these challenges, while others have tried to show how these challenges fail to undermine the Traditional View at all. For example, Dana Nelkin (2005), Christian Miller (2003), Gopal Sreenivasan (2002), and John Sabini and Maury Silver (2005), among others, have argued that the empirical evidence cited by the Situationists does not show that individuals lack robust character traits.[13]
A second challenge to the traditional view can be found in the idea of moralluck. This idea is that moral luck occurs when the moral judgment of anagentdepends on factors beyond the agent's control. Fiery Cushman[14]clarifies that this is judgement of an outcome comprising both the agent's character and an unanticipated circumstance, rather than an agent's intent. There are number of ways that moral luck can motivate criticisms of moral character. It is similar to "the kind of problems and situations one faces"[15]If all of an agent's moral character traits are situation-specific rather than robust, what traits an agent manifests will depend on the situation that she finds herself in. But what situations an agent finds herself in is often beyond her control and thus a matter of situational luck. Whether moral character traits are robust or situation-specific, some have suggested that what character traits one has is itself a matter of luck. If our having certain traits is itself a matter of luck, this would seem to undermine one's moral responsibility for one's moral character, and thus the concept of moral character altogether. AsOwen Flanaganand Amélie Oksenberg Rorty write:[13]
It [the morality and meaning of an individual’s life] will depend on luck in an individual’s upbringing, the values she is taught, theself-controllingand self-constructing capacities hersocial environmentenables and encourages her to develop, the moral challenges she faces or avoids. If all her character, not justtemperamental traitsanddispositionsbut also the reflexive capacities for self-control and self-construction, are matters of luck, then the very ideas of character and agency are in danger ofevaporation.
A moral character trait is a character trait for which the agent is morally responsible. If moral responsibility is impossible, however, then agents cannot be held responsible, depending on age, for their character traits or for the behaviors that they do as a result of those character traits.
A similar argument has also recently been advocated byBruce Waller. According to Waller, no one is "morally responsible for her character or deliberative powers, or for the results that flow from them.… Given the fact that she was shaped to have such characteristics byenvironmental(orevolutionary) forces far beyond her control, she deserves noblame[norpraise]".[13]
^Campbell, V., & Bond, R. (1982). "Evaluation of a Character Education Curriculum". In D. McClelland (ed.),Education For Values. (New York: Irvington Publishers). As described in Huitt, 2004.
^"FM-62: Leader Development"(PDF). Department of the Army. 30 June 2015. Retrieved18 December2016.This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
^Isen, Paula F.; Levin, Alice M. (1975). "Further Studies on the Effect of Feeling Good on Helping".Sociometry. American Sociological Association.38(1): 141–147.doi:10.2307/2786238.JSTOR2786238.
^Browne, Brynmor (1 January 1992). "A Solution to the Problem of Moral Luck".The Philosophical Quarterly.42(168): 345–56.doi:10.2307/2219685.JSTOR2219685.
